Freshman, Trip to Israel

Altclair is Naomi's campaign, set at the college of Altclair, which is somewhere in Minnesota. Think Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, GURPS Illuminati IOU, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Other source material (that Naomi's not familiar with) might include Elizabeth Hand's Waking the Moon and most of Charles de Lint. Players are me (Justin Thorne), Josh (Michael Conoway), Manny (Jim Gaffney), and Beth (Diometra).

From the Desk of Justin Thorne:

I don't want to write all of this, but I've gotten more than a bit paranoid, with how much justification I do not know. In any case, it makes a good companion piece to the letter about Fall's little trip to Mexico and the journal entries for the beginning of Winter Quarter about the phone call I received along with the aftermath. (1)

This happened during Spring Quarter of freshman year. It started the day after the cast party for Noises Off, although, of course, the entire incident was sparked by earlier events.

Michael and I were sitting in my room after he removed Fergus' mark from my arm. Diometra came to tell us that someone had scratched the Minoan word for help in the dirt.

Now, there aren't too many folks on campus who know that language, just Jim, and about 3 members of the Classics Department. We went to Jim and Michael's room, to see if Jim were there. He wasn't. While that did not conclusively prove anything, when I couldn't find him with my compass, I got worried. (2) I called the Classics Department and explained the situation while Diometra kept reminding me that it was Minoan, not Mycenaean, that had been written in the dirt. (3)

As I hung up Michael's phone, Delilah screamed inside his head. Then, their link was cut off. I panicked and dialed Ken's room. Michael wanted to call Russell Mast, who was engaged to Delilah at the time. Since I had no intention of surrendering possession of the phone, he asked for the keys to my room so that he could use my phone. I tossed them to him, and he left with Diometra, telling me to lock the door behind them.

I did, not that it did much good. I'd just confirmed that Ken was in his room when Michael's door started to open. I told Ken to call my mother and Sarah Lacey (on the grounds that this really did not seem like something she had engineered, and she might object to someone other than herself tormenting me. My choice of her as someone to contact proved unexpectedly appropriate, although I shudder to think about what might have happened had she chosen to involve herself. Fortunately, she had a play to direct.).

I hung up the phone. A quick glance showed that there was no way I'd be able to get my hands on one of Michael's blades or Jim's knives, so I moved to the center of the room, away from anything which might look threatening as the door opened.

This proved conducive to survival, as the two gentlemen who entered the room were quite capable of dealing with me either armed or unarmed. They politely insisted that I accompany them.

A long drive followed in a car with dark windows. Moving slowly, I took out the compass and asked it again to tell me where Jim was. As before, it just spun in circles. I returned it to my pocket and spent the remainder of the drive conjugating Arabic verbs in my head. (4)

From the car, I was taken to an airplane, and there followed a long flight where I learned that it is possible to be simultaneously terrified and bored out of one's mind. After that, I was strip-searched and shown to a cell. My possessions were taken, of course, including the compass and the paper with Fergus' mark. I wonder if he tried to use it, and, if so, what he made of the results. (5)

I ran through more Arabic in my head, waiting for someone to give me some indication of what this was all about. Eventually, two men arrived and started asking me questions about Michael.

Whatever I'd expected, it wasn't that. I asked why it had been necessary to bring me halfway around the world--a guess, that, based on flight time--to ask questions that could have been asked on campus. They said that they wanted to impress upon me the seriousness of their intent. I assured them that they had my full and undivided attention, but they were not willing to give me any idea of what was going on. I suggested that they ask Michael himself--another guess--and they said that they would, but right now, they were asking me. (6)

I apologized as politely and sincerely as I could, but told them that I could not help them unless I had more of an idea of what was going on. They nodded and left me.

I ran through a few more Arabic words in my head, then gave up, leaned against the wall, and just shook. I'd just declined to cooperate with the good cops, and I though that the next move would be sending someone a lot nastier in to convince me of the error of my ways.

I was wrong. The next step was to tell me what was going on. That was almost worse.

A couple of weeks earlier, a bomb had exploded at a bus stop in Jerusalem, killing 300 people. I'd heard about it, of course, felt sorry for Delilah, shook my head over how terrible it all was, and went back to studying. After all, there wasn't anything I could have done about it.

Nothing, that is, except make a simple phone call. For the Jerusalem Bomber turned out to have been my original roommate, Rashid Ali, Mk. I.

The people holding us--myself, Michael, Jim, Delilah, Helen, and Jennifer--were from the Israeli government, although I'm not sure how official this part of the investigation was. They had discovered the letter we'd sent to Rashid via the Postal Mages, as he'd had no way to hide it in his cell. Understandably, they were concerned by the hole in their security when the letter appeared.

