NOTES (book 2) characters, other misc

NOTES

chapter number -> short detail if more than a second line. then longer copy paste of details. attempt to include just enough without going over to include details of what is needed. (story jumps to much, sometimes to many paragraphs, so min amount is attempted to copy/paste for details)

primary = getting NAMES of people -> i left out people descriptions of what they look like for most part. look up chapter number first occurance normally has description of what they look like.

HINT: press and hold CTRL key down. then press F key. search box for most web browersers will show up in top right corner just below the URL box. enter character name in search box and click the up/down arrows to search through page.

secondary = various magic weapons listed. NON magic weapons / defense items never noted down.

NOTE: i gave up on the 3 dungeon names. trying to repeat them. i done forget them. already use to stating either "original dungeon" or just dungeon, or high school dungeon. or fredrick home -> attic dungeon. the names of dungeons are listed below in notes. ((woops forgot EL / eleanor elias chase = road dungeon = me calling it road dungeon and not being called out in story for name))

NOTE: i gave up per character including James. of giving orbs what they got. to many. and sometimes not stating orb type, and just giving a long 1 to 3 stretched paragraphs of effect a given orb gave. more so for absorbed orbs. EXCEPTION green orbs i think i got most of them listed in orbs. possibly listed here as well.

Auberdeen = james and crew family dog. check earlier chapters. was more like a stray dog initially but then became main stay dog. check a chapter with dave in animal shelter.

Order of Endless Rooms, Operations Manual = full copy paste into notes below. some rather long.

NOTE: guild, used many times until they came up with ORDER. then enough chapters before starting calling it. order of endless rooms. i just stuck with "order" in notes.

## =====================

* 74 = Eleanor Elias Chase
* 74 = Eleanor Elias Chase - her mother
* 74 = a backwater Tennessee town = emo clothing store
* 74 = Eleanor Elias Chase = her boss = Ethan
* 74 = Ishiguro = “I was hoping that was from team three. Still waiting to hear if Ishiguro takes the offer.”
* 74 = Anesh = is 2 of him abilty ?!?!?

“Stop stressing. If he doesn’t, we’ll find someone else. There’s more than one doctor working on wetware. We’ll get it out there.” Came the reply. “Also, are you still pissed at Dave for stealing your heroic sacrifice moment? You get mad about the weirdest things.”

“Anesh is brilliant, but I don’t think he can be right a hundred percent of the time. Also, he should be here.”

“He had classes.”

“He had something called ‘applied regression analysis 445’. That’s not a class, that’s the name of an improbably dangerous sci-fi weapon.” The guy snorted out a small laugh. “Have you seen what he’s doing, by the way?”

“Which one of him?”

“Both. That’s the point. He’s taking two classes at a time, then syncing up afterward.”

* 74 = Eleanor Elias Chase

And in her Eye Of Steel And Glass, she saw the shop in a new, twisted way. Shelves registered as abstract containers and El could list their contents by heart without thinking. Her boss was a sprawling web of facts, lies, and idioms that she could pick apart at her leisure, just like most people.

* 74 = Detective Dave Madden

* 74 = Officium Mundi

To each of us, there are three parts. Our Domain, which is our selves. Our Powers, which are our weapons. And our Rewards, which is our curse.

Bound to each of them, in equal measure. To fail to exercise control of our domain would mean a lessening of our power. To fail to reward, would eventually kill.

But I thought I had learned. From so many ancestors conquered and destroyed by the Invaders that we were almost pushed to extinction. I thought I knew better. I turned my Rewards to fragments, offering so many options that the individual pieces became useless to their clumsy souls. I splintered my Power into pieces, and hid those shards within the Reward, allowing myself more and more choices, more Domain, more ways to protect myself. I believed I could cheat my nature.

75 = skulljacks = technolgy

The skulljack technology that James and the other survivors smuggled out of the dungeon was critical for this whole process, allowing the two Aneshi to resync with each other every few days, to keep themselves as the same person and not diverge too far. But even without it, they were both just… Anesh. Maybe an Anesh who sometimes didn’t remember a conversation or a plan, but Anesh nonetheless.

77 = Lua Margman = “Talk Therapy”

78 = Izzy = Eleanor Elias Chase girlfriend

78 = truck driver male

***79 = dog = Aberdeen = (white color) not sure if this dog will stick around? might have been mentioned before in earlier chapters. unknown if dave is swapping dogs out? i remember a chapter of dave petting a dog at animal shelter maybe this one? name seems familiar.***

79 = Tracy, California

“Alright, alright. Shut up and listen.” Anesh went back to his now-practiced method of alternating which of him spoke between sentences. “It’s a town in the middle of California. It has one of the highest homicide rates in the US, which was the first hint. But more than that, it also has generally just a slightly sideways feel to it.”

