Rebecca's Reports (4)

[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.
Word Count: 4581
Rating: Teen
Spoilers marked by the name

Brigadier Lethe (Spoilers: Not really. Has not appeared actually in-story yet, but as he’s been referenced in a few of these entries, I figured I should probably add something, and who knows, he might actually appear in-story later. He’s not supposed to, but a lot of the characters have been breaking out of their prescribed roles at this point.)

I probably shouldn’t have to say this, but if push comes to shove our veteran teaching in the Crucible will absolutely side with Helwing. Especially if Helwing gives him the chance to go after more demons, or more likely deploy more Templars against demons.
 

Jack Boone (Chapter 1 Echoes)

Our legendary ‘last of the cowboys’ has popped up again, so we should definitely consider that some sort of omen. He’s plopped himself right outside the entrance to Solomon Island. Nobody saw him exit, so I think that’s pretty good proof that he has some sort of knowledge of Agartha’s back roads that nobody else has been able to find, and probably proof he’s at least older than he seems, even if record-keeping back in the old Wild West was honestly kind of shit, so even if he is completely legit we’ll never be able to prove it. (All rhymes are unintentional. Or are they? Just trying to get you to lighten up, boss, it’s bad enough around here without you adding to the doom and gloom.)
As omens go, this one speaks volumes. That stuff about him only showing up in the middle of the worst of the worst, like that thing in the Congo? We don’t really need to know if he really is a cowboy out of time to be able to read that one.
 

Lydia Darling (Chapter 21 Echoes)

Lydia Darling is, yes, the granddaughter of Ligeia Darling. So far she doesn’t seem tempted to get into quite the same type of underworld shenanigans as her grandmother despite the long list of infractions (looks like it’s mostly shoplifting, trespassing, a little disorderly conduct), but she’s worth keeping an eye on. From everything I’ve been able to find, I think she got possessed while doing a séance with her local coven, who is now trying to keep the family from finding out. Normally since she’s living on her own now they wouldn’t be involved, but her mom in a completely different kind of rebellion than Lydia went full-swing evangelical Christian who actually talked about marrying her off to save her from the wicked ways of being goth, so I’m tempted to just let those infractions slide. I’m pretty sure Desmond is going to be a good influence, but I’m still keeping an eye on things.

Che Garcia Hansson (Chapter 34 Echoes)

It’d be easy to dismiss this hippie-styled dude, to say that he’s just using the Morninglight to get “power and wealth and control”. Funny thing there? That’s exactly what he said to Horal, apparently. He did manage not to get run through, but I think that has more to do with the fact that Javier Horal’s trying to be more of the noble knight that people cheer when he shows up than the idea that he’s not really, really insulting and condescending.
It’d be easy to dismiss him. It would also be wrong. He’s a true believer, boss, and I’ve turned up absolutely nothing to contradict that. He’s excited about the apocalypse—which he correctly identified as the apocalypse—not because it’s an opportunity for him to gain power but because he really thinks this is the opportunity humanity needs to grow. The only reason I even stumbled on any of this is because I ran into him trying to get something—anything—on Beaumont. Beaumont’s been at this longer than we thought, because he’s the one that recruited Hansson a good thirty years ago. Something about saving his life, though who knows how metaphorical he got, there. How much cults can twist up your sense of reality, and that’s even without using memory-twisting magic. One of the agents also reported he’d remarked offhandedly that Beaumont knows Marquard himself. Yeah, the same Philip Marquard, leader of the Morninglight. So, no answers here, but maybe some leads, and if Hansson himself is just two steps down in this suspiciously pyramid-shaped scheme, then he’s worth keeping an eye on.

Cassandra “Cassie” King (Chapter 34 Echoes)

Again, just like with Che, it would be easy to dismiss Cassie. I’ve actually managed to trace her family in Georgia, who has reported her missing, and it would follow the standard cult patterns, to listen to Shaun. Recruiting young women can serve a twofold purpose—for weirdo predatory leaders or higher-ups, it means more ‘opportunities’ for them, and ‘sexy’ young female recruiters are simultaneously less likely to be taken seriously or investigated and more likely to get certain types of people prone to that kind of persuasion to sign up. (Men and women, reportedly.) So, just a victim, right?