Once they started investigating us, all sorts of interesting connections appeared. I, of course, had been rooming with the Jerusalem Bomber and his replacement, learning to speak their language and appreciate their culture. And while I know that any of us could have made that phone call, I was the one who made the initial decision to cover for Rashid Mk. I.

Jim's sister is married to a member of the IRA, a fact of which she is well aware. She's probably a member now herself. Michael's aunt used her magic during the Vietnam War to get information from the minds of soldiers she and Ash suspected of committing atrocities, definitely acting outside any legal authority.(7)

While I think Helen and Jennifer are clear of terrorist connections, Delilah is from Quebec, and I gather, was suspected of being complicit with extremists there. The fact that she has absolutely no records before showing up at Altclair did not precisely calm suspicions. (8)

From the outside, it was not possible to tell if we were simply idiots or part of someone's worst nightmare of an international terrorist conspiracy. This is why our invitation, while polite, was forceful. And the Israelis had done their homework and did have mages, including the one paying me a visit in my cell.

I asked if he could prove that Rashid Mk. I was the Jerusalem Bomber. It was a little like the research I'd done over that Yule: There was no way he could supply absolute proof, but he could help with the accumulation of evidence. In this case, he was holding the memory of one of the victims who had caught a glimpse of Rashid. We both knew that giving me the memory would prove nothing, since he could have made it up, but it's what there was, so I asked for it. He let me have it, in both senses, and kept the shock away so I could answer questions.

I told him what I knew about both Rashids and their shell game. He told me that Michael had suggested that the first Rashid had systematically broken all of the rules in the Koran. Remembering how Rashid had immediately gone in search of the hard liquors after I assured him that drinking beer did not constitute a violation of the prohibition against consuming alcohol, I laughed. The laughter died in my throat, however, when he pointed out that Rashid had worked his way down to murder. (9)

There was less to say about my second roommate except that he had prayed for my safety on the eve of May Day, and that meant a lot to me. Even given his role in the trouble I had in November, it still does. (10)

And I owed his predecessor for Mongolia. As soon as I mentioned owing my original roommate, the atmosphere changed. I was asked if I owed enough to help smuggle arms. Once I understood the question, I said that while I had not knowingly been a party to that, it was possible that I wouldn't notice. After all, I only noticed Daniel's smoke bomb when the alarms went off. I suggested he read my mind if he wanted to know for sure.

On the whole, he prefers not to do that. As I found out later, mind magic is not his specialty. So he asked me about Jim's connection to matters Irish (11) and Delilah's connection to the Quebec groups. (12) I think he was disgusted enough by my ignorance to consider shooting me on the spot. Instead, he asked about Mary.

I couldn't claim ignorance there, and I knew better than to try lying. I told him that Mary was sorry for what she had done. He wanted to know more about that and about Mongolia, and he now agreed that I wouldn't have a clue if either of my roommates were smuggling arms or anything else through campus. So, he decided reading my mind was the best way, after all.

Of course, by now, I didn't really want him in my mind. I had no objection to his searching for everything he could find on either Rashid, but I didn't want to tell him anything about Mary, and I really didn't want to spill Delilah's secret yet again. However, I'd lost any right to protest, and I knew better than to think I could keep a mage out of my mind. And, as Delilah said when I apologized to her, she was better off with the full story known. What I knew about Mary that was damning was probably already known, given that they knew enough to ask questions, and it may have been to her advantage to have the rest known. That left Ash's role, but there was nothing I could do about that.

When he was finished going through my memories, he told me to sleep, and I didn't feel inclined to argue. The only long term ill effects I had were a hangover and some nightmares. The former was not as bad as the one I got after the cast party for Wait Until Dark, while the latter were richly deserved. Later on I made friends with them, but that's another story. (13)

It was a good thing I cooperated. Jim tried to keep him out and wound up with neurological damage. (14) It was months before I learned why Jim fought so hard. He knew about his sister's connections to the IRA and wanted to keep that information to himself. I might have wound up in his condition if I'd known. I liked Cat. Now, I still like her, and her husband is almost as charming as her brother, but the whole situation frightens me.

Once the Israelis learned the basic story, there was a lot of waiting. Michael passed the time by creating a phantom blade and practicing his fencing. (15) He and Delilah were asked if they wanted her release or their link restored. Michael wanted the latter, Delilah the former. Michael suggested a compromise, pointing out that the link could be restored, and that it could always be removed if Delilah were latter released.