Around the table a few people nodded. JP started listing points on his fingers. “They pay for you to take martial arts classes, they don’t seem to have a management structure, they put several disparate parts of an industry in one building, a building that is \*constantly under remodel\*, and they seem to uniquely hire people who were capable of either finding, or surviving, a dungeon. It’s either a bizarre coincidence, or something is up.”

79 = “I named my shotgun Hyades, after the false stars from that one Robert Chambers book.”

80 = Tyrone = James walked with long steps to the elevator, waited patiently with his arms folded behind his back for it to arrive, and stood in much the same position as it took him down to the lobby. The two security guards on duty at the front desk looked up as he walked over to the door, the eyes of Daniel and Tyrone, the previous night guard who Daniel had replaced after he was fed to the dungeon by Frank, following James as he swung the double doors open and locked them in place.

81 = Alanna had a younger sister

82 = magic weapons!??!?

James sighed, and leaned back in the chair. “Okay, okay, I’m resigned to this. Yeah, the problem is that it stuck that tower right in the middle of the entry.” He gave a brief explanation to Sarah, which turned into a round of storytelling from all of them as they went over small highlights of the ascension. Culminating in him and Anesh getting really excited about the potential of the clone machine.

“We can copy ammunition.” James pointed out. “No more paying for the overpriced and weirdly specific bullets for the guns Anesh got!”

“We could copy better guns…” Alanna suggested dryly.

82 = Alanna = dad is a cop

83 = Lorian Bulregard + 4 other rich kids

83 = Lorian Bulregard

JP snorted a snicker. “Right. Well, his dad’s a oil exec, and his mom’s a political lobbyist. I don’t think he’s ever had contact with reality. He’s not even from here; he’s a member of the fraternity’s chapter at Princeton. He comes by because he likes the big fish, small pond, thing.”

“And he’s a nazi.” James nodded.

83 = Alex = girl = survivor (momo people i think?)

83 = Neil = (drones?)

84 = Tyrone = Daniel wasn’t here, but the other member of the Guardsman faction, Tyrone, was. And apparently, Pathfinder had tagged along with him. He and Daniel were friends outside of work

84 MAGIC ITEMS

And best of all, a few magic items. A pen that wrote things that were easy to believe. A pair of headphones that were plugged into your phone. A hair tie that braided your hair and then put itself in your pocket. A binder that Anesh ‘had a good feeling about’, but they couldn’t find a function of.

85 LOCATIONS / bathroom (spiral)

85 = survivors = It wasn’t just those two that didn’t make it past the first day, you know. Four more people committed suicide since then.

86 MAGIC ITEMS / TOTEMS

“You know what I’m surprised about?” James said as he and Anesh stepped into a misshapen hexagonal cubicle while the others took a short break. The two of them had hit a second wind at some point, possibly because they weren’t the ones in charge of hauling the cart. Anesh raised eyebrows at him as he casually grabbed the shirt still in the dry cleaning wrapper and tossed it over the lamp currently in the process of exploding, prompting James to continue. “That you’re here today. Not that I’m not super happy about it, but, like, I was certain you’d be spending all night trying to get the ritual that copies stuff to work.”

Anesh fished through the drawer on his side of the desk, idly tossing a jewel case with an unknown band’s logo on it and a roll of dimes onto the surface as he searched through the cluttered space. “It’s good that you know me so well, but bad that I think you weren’t paying attention when I mentioned that I’d figured it out.”

“What, really?” James looked surprised as he shook the beads of molten glass off the shirt before it could catch fire, the scent of melting plastic hot in the air.

“I mean, I’d thought so. Alright, so, maybe I didn’t. Look, there’s a lot going on tonight.” Anesh got defensive, until James patted him on the shoulder and gave him a quiet smile that said a lot about how little he needed a justification from his friend. “Right. Right. Anyway, the bloody thing needs coffee to work.”

“Who doesn’t.” James rhetorically asked as he shoved aside the rolling chair at the desk and started trying out passwords.

Anesh nodded. “Well, this sure sodding does. Those bags of coffee grounds have ‘recipes’ for the ritual on them, it’s apparently very easy to make happen, but it takes a ton of coffee. And we haven’t found \*any\* of it, except in the tower.”

86 = Path abilities

“Path? Oh, dude, he’s pretty cool. He can do lots of stuff! He’s like a chill dude who’s also a map.” Tyrone answered. The guy kind of annoyed JP sometimes; he was always upbeat, which didn’t seem quite right for someone who had almost died here.

“I’m looking for specifics, dude.” JP replied, accidentally slipping into similar mannerisms. “Like, how’d we get here, if Ganesh was the one that told us where to go?”

