Rebecca's Reports (3)

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points: Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Hey, Sonnac, it’s me, your old favorite. Reports enclosed on my observations, written by only the best, the brightest, the sexiest agent we have, yours truly, as ordered, etc. -R.C.
*Templar Bees often get greeted with a teasing or envious “you’re Sonnac’s new favorite”.
Word Count: 1925
Rating: Teen
Spoilers marked by the name

 

Iain Tibet Gladstone (No real spoilers, since approximately none of this appears in The Secret Histories, but he’s last mentioned in Chapter 35 of Echoes)

Usually, I wouldn’t bother including anything on our captive historian, but I figured I should give you a head’s up, because I’m pretty sure Helwing is going to try to use this against Desmond, too.

The Stuart Twins caught him trying to leave the library. Twice. Not unusual at all (actually that’s lower than his weekly count—I have the wards set up to make automatic graphs that we can actually use). The entire reason we have them on detail watching him is the whole ‘attempted escape’ thing, but they’re probably going to argue that he’s attempting to go join Desmond and that’s evidence that Desmond has bewitched pretty much every Templar he’s ever met and some that he hasn’t. He’s also taken to interrogating Shaun about Desmond and specifically he’s taken a pretty big interest in Desmond’s cult, probably from his stint ‘undercover’, which as you might guess Shaun is not taking to very well. Especially as Shaun’s itching to look into it but is paying more attention to the apocalypse, and Gladstone is mostly just lending a hand there as an excuse to interrogate Shaun some more.

The best defense I’d recommend is the truth: reminding everyone the whole reason he’s under house arrest is that the last time we left him to his own devices the world nearly ended, he’s consistently drunk because we won’t let him have harder drugs that let him astrally project, he’s banned from lecturing at Oxford because apparently even teaching about the forbidden play is enough for people to die, and it’s not Desmond he’d be chasing but the thrill of chaos and apocalypses. I don’t know how much it’s going to help, given that they’ve made their minds up that they want to interpret the evidence in a very specific way, but if they argue against it they’re essentially saying they want him roaming around the world barely stopping everything he’s started and then finally vanishing onto some ethereal plane leaving us to clean up his mess.

 

 

Jin Jae-Hoon (Chapter 12 Echoes)

After Gladstone, it only makes sense to talk about the Dragon’s captive historian and one of Shaun’s pen-pals. I’d say Jin’s much less cool with it, but that’d be a lie, because Gladstone isn’t too happy about it either (despite the free booze and the other entertainment that the twins provide). It’s just more that he didn’t really deserve to get caught up in all of this, not that that makes too much of a difference when you come to the attention of the wrong people. At least it wasn’t Orochi. He’d be stationed somewhere probably safe and out of the way and still wind up in an incident somehow.

I already covered most of the relevant stuff in the entry on Desmond, but Shaun off-handedly mentioned something he probably would’ve realized was more important if he wasn’t running off of fear, sleep deprivation, and fifteen gallons of caffeine. He said that from the way Jin was talking, it sounded like Desmond took Jin’s backstory personally, which is a helpful clue. For reference, just in case you don’t remember offhand, that’s the Dragon’s tactic of ‘make Jae-Hoon look like a lunatic for discovering classified stuff about the Secret World and attempt to write articles about it, humiliate and disgrace him to the point absolutely nobody would hire him and his fiancée left him, and then kidnap him to work on their own history of the Secret World to try to find some pattern in the data we’re all missing’.

James Morris (Chapter 6 Echoes)

Not too much on this guy, just that he used to be a janitor in the wrong place at the wrong time. Desmond attempted to save the guy and went into some kind of healing coma. I hadn’t known what to make of some of the readings I was getting at the time, but unfortunately, Boss, now I do.

It’s the Filth. The Filth is back. And we should probably pull all those agents who just gave us reports about him being a ‘special kind of zombie’ into a special lecture (probably not Gladstone, though I know he’s dealt with it before) about the Filth, because they really should get better about spotting the infection before they’re sporting goopy black tentacles as accessories. I guess plus side there is now I know what the signature looks like, so I can identify it if it pops back up (honestly, it probably will, because unless it’s been under Solomon Island this whole time it doesn’t seem like something lingering from past ages anymore; more like it’s spreading). We’d known about it in Egypt but figured the Council and their allies had it under control, so I haven’t made it a priority to try to get sensors, magical or technical, out there. He was infected, which means it’s there, on Solomon Island, which really means Horal and his minions really should be taking precautions if they weren’t just going to constantly ignore everything but the worst advice.

Reviewing the sensors taught me a little more about Desmond’s brand of magic, too. Shaun’s instinct was right, he’s tapping straight into Gaia and doesn’t even seem to realize it’s weird, though he’s not trained with it very well (which matches him saying that he hadn’t even believed in magic to start with). Unlike, say, Zuberi, or even other Bees, he’s not going through an intermediary. It’s fairly unique, which would help more if Shaun could match it to anything else.