I was asked if there was anything I wanted, so I made a list of the books for Macon's class. They got most of the books, and I studied. They wouldn't let me see newspaper articles about the bombing. I asked if it would be possible for them to tell me anything about the victims of the bombing, and that's how I met the flaming skeleton.

I have, at best, only a passing acquaintance with normality, so I do not know what the normal reaction to having a flaming skeleton pay one a visit in an Israeli cell would be. I am certain that mine was not it; I calmed down as soon as I saw him. This was weird. I am trained in weird.

That's the best I can explain it. I did not assume that he was well-disposed towards me; if anything, I thought he might kill me if he didn't like my answers to his questions. Mostly, I just thought that this was something I could deal with. He said he would tell me what he could. (16)

And, I answered questions about the postal mages and whether there was a secret message in the letters we sent Rashid. They wanted to close the hole in their security. However, there wasn't a lot I could tell them. As we covered the same ground yet again, high past time, I remembered Caliban. (17) I had no idea what my overprotective sword might do in my sudden absence. I asked for the man in charge, explaining that there was a loose cannon I wanted to nail down. He came, asking for details. Since it was obvious that his people had done their research on all of us, I was able to get to the point without a lot of explanation.

I didn't want him to destroy Caliban, who hadn't done anything wrong, but neither did I want any more corpses. I figured that the best I could hope for would be to be allowed to explain to Caliban that I was angry with Rashid, helping these people, and that I wanted him to behave.

What I got, some time later, was a beanbag which, I was told, was Caliban. I saw no particular reason either to doubt this nor attempt to do anything to change the situation. I recognized an intelligence test. (18)

We were all released, eventually, and Caliban was restored to his original form, much disgruntled. Michael was magically bound from speaking too freely about what had happened. I was not. Can you say intelligence test, take 2? I knew you could. Michael could have broken the spell if he'd chosen.

The women didn't have this to deal with. Jennifer and Helen knew almost nothing, and Jennifer said they'd been very gentle with her because of the baby. Just as well--the last thing we'd have needed was an impromptu test of Ash's commitment to pacifism.

Delilah was a special case because of her link to Michael, and she thinks they cut her some slack because she's Jewish. Jim, of course, was in no condition to go telling anyone anything.

It made sense; they had to either let us go or kill us, and tempting as I'm sure the latter was, there was little point in six more corpses. There was another factor as well. When we vanished, Ken called up Congressman Frye, whom he calls Benton, and made sure our government devoted some resources to locating its missing citizens, as well as a couple of resident aliens.

He was effective enough at making noise that as soon as I got back to campus Congressman-Frye-Benton-to-Ken called me to make sure we were all right and to ask me to get Ken to ease off now that we were home. He said that it would be all right to tell Ken everything, but it would be better to tell everyone else only that we'd been assisting the government--our government--with an investigation of the Jerusalem bombing.

I told Ken the whole story and started trying to salvage what I could of the quarter. This began with an apology to Sarah for my part in the disappearance of her stage fencing coordinator. (19) She was annoyed by that, but impressed by my role in the Jerusalem bombing. She wasn't sure which way she was impressed, however.

I let my mother know I was back and made arrangements to take Arabic and Acting as summer classes. I figured that my philosophy grade would be either an A or a recommendation that I see a psychiatrist, and that I'd better find out which. It was the former. With Ken's help. I got a charity C in Math and decided that I was not too proud to accept it. (20)

Since I was staying around for the summer, I needed a job and a place to stay. Since Michael had inherited his father's farm, he needed help he could underpay. I pointed out that we could solve each other's problems.

Jim withdrew from his classes after he got out of the hospital and went home to his family in Boston. Kristie went into a depression, and she's still not out of it. To my surprise, she didn't hold me responsible, and Jim answered my letters.

Delilah spent the summer in New York. Helen went home. Jennifer stayed with Ash. And all of us, except Jim, began preparing for Halloween.

General Notes

This was a lovely twist. While the PCs were worrying about the usual blend of supernatural and academia, one of their thoughtless but really stupid mundane moves bit them. Hard.

I liked the sudden switch in tone, particularly as it did not last too long. (I'm not talking about long term consequences here, just about the amount of time, realworld and game, spent keeping the PCs on ice and absolutely powerless to do anything.) It was beautiful misdirection, a case of handing PCs enough rope to hang themselves with.

Justin made the initial decision not to say anything about Rashid's shell game, but would have been willing to change his mind if anyone had made an issue of it. Michael and Jim didn't. I think all three were using roughly the same code of macho loyalty here. Helen figured Justin knew what he was doing, Jennifer had other things to deal with, and by the time Delilah figured out that a switch had been made, it was weeks later.

