Autoscopy

Autoscopy Chapter of Hypolethia
The statues in the temple. Dionysus and Kassandra
Chapter 3 of Secondary Intent
Chronology
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Paramnesia	-

In which the cabal follows a road of dead possibilities, and two souls reveal what has been taken from them.

What Happened

• Continuing the astral journey, the cabal intended to return to Vánagandr's Oneiros but things did not go as intended. The jeep they had used as metaphor of travel slipped out of Wotann's control and careened into the jungles that seemed to be the natural bounds for his soul. The terrain grew wilder as the vehicle picked up speed. Images of other paths the jeep could have taken spread out like possibilities to the left and right with each ending in a violent collision, smashed and wrapped around a tree, and each filled with what appeared to be their own bodies broken and dead.
• Over one last rise and the forest disappeared into craggy hills filled with ancient Greek ruins built upon rough-hewn ground where trees had been uprooted and the land remained wounded. They had reached Kassandra's Oneiros.
  • Vánagandr's sense for trauma (her praxis Scars in the Wallpaper) told her that this was a place devastated by long term human exploitation and dominance, but the despoilers were long gone and the realm had since scarred over and regrown with ruined imagery.
• The entire cabal began to see images of their own deaths by sudden and brutal means. This was an unsettling experience for all besides Kassandra, who has been seeing such visions for so long that she has stopped reacting to the horror. She spoke of her past, how she had always seen such things, of how her parents had tried to milk fame and fortune from her visions. And how, in the end, she had foreseen their deaths in a car accident and chosen not to tell them.
• As they were talking, Kassandra became overcome with a vision. A deific entity in the shape of a monstrous and gigantic satyr appeared to murder the other members of the cabal with an immense spear. It contemptuously asked her what she thought was going to happen when she brought unwanted people here, tormenting her and driving her into a fit. The others tried to help her come out of it but it only passed when another, calmer voice spoke to Kassandra and guided her back to awkward, pained consciousness. And only then did they realise one of their number was missing...
• Vánagandr had tried to help Kassandra by weaving a spell of shielding to protect the younger woman's mind from the pain and intrusion tormenting her. The spell failed, forming improperly and lashing Vánagandr with both the contemptuous abuse of the satyr and the full force of Kassandra's tempestuous emotions. Overwhelmed by this and her own inability to help, she slipped while the others attended to Kassandra's medical needs, trailing a chain of pained memories and bloody words as she stalked deeper into the Oneiros in search of the intrusion into the young woman's soul.
• The others found her in the greatest ruin of the Oneiros, an elegant and magnificent heap of fallen glory. At its heart lay a statue that bore all the mythic symbolism of Dionysus, leaning atop a smaller statue of a woman with Kassandra's face. As the others contemplated the psychological symbolism of this, Vánagandr remained lost in her own fugue and a rising obsession to find the thing that was missing inside Kassandra, eventually tearing a path into her own Oneiros.
  • In her digging, she found something. Hidden in the ruin of trauma was a sense that something had been stolen from the Oneiros. A destiny or future perhaps, and not simply by mundane horror. This absence felt like the intrusion.
• The world collapsed under the four of them, pitching them down through darkness and into cold rain. Onto a wrought iron balcony high above a cityscape that bled under a crimson-tinged stormcloud sky. Behind them lay doors into a penthouse suite, and a presence drawing close.
• While Vánagandr remained insensate and overwhelmed, the others were met by a woman that wore her face but spoke with smooth amusement and barbs beneath her words. She knew that the incident with the distorted trailer and that it had come from Kassandra's memories. And she commented that as much as Vánagandr would not like it, perhaps she should show the others where her intrusive trauma lies. Since she is so set on tearing open all their pain for inspection.
• Vánagandr grudgingly agreed, reasserting her professional mask and trying to establish distance from her erratic actions. Shame is as easily buried as any other emotion, after all. She apologised for her behaviour though did not explain herself and identified the other her as her daimon, the Wolf in Chains, though she did not explain the name. The city beyond the penthouse windows seemed to have lost some of its incoherence by the time they took the elevator down.
• She led the cabal down into a sprawling place of mirrors, each depicting a slightly different version of her in the reflection. A thousand facets and shapes, identities and attempts at a self, all arrayed out in every reflective surface. The path led them to one in particular, a mirror and a memory, of her Awakening...
• The woman in the mirror is Vánagandr worn raw and stripped of the armour of professional intensity that she wears against the world. It is simply Arianna Dray - sleepless and ragged and holding herself together by will and determination alone - staring into and out of the cracked mirror of a nightclub bathroom. As the cabal watches, the mirror grows and sprawls out to fill much of their vision, and something that had appeared to be the mirror woman’s shadow flows closer. It is a shapeless thing that scratches the back of the mind like primal memory of facing a predator, growing larger and more dominant with each heartbeat. It flows larger like the shadow of something vast beyond measure drawing closer to the surface its shadow is cast upon. As it grows it usurps and consumes the image of the memory, reshaping it into a distorted image of Vánagandr herself, spitting fury and promising to devour them all.
  • In that moment, Vánagandr felt the sense of unreality that the intrusion set in her bones shift. It was not the intrusion here, she was. Everything felt wrong.
• And as darkness fell upon them all like the shadow of destined death seeking its prey, they desperately tried to reach Titania’s Oneiros so they could complete this journey before more harm was wrought on their souls.

Plot Developments & Facts Discovered

• Kassandra has been seeing visions of impending deaths for much of her life. Her parents attempted without success to monetise this for their own benefit, and died after Kassandra chose not to tell them about their impending deaths.
• When beset by the satyr in her vision she asked if she could join the dance with it, at which point she began to go into a fit.
• When Vánagandr was overwhelmed in Kassandra's Oneiros, she left a trail. Fragments of angry abusive words and glass-shard jagged memories bled into the air in her wake, rasping like rusted iron.
• The Wolf in Chains seems to know more than it should, or perhaps it speaks with more confidence about its guesses than Vánagandr
• The shape of Vánagandr's Oneiros changes distinctly depending on her emotional state, with an alien cityscape choked by crimson storm-clouds pushing in at the edges when she was overwhelmed by the events in Kassandra's Oneiros.
  • This alien cityscape was confirmed OOCly to resembles the Empty City
• More details on the shapes of the intrusions
  • Vánagandr felt that the intrusion in Kassandra's Oneiros was that some sort of fate or destiny had been cut away but the details were buried under the traumatic damage to Kassandra's soul.
  • Vánagandr also shared her first memory of intrusion - part of the encounter during her Awakening - but felt unsettled and partly consumed by it, such that she felt like the intrusion in her own self.

People Appearing (in order of appearance)

• Kassandra
• Titania
• Vánagandr
• Wotann
• The demonic satyr, ecstatic and controlling. (seen only by Kassandra, aside from a glimpse by Vánagandr)
• A calm voice. (heard only by Kassandra)
• The Wolf in Chains, shared a cigarette with Kassandra and seemed to know more than she should.
• A hungry predatory shape, raging and furious in a mirror.

Locations

• Kassandra's Oneiros
  • The Temple of Dionysus and Hope
• Vánagandr's Oneiros
  • The Bound Suite, the Mirror Rooms

Notes

• Vánagandr suffered a dramatic failure when casting her spell and gained the Spooked condition. That combined with her vice of Pride drove her to go off alone to seek answers. Mental contact with Kassandra's pain and the sharp personal trauma of not being able to help someone who was suffering in a very familiar way drove her obsession into a fugue.
• Experience: total given so far in the Chronicle is 4 mundane and 3 arcane.