 

 

Reverend Henry Hawthorne (Chapter 18 Echoes)

The good pastor is only technically not an Illuminati; like anybody allowed to get a position on Solomon Island, he has Illuminati ties. He’s obviously not completely in the know and honestly might not even be aware that the Templars or Dragon even exist, but what he lacks in knowledge he makes up in enthusiasm. Shaun’s sparred with him a few times on the forums, but he honestly doesn’t even seem like he’s learned too much since the zombie invasion started, only gotten a little more practice with wards and his magnum.

 

 

Deputy Andy Gardner (Chapter 8 Echoes)

I was kind of looking forward to Desmond weirding out Andy, but no, other way around. Desmond didn’t go into a lot of detail in his text, so I don’t know what prompted it. I’m guessing it wasn’t him talking about the time his dad walked out on the family, since I think Desmond would be sympathetic, not dismissive. He might’ve just started talking about the time his dad drowned a bunch of kittens, or the witch house burning, or the serial killer in the family, or the occasional human sacrifice. Which...yeah, the relationship between the inhabitants of Solomon Island, especially Kingsmouth, to ‘normal’ is...kinda skewed. That being said Desmond didn’t avoid talking to him after that, so his instincts—that Andy means well, that he genuinely cares about the people he serves and isn’t just in it to throw his weight around or for Illuminati advancement or anything—are pretty good. (Okay, I’m not completely sure Desmond picked up all of that, but...he definitely picked up at least some of it.)

 

 

Sandy “Moose” Jansen (Chapter 14 Echoes)

I’ve actually been tracking this guy for a while now, mostly because I’m a fan of his work. He spontaneously decided to walk out of an office job to go biking around the country, and even after taking care of a bunch of werewolves in New Orleans and a bunch of zombie alligators in the Illuminati’s backyard refused to join any faction but remained open to working with any of us to try to stop what’s coming. He could make an explosive out of anything (I’d love to ask him how he does it, because, well, sure I’m not using them much in the field anymore but someone could), and somehow everywhere he goes he both manages to find something wrong and solve it. (Unlike Gladstone, though, he definitely doesn’t seem to be causing the messes.) I’m also almost completely certain that he can both see and use the Agartha portals.

 

 

Doctor Bannerman (Chapter 15 Echoes)

Not much new on Doctor Bannerman, the old perv (seriously Helen deserves better), though Desmond was actually finally able to get his hands on Bannerman’s notes and find that the ship, the Lady Margaret, was probably what brought both the zombie infection and the fog in after it. The zombie infection didn’t follow the known patterns: it started with paranoia and violence before any sort of decay. It’s also never been associated with fog or a location before. It does seem like he was actually concerned about his patients and trying to fix things but that’s all I’ll give him.

 

 

Scrapyard Edgar Stone (Chapter 33 Echoes)

Not much new here either; Edgar’s still as mean as ever and his dogs are as vicious as ever, though we do finally have confirmation that they are in fact eating zombies and Draug ‘alive’ without getting massively sick or infected. He did in fact get the scrapyard legitimately, rather than just moving in after the zombies started. The golem-creating spells appear to be affecting the scrapyard, too. He might have actually been one of the last ones to see Theodore Wicker, as a kid. And even though there’s some sort of time-distortion effect going on too, we can use Edgar’s plans to work out some kind of rough timeline. His escape plan was probably made shortly after everything started going down, but at that point the Orochi hadn’t yet moved in to block off the bridge, which means they weren’t on the island before the fog or zombies hit.

 

 

Madame Rogêt (Chapter 24 Echoes)

I hadn’t originally paid too much attention to her (you know, other than the fact that she is gorgeous and would probably be great in bed); con artists and ethnic misrepresentation are kind of squicks of mine. That being said, she’s dropped most of that since the Fog rolled in and she actually got psychic powers, which is definitely hotter, and a lot of her visions have turned out to be pretty useful, so she’s worth keeping an eye on. For multiple reasons.

 

 

“Ellis Hill” (Chapter 31 Echoes)

It’s thanks to Desmond that we even know the newly hired mechanic happens to be Phoenician. He didn’t take off, though—said hi to Javier, and while he didn’t confirm he’s Phoenician didn’t actively deny anything, either. He’s almost certainly keeping an eye on the Orochi in the airport, which is interesting for two reasons: it confirms that the Phoenicians are back (if they ever even left) and that the Orochi have been involved in the Secret World long enough to make the Phoenicians wary. It’s not a new thing.

The only thing he got vaguely threatening about was when he asked about a note he’d supposedly left for the real Ellis Hill. Desmond’s people didn’t find one, which made him mad (and also means that somebody else found the body first? And then re-buried it?). He’d left it specifically so the real Ellis Hill “would have an explanation as to why he’d had to die”, as something owed a target, and gotten ticked off enough that “Ellis might miss it”. No clue what’s even going on there, but he calmed down when Javier offered to write another one before burning the body.