Here's where playing the NPCs becomes a delicate matter. Naomi was pushing things in a particular direction, so Delilah didn't make an issue of it, as Justin had half expected her to do. She was worried, though, which is why she first looked for Rashid over intersession and then suggested that everyone write letters to him care of the Postal Mages, and asked Justin to set that up. He almost didn't (the Postal Mages stay out of politics, and he wasn't sure if this counted as politics), and Naomi would have been willing to accept that decision and find some other way to get the PCs in trouble. But Delilah's reaction made sense.

Justin had talked about Rashid with Ken before, but he left out the part about the shell game. At one point, he almost told Ken that, but Naomi did an excellent job of making sure he didn't without warping an NPC's character beyond recognition. Ken asked if what Justin was about to tell him was something that Rashid would mind being spread around, and if Justin didn't know that it was, then he shouldn't tell Ken without checking with Rashid. As Ken pointed out, he was fairly sensitive on the subject of revealing someone else's secret without permission. This made sense to Justin, who figured that enough people knew about the shell game. And without that final piece of information, Ken had no way of knowing how stupid the PCs were being.

Naomi was a bit surprised everyone talked so soon. Well, more precisely, that Justin and Michael agreed to cooperate so quickly -- Jim was a wiseass, and he paid for that. But basically, the shitawfulpowerful mage on tap because a) Naomi probably wanted an excuse to play an old PC and b) she needed someone who could keep Michael from using his magic to get everyone out too easily, approached Michael with an honest explanation of what he wanted to know and why, and Michael told him. Justin refused to answer any questions the first time around, on the grounds that he didn't know what was going on or why, just that he'd been hauled halfway around the world for whatever it was. Also, in his case, the men started by asking questions about Michael. But once Michael had talked -- and Naomi was playing the Israelis as very competent, which is as it should be, so none of the PCs had a really good idea of who was where or in what condition -- and the mage told Justin what he wanted to know and why, Justin really didn't have a reason not to answer questions. Finding out that one might have prevented one's roommate from killing about 300 people is pretty good incentive for cooperating with the authorities.

One thing I learned later was that Naomi wanted to keep Justin from going back to the 19th century to try to help the gargoyles. While she would have had the Israelis grab the PCs anyway, she wanted to know how long they'd need to keep them before Justin decided he'd have to cancel the trip. I pointed out that given what he'd learned, Justin was going to have enough trouble handling the 20th century to even think about going back to the 19th. I also suggested that Naomi let me know the next time I start pulling the plot in a direction she doesn't want it going in, since I'd gotten the impression that she was perfectly happy about running a summer trip to the 19th century.

Manny was getting tired of the game at this point, so when Naomi rolled a fumble for the mage's attempt to read Jim's mind, she asked Manny if he wanted to use this as an excuse to write Jim out, maybe create a new PC. Manny decided to drop the game, but said that Jim would probably view the whole experience as a recruitment call to the Palestinian side, which probably meant working with his brother-in-law's IRA contacts, once he recovered enough to do so, that is.

Naomi's using Jim as an occasional NPC. At the moment (Justin's fourth, but junior year at Altclair), Jim isn't answering letters, and Kristie, who spent a lot of time with Jim in Boston before and after her graduation, is in Dublin. When Justin asked Kristie if she'd heard from Jim, she wrote back about how much fun the Irish theater was, but did not even mention Jim. Justin is worried.

Footnotes

(1) Justin's writing this in Spring Quarter of his sophomore year, but I'm using the order in which events happened. The references that don't get explained are to events that happened months after this.

(2) This is a compass that Justin tinkered with magically. It couldn't find Jim because magic was used to prevent that sort of thing.

(3) The PCs, and players as well, I think, just could not keep the name of the language straight. At one point, Diometra grabbed a sheet of paper, wrote "Minoan" on it, and shoved it under Justin's nose while he was on the phone, misidentifying the language to the Classics Department for the third or fourth time.

(4) Naomi asked if Justin were subvocalizing or conjugating out loud. I didn't know, so I rolled and decided that he was subvocalizing. After a while, both Justin and Jim had roughly the same idea:

Lisa: Think all the curses I can in Arabic. Invent a couple more.

Manny: I'm trying to see if "bloody fucking hell" can actually be made into a bardic style poem or if it just feels that way.

(5) Fergus could use the mark to sense its surroundings. Whether that would work given the magic shielding is an interesting question, but even if it did, there probably wasn't much to sense.