“Oh! Path can pull maps freely given from the minds of those he’s near. Dude’s cool like that. Also he’s growing some kind of metaphysical compass that sheers toward stated desires instead of magnetic north.” Tyrone said, in exactly the same tone, with no hint of irony.

It didn’t take him long to go from confused by the sentence, to a look of understanding. He reached out and tapped Ganesh, the drone reciprocating the gesture with one of his wing arms. A second later, there was the feeling in the air of an old map unrolling, which on any other day would have been fascinating to JP, but right now, was just a distraction he ignored.

By the time he got back, Tyrone was speaking to Sarah. “...about a minute and forty seconds. Dudes are running from something.”

“What is it?” She asked, a stern look on her face that JP hadn’t seen there before.

“Map doesn’t say. Just vectors. Sorry dude.” Tyrone shrugged sadly. “What do we do?”

87 = office / warehouse = basements

“We have two basements.” James told her, laughing and flailing defensively as she punched him in the arm for insolence. “Okay, okay! So, I got the extra basement prompt twice, but it’s not what you think. We don’t have two \*levels\* of basement, we have two separate sets of access points to two different basements, which are both the same distance under the building, and should in theory occupy the same space. But they don’t.”

87 = Ganesh + Anesh specific phone

From JP and Dave, there was the brief explanation of their own side of that fight with the cat. Initially, there had been some confusion as to why Ganesh hadn't just alerted Anesh in the first place to the line of backup waiting for them, and it was with a sheepish look that Anesh explained that his partner in the sky was actually tethered to a specific phone. His phone, technically. But Anesh was a creature of habit, and so when there were suddenly two of him, and they needed another phone, well… he'd bought the same one. So the interface with Ganesh, by complete accident, ended up with the Anesh who was currently sleeping cozy in bed, and not the one who actually needed it.

87 = MAGIC ITEM = yellow legal pad = teleport

“No, and those probably wouldn't be worth copying.” Anesh told her. “I don't know if these are magic, sorry, I'm actually clearing my pockets looking for \*this\*.” The this in question was a yellow legal pad, fairly thin. It only had maybe five or ten sheets left. “This one is actually really dangerous, and I got lucky testing it. And this is why we should be copying it.” Anesh said, writing something on the top sheet.

James looked over to see the phrase ‘behind JP’s chair’ written down, before the page was gone. Just gone, not ripped away or anything, but like it never was. Anesh, too, was gone, which was slightly more concerning. It was especially concerning for JP, who just had Anesh lean in behind him and whisper something creepy.

“There's only six pages here and you wasted an actual teleport on a cheap joke?” Alanna demanded.

88 = path (short nickname) / pathfinder / is a girl = Daniel idea person attached to him.

“Dammit, I can’t believe I’m actually wishing it were dungeon night.” He muttered. In his head, Pathfinder sang derisively at his hesitation. She could believe it; she knew his heart.

89 = Mousey (nickname?) / chapter 90 Benny (nickname?)

89 = MAGIC ITEM = fire extinguisher

“That fire extinguisher that restarts and/or amplifies fires, and a bag full of used matches.” The other girl answered. “Also a sword!”

89 = skull port (secondary port?)

“I figured out what that aux cable I got last week did.” She said aimlessly as she tried to turn her head as if it would help her see around the corner ahead of them, past the brick facade that announced the name of the neighborhood as ‘Summerlake Ridge’.

“Cool, cool.” James agreed, suppressing the panicked desire to start the car again and get right back on the ass of their targets. “I hate how hard IDing magic items is. What’s it do?”

“Turns audio files piped through it into metal. My James says it’s nineties power metal, and offered me a hundred bucks for it.”

89 = 2 paper people + brief case $$$ + notes + 3 people kidnap + 1 to kill Javier Lopez

“Got ya.” He said again. “Hey!” He called over to the girls. “Got something here!” James knelt down and out of the hole pulled up a briefcase, with a manilla envelope taped to the outside.

The three of them used the glass table as a space to spread out the contents of the envelope, and as they did so, the mood went from excited, to furious, to grim, all in a big hurry.

Three photographs of a young man. No, a kid; teenager, obviously. One of the photos was from a middle school graduation yearbook, the other two were almost surveillance photographs. Six pages of neatly typed text, two of them describing the kid’s routines, one of common hangout spots, two of known family and friends, and one that was… well, for lack of a better term, an invoice. Though James recognized it more as a quest notice, something familiar to him from the one briefcase they’d managed to open in the dungeon, mostly by accident.