Except no. Her last known words made it seem like she was fully aware of how she was being used and going along with all of it for purposes of her own. She’s probably after the sword, though that’s not quite so clear, and she’d been acting to keep something out of the Morninglight’s hands (yeah, I’m convinced of Shaun’s little conspiracy theory at this point), so she’s not with them. Funny thing is, I can’t figure out who she’s with, and she’s vanished off the radar as thoroughly as Beaumont, which makes me kind of nervous, not going to lie here. My best guess is some internal faction (maybe?) or third party, maybe somebody that hasn’t been heard from in thousands of years, but this isn’t even the Phoenician M.O. They usually either stay behind the scenes entirely to the point you wouldn’t even know they’re there unless you’re a paranoid conspiracy theorist looking for patterns in data (the nearest one I can point you to is Shaun though he has a lot of them, if not on speed dial, in his contacts), or come out guns blazing. None of this in between wishy washy stuff. But Phoenicians aren’t the only lost ancient organization, and at this point we might want to have Gladstone combing through his history books or memories of astral projection. We’ll probably turn something up. The only question is if we’ll recognize it when we do.

Alice (Chapter 40 Echoes)

Alice makes me nervous. Not because she’s clearly not human or any sort of Templar prejudice against reptilian species (honestly, given hints toward baby dragons, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was a Korean Imugi—basically a ‘lesser dragon’ or ‘giant serpent’ that has to earn status to become a full dragon, through living long enough or acquiring a dragon pearl). Because of what she represents. Because it’s just more implication of a civil war.

Now, when he first met us, he said the ‘tiny child’ knew more than he did, and when he met Alice, he absolutely did not act like he’d never seen her before. It’s even possible that Desmond may have never talked to Bong Cha at all, and that also implies things.

I’ve never seen anything about her, and that’s generally only true of the kind of people that get kept under close wraps in Seoul. I’d almost say she’s out without permission, but given that a van with Silent Monks hasn’t just appeared on one of the roads to bring her back, she can’t be. But that’s also the kind of shift that even the chaotic Dragon don’t make—once an asset they’ve deemed worthy to keep close is taken, there’s no escape. I don’t like this shift. I’d almost say that she’s sticking close enough to Desmond to observe whatever experiment they’re doing with him, which would mean maybe he’d kept her isolated specifically for this, but most of my experience has not prepared me for this. The Dragon are usually predictably unpredictable, and I’m not a fan of this change.

Nicholas Winter (Chapter 42 Echoes)

There’s a whole lot of people I feel bad for on Solomon Island, and Nicholas has to be pretty high up there. Poor guy was neglected by his father for most of his life, gets this bright idea to look at his inherited property before he sells it (which was clearly a trap to try to get him in here dealing with his true, terrible inheritance), and has the one actual father figure he had die when he got here. And I know I will say in a later report that Winter’s control was fairly limited, but there are exceptions, and I’m pretty sure if we got Nicholas in here right now we could trace a (now broken) magical tie to his birth father. I think mind control was used to nudge him down to Solomon Island and pretty much none of the spells cast by an awful father with powers on progeny are good ones. I hope he can escape it and go back to his old life (like, he’s even a responsible rich man’s kid who lives modestly, didn’t get most of the inheritance which might explain his retention of sympathy, kindness, and generosity), but once marked like that...yeah, that doesn’t tend to be a thing. There are cases where it happens. I’m rooting for him.

Nuala Magorian (Chapter 42 Echoes)

Interestingly, smaller factions like the Druids of Avalon seem to be popping up. Unlike the Phoenicians, we knew they were still around, even popping up in Agartha when the Council was on whatever break they were on. Them being in the so-called New World in such numbers is a little less usual, not that you need me to tell you that, and Magorian’s leading them. A couple of the others, Chelsea included, theorized that maybe such a large threat to the natural and supernatural world that it actually necessitated them showing up in force, but I have a harder time believing that. I think they are looking for Excalibur again and maybe at least send out a familiar or two to check out any rumors of Third Age swords, but something about this time was a little more credible than most. I don’t think they’re entirely sure, though, just think that it’s a good lead.

The last time we saw The Reader, she was in the body of a 60-year old Scottish wizard, so, you know, just a little bit of a change there. Plus I think Dame Julia did a few assignments with her, so might want to catch up. She does seem to be leading the Druids of Avalon in a foray into Solomon Island, so she might be sticking around for a while this time.

