Paramnesia
| Paramnesia Chapter of Hypolethia | |
|---|---|
| Chapter 2 of Secondary Intent | |
| Chronology | |
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| Adhesion | - |
In which
What Happened
travelled to the Velvet Room (thursday late afternoon, so not open yet). Knock on the door, met by Toni and signs of people starting to set up. She nodded and let us in.
Little route through. Intro to the place. A brief discussion of rules and what to expect. The tokens taken - the card from T, the knife/claw from W, the random playing card from K. Tied in red silk and wound around V's forearm. Meditation into the false city. Some comments on the dullness of the inside of V's soul. Walked to the Reception through misling rain. The concierge was judgemental, V introed them as guests. Attempt to get to the archive. Uncertainty along the way and the horrible, distorted trailer home - unkempt, stinking, woven with thorned vines that grew longer and closer when T denied anything about this being her memory (as did the others but T was most uneased by it). Door slammed and the vines hit the floor with the sound of fist on flesh.
To the archive. Records found. Commentary on the walls of evidence and thread. Photos of events, one for each. These are the keys to the other oneiros. Down to midnight transit. Wotann first. A train that slowly became an army jeep. The others clothing becoming uniforms, the khaki of the french foreign legion. V's refused. The tunnel of the train became a jungle road, africa, under the jeep. Eventually the open clearing with an incongruous building - european in design (W recognises it as the University of Graz), and through it is an immense tree whose branches reach the heavens and roots seep out and sample, taste, brush up against the jungle beyond.
So what are we looking for? An irregularity. An intrusion. T weaves a spell of Fate, wincing as the paradox bites into her. But the thread of evidence and echoes, dream fragments and lines from research papers weave a lucky path which heads into another part of the jungle, then through into the night and a savannah, and a firefight that W recognises.
They see the creature he saw, the thing out of the night that tore his patrol apart. The one he barely survived and whose claw he keeps as a tool and the first thing that drove his obsession. But the scene is wrong. The creature - sinuous and black and monstrous, predatory - it cuts down all the patrol, not like a predator out to feed but seeking to play or simply hurt for the sake of it. And he sees it kill the image of himself in the memory replaying. He dies, the creature lives, and his body rises as another of it. Then the memory flickers and replays, seeing the memory as he remembers it. Survival. Somehow. Alive. And the memory of life feels like the intrusion.
Unsettled. And one of the nearby trees, still stained red with ordure of a dead legionnaire, opens into a face like Wotann's own. It speaks to him with a measured, calm voice, commenting on the uncertainty of memory, perhaps the first vision was an attempt to understand the unlikely survival that he experienced. V recognised this as W's Daimon - of the others, only W had done any astral travel btu had not met his daimon before.
Plot Developments & Facts Discovered
- Wotann has
People Appearing (in order of appearance)
Toni, bouncer at the Velvet Room The Concierge Faceless archivists A sinister predatory entity, or the memory thereof. Wotann's daimon
Locations
- The Velvet Room, not yet open for the evening.
- Vánagandr's sanctum in the vaults beneath
- Vánagandr's Oneiros
- Rain-streaked streets, the Reception, Contract Archive, and Midnight Transit.
- A strange memory-realm of neglect and jagged thorns.
- Wotann's Oneiros