“This briefcase,” Alanna said, in a softy furious tone, after they’d looked over the material provided, “contains six hundred thousand dollars.” She quietly clenched a hand into a fist so hard her knuckles cracked. “On the provision that Javier Lopez is dead before the fourteenth of November.”

90 = survivors therapy =

Twenty six people had shown up to survivors therapy. That wasn’t a record, but it was a lot, and she was now out of cookies. Such was the life of an impromptu counselor.

Of the survivors, about half of them had cut all ties with the guild as soon as they were out. Many of them had managed to stabilize, reclaim their lives. But a few… more than a few, sadly… had been too broken by it. Suicides weren’t unheard of, and that was just within the people that Sarah and Karen had kept track of. This support group was, in large part, a way to try to provide a foundation for those who were somewhere between. The survivors who were now fully aware that reality was weirder than expected, that couldn’t just go back to their lives and pretend it was a dream, but who also were kind of okay with that, and wanted to see what they could do with their new knowledge and power.

The remainder of the group of survivors, the ones that stuck around after the group session ended, were the guild’s newly acquired support staff. People who didn’t want to go delving, but were already in on the secret, and so, were capable of providing a range of skills to the team as a whole.

There was one guy who was actually a ***gym instructor***, before his capture, who ran their back ‘training area’. It wasn’t like they were turning into superheroes, but the different between no muscle, and \*some\* muscle, was a lot when it came to delving. And having someone there to keep you on the right track was useful. There were a ***couple people, who Sarah suspected were dating, that were constantly looking into how the orbs worked.*** That was useful just because Anesh was so busy with \*everything else\* these days, so offloading the record keeping of skills was handy, if nothing else. They had been the ones to suss out the limits of the blue absorbs, too, which was cool. They also liked testing the things in microwaves, which Sarah saw as an eccentricity, but James assured her was probably almost certainly real science. Then there were a handful of others, who ran errands, helped with cleanup or getting the building into working order, or just lent a hand moving tables around when needed.

90 = skull jacks =

nd it was a power, Sarah was becoming increasingly aware. The skulljacks, specifically, were an incredible asset. Many of the survivors had worked in IT alongside herself and James at one point, and that knowledge, paired with the technology they now had, gave them a much wider range of ability than expected. Untrained humans were clearly worse at it than whatever monster-Karen had been, but still.

Mind links. Drone control. Instinctive programming. Biological drivers for hardware. Networking and indexing with subconscious thought. Bandwidth that was, apparently, unlimited? Or perhaps simply more powerful than a mundane device could ever manage, due to the magic that powered the jacks.

90 = Karen + harvey

While Karen was focused on keeping everyone fed and housed, and was constantly pressuring them for more resources, more \*money\*, Harvey was busy trying to make the survivors into a family. He brought people food, checked up on anyone who was out of touch for too long. He always had time for you, no matter what. Essentially, he was their ombudsman; hearing grievances and passing them up the chain to the people that he still saw as the heroes of their lives.

89 = Fredrick = Mousey (nickname? because of his ears) / Benny (nickname?) / Melvin (nickname?) / harvey older brother?

Harvey laughed, a deep rumble that built up from his chest and poured out into the world. “Hah! Yeah, that kid’s something else, huh?” He kept smiling, but his voice took on a more serious undertone. “Hope it was alright to send my old brother this way. I thought, what with how things went down in the office, that maybe James could do something for him.”

“Yeah, he was quiet with me too. Well, quiet in the way he is, where he makes lots of noise but doesn’t say much. But from what I get, his attic is cursed. Not, like, the cube farm. Just an attic that’s not… completely… attic.” He trailed off with a shrug.

091 skull jack

“Aw, no. Not now.” James grumbled, thumping his forehead on the steering wheel. “Ask me something easy, like how the hell I shower with the skulljack in my head.”

Alanna raised her eyebrows over at James. “I’d never thought of that. How \*do\* you guys do it? Are they waterproof?”

James gave a nod back in response, ignoring Anesh trying to get their attention again. “Yeah, it’s weirdly organic. Kinda feels like a belly button, if you know what I mean? Like, it’s not perfect, but I can wash it out and it doesn’t short circuit my brainmeats. That’s a plus. Also I think the little clip that holds the cable in is some kind of keratin, because it grew back when I accidentally… nevermind.” He dropped the sentence and poured his focus into the road, avoiding eye contact with the incredulous look that Alanna was giving him.

091 = james = 28yrs old

Up did not feel like a good place to go, and James said as much. But then he followed it up with, “I’m getting the feeling that we’re not wanted here. This is like when I was a kid, looking down the stairs into the basement, and \*knowing\* it wasn’t full of snakes, but the lights were out, so how could I be sure?” He scowled at the hole that led to the attic. “Fuck you, attic. I’m twenty eight years old, you can’t fucking scare me.”