(6) Naomi had some trouble arranging for Michael to get captured, since at that point he was aware that something was going on, and was staying with Diometra and Daniel, whom Diometra thinks of as one of the local gods. Naomi said that the people grabbing the PCs wanted them to be alone, and would kill whoever was with them, but if Beth wanted to kill off Diometra, that was all right by her, just so long as it was okay with Beth. Josh pointed out that there was a perfectly simple solution: Michael would have to use the bathroom at some point. Naomi was happy to grab this one. Michael had his sword on him, invisibly, at the time, but it was still found and removed.

Diometra, who'd just been told by Apollo that she could call him any time, asked what was going on, and got an oracular answer: In desert warfare, there are those who keep the old ways.

(7) Mary used mind magic, at one point completely shattering the mind of one of the people she was interrogating. While he had done what she'd suspected him of, the event was traumatic enough that she no longer does mind magic. She doesn't believe that she can, although Ash told Justin that she might be able to in desperate circumstances.

(8) Since Michael invented Delilah out of magic, none of her past exists in this reality; hence, she has no records pre-dating her earliest appearance in it.

(9) Michael had been approached directly by Israel Bar-Lev, the mage questioning Justin, as one mage to another, and told what was going on. Michael had tried to use his abilities as summer king to make grass grow in the cell. Israel had him stand in the center of the cell, and then very carefully burned all the grass away, including some stuff growing in on Michael's person, IIRC. Justin was asked about Michael on the theory that this would get him talking, and then he could be steered towards talking about Rashid. When Justin clammed up, Israel figured, correctly, that Justin was confused and scared, and would probably be more likely to answer questions if he knew what was going on.

When Justin said that he liked Rashid, he was asked why.

Justin (not being a wiseass, just under a lot of strain): Because I'm an idiot!

He subsequently decided to have that line painted on his door sophomore year.

While the strain was starting to show on the PCs, the players were laughing, which is as it should be. It was a good combination that's hard to achieve: We weren't making wisecracks to the point of wrecking the mood, but we were enjoying a situation that our characters certainly were not. This was at least partly because Naomi wasn't trying to isolate the players, so we got to hear each conversation.

(10) November of Justin's sophomore year. I'll get to that write up after I get to the October hunt write up.

(11) Justin: Jim? What does this have to do with Jim? He has a brain!

(12) Justin: They have terrorists in Canada?

(13) Justin used his dreamcatcher and caught a couple of nightmares which appeared to be tiny gargoyles. At first, he slept somewhat restlessly with them in the room. When he noticed them looking wistfully at some paper airplanes he'd made, he folded tiny ones for them to play with. After that, he slept much better. He tried explaining to Matt that really, one could make friends with nightmares.

Justin: They're kind of cute. And they like paper airplanes.

Matt just gave Justin his "Thorne, you're insane" stare.

(14) Jim tried to be a wiseass even before that.

Jim (answering a question about Mongolia, with perfect accuracy): I can't tell you that. The honor of a lady is at stake. Anyway, it was long ago in a far away country, and everyone involved is dead except for one.

Since time travel was involved, Jim wasn't lying.

(15) Michael asked for a real fencing foil, a fencing uniform, and a practice dummy, and seemed actually surprised when, for some reason, his request was denied.

(16) This was Lauda, who, along with Israel was taken from an old Ars Magica game Naomi was in. An accident with fire magic turned him into a flaming skeleton. I think what got Lauda to agree to see what he could tell Justin was the fact that Justin replied in the affirmative when asked if he felt responsible for what had happened. This is the sort of question that baffles Justin because the answer is incredibly obvious to him.

(17) The chain of association went more or less like this:

Justin (having been asked for the umpteenth time about the postal mages and about whether he's absolutely sure that the letter package to Rashid didn't have a coded message): If you want to check with someone about whether there's a coded message, I don't know - write to the postal mages and ask. Or if you really think they're more likely to be responsive to me, I'm willing to dictate a letter or write one if you trust me with sharp pointy (about to say "pens", then realizes what else is sharp and pointy) Oh My God. Caliban."

(18) Naomi says it was a test of character.

(19) Michael.

(20) Justin got a fair amount of teasing about this from Matt and from his mother, who asked the obvious question.

Miranda: Just how much time did you actually spend studying? Or is that something a mother shouldn't ask?

Justin: I did study! Sort of. At least - I mean - (giving up) No, I guess it isn't.

(Actually, a fair amount of "studying" time was spent talking about what had happened in Israel, what might happen on Halloween, and what should happen between Ken and Justin.)