Francis Rowan (Chapter 42 Echoes)

Francis lives up to a lot of the druid stereotypes, particularly the ones that suggest they’re more at home with nature than other human beings. This isn’t quite true, as he’s perfectly able to strike up a conversation about pets which is a safe topic for many people, and when it isn’t (such as when a pet is sick) he is able to step in and heal them. He’s generally a lot more level-headed than anyone other than Magorian, and is fully able to ‘rough it’, but he will lose his temper. Magorian actually has to actively keep him away from hunting areas, even if it’s done for the hunter to eat.

Brann Mac Diarmada (Chapter 42 Echoes)

I’m pretty sure I have no choice here: I have to admire anyone that would put “Professional Stormlord” on a resume. From afar, since I’d probably provoke his temper too. Subtle and quick to anger is only half a description that can be applied to Brann, according to what else I’ve read. (I’m guessing that it’s mainly the fact that they were distracted that prevented Desmond from doing that, since he’s not the most diplomatic and that’s when he’s trying.) Anyone who can keep this lot in check has to have several lifetimes of experience telling them how to deal with it. Maybe by just constantly telling themselves that this is pretty temporary in the grand scheme of things.


Amelia Bindings (Chapter 42 Echoes)

I am finding absolutely nothing on how the Druids managed to recruit a married Hindu lady, but I guess that proves they have pretty good diversity initiatives in the organization. Given the accent in this tape, she is British (I know, I know, English, you’re all so touchy about this!) so I’m guessing she’d probably run into them geographically, but still. She is particularly gifted, so given the sparsity of data I’m going to guess she had a particularly impressive divination one day. She can use several different methods of divination and tends to combine them to form a more complete picture, unlike most. She’s also a lot older than most of the rest (even, technically, her leader, given the whole ‘past lives’ thing) and doesn’t seem to get pulled into the rest of the shenanigans as much.

Finn Mulligan (Chapter 42 Echoes)

He seems okay, but anyone actually playing Pied Piper with a flute and mice is worth keeping an eye on and maybe not fully trusting. Because I remember how that story ends. Particularly when he seems like a hothead, which, yeah, okay, means he’s probably not pulling off exactly that kind of stunt, because it takes planning, but still. I have to hope Magorian doesn’t let him start any bar fights, because let me tell you, a ragged rhyme can wreck more havoc than a broken bottle in there.

Laughing Jenny (Chapter 42 Echoes)

Laughing Jenny has, as always, a wicked sense of style, though I suppose if you’ve got thousands of years you figure out fashion. She’s probably Nuala’s oldest friend, very, very literally, though like most probable immortals she’s gotten pretty good at hiding it. She’s also absolutely trouble and her connection with Magorian is probably the only reason she hasn’t been kicked out yet (though I’m also pretty sure they get in epic fights now and then). Also, she probably hangs out with fay and may or may not actually have shown up in the 19^th century as a sorceress before. Also she’s like a slightly more unhinged red-headed version of Johanna Constantine, so that’s hot. I mean—sorry, boss, I probably shouldn’t tease you about your thing for Geary. At least she follows some rules. I don’t agree with any of her rules, but at least she follows them.

Tiana Cardoza (Chapter 42 Echoes)

I’m not sure how an Umbanda High Priestess ended up traveling with the Druids of Avalon, but I’m going to take a wild guess that one of her spirits warned her about what was going on in Solomon Island and thought the Druids might want to know. She had been acting as an apprentice for her grandmother for a while, but accelerated the process after the death of her grandmother. I don’t have a clue if she’d get along with Lydia or think she and her grandmother were a little too wild for her. (I do also suspect that given her age, the general community thought she was too young, so she might be trying to prove herself—which is another thing they have in common, but Tiana might not see it that way.)

 

Archibald Henderson (Chapter 43 Echoes)

We’ve all heard the stories. There’s no shortage of warnings about the latest monument to hubris and messing around with magic we shouldn’t, but Henderson, the man who would rather blame his wife’s death on everybody other than himself, is kind of up there. The fact that he’s still punishing everyone else long after his death and the actual moving on of his spirit is the kind of useless petty bullshit that a lot of people can only aspire to. It is good to know after the fact that he’s not lingering around waiting to destroy us all, and that the only thing lingering is the magic.

It’s interesting to note that our magic can live on long after us. Also, speaking of useless petty bullshit, I’m needling whoever’s unlucky enough to be sent as the Lumie representative at the next meeting about this, the fact that Archie’s Legacy is a stain on their record and that it wasn’t even them that managed to clean up their own mess in the end, because they were too scared to stand up to him.