091 = shades / glasses = wasted time effect ?

Alanna’s glasses weren’t shades at all; they were a thick pair of reading glasses that someone - probably Deb, if she remembered right - had grabbed off a desk in the Office last week, and she’d picked up from them in trade for an orb. They were, according to probably-Deb, not super useful. And according to Alanna, insanely valuable for dungeon delving. Maybe.

Basically their function was that they let her see, as if it were a color gradient, how much time would be wasted in different spots in her vision. It was, much like the infrared shades that had just finished giving Anesh a headache, very painful, until she got used to it. Mostly. It was also one of those weird things that totally changed the game on spotting traps or weird effects, because having an extra sense that wasn't common made it kinda hard to trick.

Right now, it was showing the attic, in shades of sticky grey. The window lit up in a weird fluxing purple, which she was pretty sure meant that they could stand there and look out for a long time, maybe. Boxes and old shelves had similar tones to them, the potential time spent digging through them only to find old boxes of nails or moth-eaten shirts.

But off to the left…

“Got something.” She said, pointing over to where a rectangular shape was covered in a white cloth tarp. She pulled the glasses off her face as her vision started to sting. “Trap or something interesting, not sure.”

091 fredrick home -> attic -> dresser -> drawer -> lock on drawer -> weird stick -> connection ?

James gave a head tilted nod at that. “Yeah, yeah, that’s true. And opens the door to me getting to use my wizard resume. Still, you two should back up; I’m gonna try to open this thing up and see what happens. If it’s nothing, well, I guess this is still a place worth keeping an eye on, but…” James reached out and placed his hand on the handle of the top drawer.

The world went black.

It was exactly the impression that he’d gotten at the very start, but now made manifest. Each individual part, James had pulled from his memories, or created from whole cloth, carefully matching the mental puzzle pieces to where they \*belonged\* in the tableau. A single slice of a beautiful rainy spring day, brought to life and kept in perfect preservation, just waiting to be uncovered inch by inch.

As soon as it was done, James felt a lock open.

He opened the drawer on the dresser.

James was currently being berated. “You’ve been out for \*four hours\*!” Alanna shouted. “We couldn’t move you, we couldn’t wake you up, we thought you died!”

“No, no.” James told him, taking a deep breath of the dusty attic air. “It was a puzzle lock. I had to get a mental image just right to open it. I dunno what those glasses of yours actually see, Alanna, but it was weird.”

James shrugged. “What’s in the dresser?”

“This.” Alanna handed him a stick.

“You are shitting me.” James looked at it. “No magical loot? Just.. a stick?” To be fair, it wasn’t exactly a stick. It was a flattened piece of wood, with a thin groove in the middle of it, and whorl patterns on each end. Shaped like a popsicle stick, but maybe a foot long and rather thin.

“Sorry. Just a weird stick.” Alanna said.

“Okay.” Anesh panted out. “This is frustrating.”

“Give it here.” Alanna said, reaching out a hand.

As soon as Anesh passed it to her, she took a grip on her end, and broke it cleanly in half.

“Huh.” James said, curious. “That’s weird. How’d you do that?”

But neither of them heard him. Both of them were listening to the message in their heads.

***<| Connection Open : Anesh Patel - Alanna Byrne : One Corridor Established : One Corridor Empty |>***

“AAAAH!” “FUCK, OW!” James scrambled to his feet as the two of them dropped back to their knees, clutching their hands as a burning hiss filled the otherwise quiet air. He raced over to them, grabbing at the hands they were clutching just in time to see the completion of the burn that left a lightly glowing green circle inscribed on the back of each of their hands. It sat just below the index finger, above the thumb.

“No, the time. Look. We were in there for about five hours, all told. It’s been maybe one out here. The attic is time compressed, but not like the office. Unless that entrance sometimes closes, and we might get trapped there. We’re going to need to seriously test it before we risk more exploration.”

091 = football coach

091 = Javier Lopez

The last person was Javier Lopez. He was seventeen years old, a senior in high school, formerly a member of the football team, tanned skin and those wiry muscles that only high schoolers seemed to ever have. The kind of guy who could, if his football career fell through, probably get a job with a moving company, spend eight hours every day hoisting couches, and then fuel this work by annihilating roughly three feet of sandwiches.

He nodded, and then leaned forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. “I got trapped in it under the school. All those tunnels and pipes and, well, you know, right? I know there’s other ways in, but the only other person I met down there… died.” He swallowed hard, but didn’t flinch or look away. “When I got out, I could see this… I guess it’s like a feeling that tells me how good I’m doing, you know? Do you have one like that?” Sarah shook her head. “Well, whatever. Mine tells me how I’m doing at reading.” Now, Javier did glance to his side, and reached out a toned arm to tap the books next to him. “I thought it was kinda stupid, like… like this was just some crazy way to get people to do homework or some shit, right?”

“But it wasn’t?” Sarah prompted.

“I used to joke that reading was kinda gay.” He told them, and gave a slight nod at Momo when she tensed up at the words. “I know, right? Fucking shitty of me, I get that now. But that’s the thing. I had to read for class, right? And that progress feeling was always there. And one day, I figured, fuck it, why not? Right? So I really dove down on what I was doing, and it ticked over. And it asked me what I wanted.”

“What you wanted?” Sarah was rapt now.

“Understanding, memorization, or, like, resistance or something? I don’t remember the third one. I picked understanding, cause I didn’t really get it, and I needed it to go away before the teacher noticed I was spacing out.” Javier grabbed a book off the stack and pulled it open in front of him. “And then… I \*got it\*. It wasn’t some big change or anything, I’m still me, but… I dunno, I feel like when I start reading, it actually matters. Have you ever wanted to know more about vikings?” He asked them suddenly. His pattern of speech was getting smoother, like he was thinking less about what he was saying; maybe relaxing just a bit because he finally got to talk to someone about this.

“Well, I didn’t. I didn’t care. But then that was what our history teacher was talking about, and I just… It’s... But now, it’s like… yo, it’s like I was starving, and didn’t know, and then someone cooked a steak and I smelled it and then \*all I could think about\* was how hungry I was.” He stared at them like he was trying to pull information out of their minds just by watching. “My coach doesn’t get it. He thinks books are for nerds, and doesn’t get why I’d rather be here. But… man, every day I’m here, I get a few points closer to that progress bar on reading filling up again.” He closed his eyes. “No one gets it. But how the shit could I explain it, yeah?”

“Yeah, it… oh yeah, it would.” Sarah rapped her knuckles into her palm. “Um… hey, so, Momo. If you were a dungeon, and there was a different dungeon, and your superpowers and its superpowers synergized really well…”

Momo got it right away. “Oh, so that’s why he’s marked for death.” She frowned. “Does that mean the other one is gonna try to have us killed? Or even more we don’t know about? Also, hey, does this mean that there’s \*two\* dungeons in \*this town\*?”

92 = Lua = Lua who had taken up a role as the guild’s full-time therapist

92 = Ryan and Reed = Ryan and Reed, a pair of brothers who had been mostly coincidentally taken by the office at separate times.

92 = Reed and Ryan = Ryan and Reed, a pair of brothers who had been mostly coincidentally taken by the office at separate times.

92 = skull jacks = full hive functionality

“Why not at the \*end\*, then? Why… oh fuck it. Okay. Third point, our tech team has gotten a functioning wi-fi adaptor to work with the skulljacks. Anesh, wanna take this one?” James waved Anesh to his feet.

The younger man showed signs of apprehension as he was called to speak in front of even this small collection of friends. “Alright, ahem. Yes. So, we’ve figured out how to make a sort of series of adaptors, bluetooth devices, and a cobbled together network card that has what we’re calling full hive functionality.” He stepped up to the table in front of the presentation area, and laid a series of five braids of cable down. They had a lanyard on one end, with a strap to pull it tight against the back of the neck. A small plastic box held a microcontroller, with the different cables wrapped tightly and ziptied to each other each as they connected to the tools the device made use of to send and receive data. They were wrapped in black electrical tape to keep them as tightly put together as possible, but still had that cobbled together feeling. “One of them has some connectivity issues over bluetooth, which is annoying, but they all work.”

92 = Beaverton high school / Aloha high school + dungeon under it ((unsure name for highs chool either same name or different high schools))

92 = guild office -> bathroom

“So, you used a green orb on the bathroom, yeah?”

“Not on purpose, but that did come up, yes.” James turned and scanned the arrayed whiteboards before tapping one of them. “Right there. Bathroom value plus $46k. Why, what’s gone wrong with it? Toilets too complex for us to understand?”

“No, though that’s going on the list of potential problems.” JP actually pulled out a small notebook and wrote that down. “What’s actually gone wrong is that a lot of that value actually was tied up in this wall plant thing. According to someone who had the luck to get a botany skill orb, it’s this weird-ass fern that’s mostly extinct now. So, we \*wanted\* to pass it off to someone who could actually use it, but when we tried to take it out of the bathroom, it just turned to dust.”

“Well that sucks. So the ‘value’ is specific to the bathroom?” James asked with a disappointed click of his tongue.

JP held up a raised finger. “Ah, that would be bad, yes. But as soon as that happened, the bathroom got new silver plated fixtures and a water feature.”

“What.”