Annabel Usher (Chapter 45 Echoes)

Good news for you to pass along to whatever remaining relatives of the House of Usher are in the field: Annabel is just fine. Kind of pissed about the whole situation (it sounds like a bunch of her students and coworkers died), but fine. Hopefully they’re finally coming to terms with the whole ‘teaching at an Illuminati school’ thing. I think Shaun is finally starting to forgive her too (mostly for ditching us; he thinks she could have been a lot of help bolstering the kind of changes we want to make, but Helwing and his Brigadier Lethe are mostly in charge of the training and they’d never have let her have the kind of freedom to shape the minds of the youth that she’d want).

Hayden Montag (Chapter 45 Echoes) 

Montag is just as eccentric as ever, and I’m still fairly confident that he’s doing less damage as a headmaster than as a doctor. Fairly confident. Also, I’m pretty sure Shaun’s breathing a sigh of relief his favorite debate sparring buddy is still intact, even if he’d never admit it out loud. They may still run into communication issues, though, since it seems the man is still ‘the straight man’ in this whole dark humor scenario.

Javier Horal (Chapter 49 Echoes)

As the Old Guard goes, at least he’s reliable and vaguely honorable even if he is a pompous jackass. I’m hoping seeing what Desmond can do served as a wakeup call. He kinda did seem a bit subdued the last time I saw him.

 

Chad the Chipmunk (Chapter 53 Echoes)

Something interesting and new here. I think Desmond’s attempting to send messages without communicating directly. He looked up the fate of “Chad the Chipmunk” (real name Steve Gardner), who escalated from drunk and disorderly to full on murder of multiple teenagers, but barely even looked at the results. I can nearly guarantee he knows I’ve got a surveillance program on his phone and was trying to tell me he was involved with the Park somehow (you know, other than having been the mascot). The thing is, he’d died in the mental hospital, so unless his ghost showed up, I’m at a loss. (Which, given how obsessed he’d been with the mascot and ice carving at the end, is exactly the sort of thing that would create a ghost with unfinished business.

Lorraine Maillard (Chapter 55 Echoes)

He also looked up Lorraine, but actually in earnest, and also asked Danny (who seems really good at this, I’ll point out for absolutely no underlying purpose) to look her up too and actually try to trace where she went, like he actually still thinks she’s out there. It’s possible, but she was on antidepressants and went missing after her son went missing like a couple of other children in the Park, so she’s been listed as ‘missing, presumed dead’ for years.

I’d really like to know what Desmond, Carter, and Alice saw when they went into the other plane of existence, but even my spells aren’t that good. (I’d also ask Rukh, but, being a really quiet raven aside, I don’t think he’s likely to tell me.)

 

Carter Waite (Chapter 56 Echoes)

Interesting note about Carter—she’d actually been offered two full scholarships, one from Orochi’s Virgula Divina program and one from the Innsmouth Academy. Her parents decided to go with Innsmouth after a visit from Miss Usher. I don’t want to jump fully into Shaun’s conspiracy theories here—he can’t be right about absolutely everything, and tends to be a bit on the paranoid side—but that is the kind of thing that gives me some pause. Her ability to blow things up is also really cool, and we’ll probably have a little contact with her if when we recruit Danny, so explosions on demand. That seems like a win-win situation to me. She’d had the typical ‘afraid of her powers’ stuff with someone so strong, but Desmond might have given her some pointers about shielding or how to better control it, because she’s not as scared anymore.

Nathaniel Winter (Chapter 56 Echoes)

I’m still keeping an eye on things even if I’m not allowed to talk to Desmond directly, and it is utterly fascinating to learn that he’s managed to stumble on the actual fate of Nathaniel Winter and what the hell the business mogul was even trying to do with his bizarre theme park tycoon dreams.

(Side note: I would advise, if anyone asks, that nobody ever gives their kid the middle name of Harvey. That just seems to go bad places. It’s not great as a first name but it has a way better track record than as a middle name.)

For someone with absolutely no magical ability, he sure managed to make a big working happen, and that’s kind of really good to know—just because someone seems like a “normie” doesn’t mean we should write them off. In fact, that probably has implications for Desmond’s persistent if terrible assassin. We know the Lumies especially have been working on anima tech for a while now, to extract, store, and use, but either they’ve been working on this a whole lot longer than we thought or they’re basing that tech off of older tech. (If that’s the case, my money is on Alexandrians, seeing as a whole lot of their documentation got lost.)