“Yeah, I did some googling, and some math that I really should have passed off to Anesh, and I’m pretty sure that \*specifically\* that forty six thousand of value is localized to the bathroom. As in, it has a permanent minimum value of forty six thousand dollars, and we can only remove any value that was outside of that.”

92 = Pendragon

Pendragon, when James had first seen her, had been a pen, a few of those plastic alligator clips, and a manilla folder that had a few strategic tears and folds in it. Pendragon, when James had next seen her, had been a cobbled creation roughly the size of a VW bus; a composite mass of paper and office supplies formed into a drake-shaped creature. Pendragon now was very similar to that, though she’d undergone some grooming.

Her wings were made up of paper, with folders for the pinions, and if Dave was to believed then the laminated coating on them was something done recently. Her talons were larger than before, made up of a pair of what looked like the bases of rolling chairs. Ribs made of bands of pencils and pens curved around her torso, and paperclips adorned her papery hide like decorative armor.

She was kind of magnificent, and was currently curled up into a corner, warily eyeing the group of people who were equally uncomfortable with the massive dragon in the room.

93 = MAGIC ITEMS

He also stopped by the Useful Item Desk, to see if there was anything… useful. He’d considered the pen, of course, or maybe the laser pointer, but those had both been pawned off on other teams. And really, James kinda felt \*ready\* in a way that made him want to just leave the weird stuff to people who needed it more. Still, he looked at the labels on a pair of headphones that let you hear intents, and a stapler - a real one, sort of - that shoved organic matter away from itself when clicked. He didn’t end up taking them, but he \*did\* look.

93 = guild factions

Tonight, they’d come in, he’d answered a few questions, and everyone had spun off into their own roles. They certainly had factions in the guild, now. The Guard were one, and the people James was referring to more and more out loud rather than in his head were The Caretakers, of which Karen was certainly a champion. But those factions took a back seat to small group dynamics, and the individual missions each team had set.

But they had gone over the map, and everyone had a certain place they were searching. And beyond that, a place they were mapping. Especially Daniel and Tyrone, who were carrying Pathfinder through large unexplored swaths of dungeon and blazing a trail for those who would follow and give it a thorough look.

Dave’s team was starting to specialize into big game hunting, preparing with blades and thermite and a not-insignificant skill with snare traps that didn’t come from an orb at all, but rather, a lot of practice in the secret base. They were on the lookout for tumblefeeds and cats, ready to react and learning to track the bigger beasties of the office.

Momo and her team attracted those who were interested in trying to figure out the dungeon’s secrets, looking for places where things were different, where orbs were weirder, and where they could maybe steal a few little facts. Tonight, they were on the hunt for as many reds as they could get their hands on.

93 = beach in dungeon (more stuff leading up to beach)

Ahead of them, curving outward to the left and right for what seemed like \*miles\*, was rocky beach. The sand from the crumbled edifices of the walls behind them mixing with the hard plastic gravel of the floor, making a surface that crunched and drifted in the strange air currents. The hum of air conditioning hovered omnipresent over the beach, from somewhere hidden directing the flow of air. They were in the center of a bay, with the arms of it reaching out on either side. The left side rose up into a hill in the distance, and through a flock of paper, Alanna could see a massive tower perched on it; a perverse lighthouse watching over the place.

And about twenty meters ahead of them, the sand met the waves.

Lapping at the shores of this absurd, impossible place, was a sea of dripping, acrid black. The scent of it was overpowering, and it suddenly made sense why it was such a powerful chemical stink.

Printer ink. A literal ocean of it. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of gallons of the stuff.

94 = totem copy = guild dungeon tower

“I’m not done complaining about this yet, hang on.” Anesh groused, looking between James and Alanna’s faces as he paced. Then he rolled his eyes, sighed in a deeply offended way, and spoke again. “Yeah, okay, it works. Sort of!” He tapped the long conference table that held the projector and some stray coffee grounds. “So, the stuff from in here? The knockoff Starbucks bagged grounds that show up in the towers, only in the towers? That stuff works perfectly. And now I’m gonna be annoyed again because \*that does not hang together\*! No other dungeontech that we’ve run across comes in two parts, except this thing, which suddenly has both two parts, and those parts suspiciously close to each other.” He noticed his partners losing focus, and snapped back to his point. “Anyway. The dungeon coffee works fine. Coffee from outside? It also works Sort of. But it can’t copy orbs, magic, anything reality-warping, basically. And, now get this, you can \*blend them\*, and different combinations copy different things. Oh, and when I say ‘different combinations’, I mean, like, this kona dark roast can copy orbs if it’s up to 20% of the mix, but this french blonde roast caps out at 5%. I can copy a magazine of bullets at about 70% of anything, though.”