It turns out he’d transformed himself into a Bogeyman, though I lost track of what was going on with all of that when Desmond and the others slipped into an alternate plane of existence. The haunting was different than usual, with limited reach (no closets and beds all around the island for him, only the Park) but greater control within his domain. Honestly, that limited reach might be part of why no one noticed for so long, but also demonstrates a sleeping threat. I’m not sure if it’s a side effect of everything else going on on the island or his own efforts, but an analysis of the data after the fact says the sphere of influence was spreading, and you know how these kinds of creatures are. They’re long-lived, patient, and so he could wait thousands of more years to engulf the entire island, further. Second thing, the obvious: more victims means more strength. Maybe he couldn’t have kept pushing it, but if he could, increasing the number of victims means that continuing to push the boundary is worth it mathematically. And we would not want a juiced up Bogeyman on our hands, so. We have to look out for this kind of thing, stop it in its tracks. What makes that worse is that while I can’t verify this on account of this iteration of the Bogeyman and the Park being wiped off the face of the map thanks to Desmond, but I got some readings indicating he could feed on atypical (for Bogeyman) emotions. Things like joy. Which would mean he had the potential to grow in strength at a much faster rate. Just in case there was any chance of you sleeping well at night.

John Wolf (Chapter 57 Echoes)

You probably haven’t heard of this one simply because he doesn’t tend to leave much of a record. His are more the quiet sorts of victories, you know, the ones that linger on the verge of our secret world where a family hires someone to deal with their ghost problem and never tells anyone else about it. From what little I’ve managed to gather, he’s one of the best non-affiliated exorcists around, mostly because he managed to live longer than the rest. It’s not that he’s the strongest around. I’d be lying if I claimed that was the truth, but I won’t and neither would he. It’s precisely that lack of magical strength that probably kept him alive this long.

See, if you’re good, you get cocky. There’s always something bigger, tougher, faster out there than you, and if you keep going, sooner or later you’re going to run into it. What keeps you alive is knowing when to call in help (in this case, it seems like that consists of another man we don’t have much on, Jack Boone), use artifacts to boost yourself, or retreat to fight another day. Common sense, in other words, and John Wolf has plenty of that.

Sam Krieg (Chapter 61 Echoes)

My surveillance isn’t quite as thorough without the help of Desmond’s actually reports, so anything I can tell you is spotty. I can tell you Desmond didn’t seem particularly impressed, which means he agrees with Shaun a bit there. (As you’ll remember, Krieg’s Massacre on the Mayflower was one of the works he’d read to try to prove his point about the original always being better than the movie and had grudgingly admitted that as bad as the movie was, it was still an improvement from the screenplay. I really don’t know what happened during filming but what I do hear it was a pretty wild time.)

That’s kind of the sideshow there, though. The real deal is that yes, the rumors are true. Krieg is somehow getting some sort of insight into the Secret World, and it is that someone is slipping him information, that fragment of an artifact he had his hands on was showing him something he shouldn’t have seen, or both.

Red (Chapter 62 Echoes)

It’s a good thing Desmond was able to run into Red. Not that he’s one of the people we’re too interested in, as callous as that sounds, but it means Ami’s probably okay, and seeing as she was the one that took up holding back the darkness on the island after the death of their grandfather, given the current circumstances that is a really, really good thing. How much worse would it have gotten if she’d been one of the ones taken? I shudder to think.

Mysterious Phoenician (Chapter 63 Echoes)

Again, not much on this lady, but while in the old days Phoenicians used to talk to Council members more in their whole ‘enforcing Council standards’ duties, even before they practically disappeared they’d been slowly ghosting us all. So the fact that she talked to Desmond? I’m keeping an eye on this. Two of them, even.
 

Joe Slater (Chapter 18 Echoes)

It’s not clear (mostly because the last time Desmond saw this guy, he kind of got mind controlled in the middle) whether Slater is still alive. The sailor is being transformed, but unlike most of the others he’s not turning into a zombie or a Filth-infected. No, he looked like he was becoming a Draug. Maybe that had something to do with being the person who found the sword artifact? I bet he would have a lot of useful stuff to say, but it’s probable his transformation has progressed since then, and he might not be up for questions. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to find him or get those questions answered.