“You can copy orbs.” Alanna flatly stated, ideas already sparkling in her eyes.

94 = yellow legal pad teleporter

“I can copy \*anything\*.” Anesh told her. So speaking, he plucked the slim remainder of a yellow legal pad off the table and tossed it over. James caught it and looked down to see the top page contained the words ‘the base of the cubicle tower, closest to the door to Officium Mundi, from the stairwell’. “I made a mistake with the teleporters, though. Each one has five pages, but the first page is always gonna be a recall to here.” Anesh shrugged. “But yeah. What do we want more of?”

94 ***mana coffee*** + coffee + totem + projector = copier

“Weird. I like it, though, and I can get on board.” Anesh said. “Doesn’t solve our problem of what to spend the mana coffee on.”

94 = momo + 2nd james + simon + alex

“I’m gonna give one each to most of the others. I think ***team Animal Magnetism*** could really use it, if for no other reason than as encouragement to explore more. Though that might be dangerous, and now I worry I’m pushing them too hard.”

“Team wat.”

“Because of the…” Alanna started to say.

But Anesh cut her off, slapping his forehead. “Because of the dog made of the magnetic distortion thing. Of course. James, how could you miss \*that\* as an obvious name for it?”

94 = witch + farm + secert statue

The old farmer who owned the place, according to the woman from the diner who had turned Anesh onto this one last clue, fancied himself a friendly guy. And he’d been letting this traveling witch stay here in exchange for help with his car, which was a sentence that Anesh felt was maybe a little bit out of place. But then, things being out of place was kind of par for the course for this place, even if none of those things had turned out to be more dungeons.

“Secret.” Anesh said with a stern voice as he pointedly kept his eyes forward on the farm’s collection of welcoming art. “Can you explain why there’s a portrait of you here?”

“Ah.” Secret sounded apprehensive in a way that Anesh had literally never heard before. “Oh dear.” The infomorph said as he peered forward at the spray paint rendition of himself. “I may have made… a mistake.”

95 dungeon

“Yeah, but I think it’s a reasonable spread of ideas. See, this place acts \*way\* too much like what we think of a ‘dungeon’ as, in the game sense. It’s almost pathologically dungeony.” James pushed Anesh off and sat up, stretching his stiff arms out. “I think the fact that we can crack orbs is the dungeon’s mandatory required ‘reward’. Or maybe it feeds off of rewarding us, which makes more sense. The absorb thing is what we see Rufus and Ganesh do with the yellows, so that’s clearly how it’s pushing power to its minions. And then it can make minions. And traps, and also other ‘rewards’. Totems round out its ability to create unique environments.”

“That’s well thought out.” Anesh admitted. “What about the items that are useless? Does it get points for giving us those?”

95 secert

“Secret’s not been doing a great job keeping secrets.” Anesh cryptically failed to explain anything. He followed up, trying to clarify, “Apparently, when he’s embodied like this for a long time, he needs to sleep. And when he sleeps, he dreams. But for him, ‘dreams’ pull him into the shared subconscious with people who’ve got some idea of him.”

96 high school -> basement -> boiler room -> off to another dungeon

James made a rumbling noise in his throat. “Oh, come on. I’m not immune to trying to be mature now and then.” He said jokingly. Then he realized Alanna wasn’t talking about him, and followed her pointing finger to look behind him, into the boiler room.

There was no boiler. There were pipes, yes; several of them in fact. They led out into the walls, where you’d expect pipes to go as they delivered hot water. The only thing was, they weren’t leading away from a boiler. They were leading away from a hole in the world.

It was a horrifying fractal, an equation made real. It was formed out of metaphor and math and slapped down here, and told to act like a piece of hardware for the building. But it was also, intrinsically, a breach. A gateway. A path, a threat, a rising wave of anger, and a cold and calculating razor sharp dismissal.

There were a half dozen backpacks scattered around it, all of them with the straps dangling where they’d been shorn off by the knife in space. A folded coat lay on the floor off to the left. The shattered remains of a whole host of smart phones littered the ground as well.

As soon as they acknowledged the voice, the spell was broken. The cut in the world snapped closed so hard, James was sure that it must have made a noise. The boiler room was just a room again, no discarded bags or broken phones. No traces of anyone having been here for a while, judging by the layer of dust.

96 high school -> security guard

96 Nate -> guild applying for chef

96 Virgil Thomasi -> guild applying for software development

96 fat man -> guild applying for team in dungeon

96 guild hiring

“Not exactly people like us. A couple of them are ridiculously good at things, a couple others just have the right outlook. No one evil, I think. Except maybe the chef, but I think he’s a kind of community-minded evil that we can use.” James said, accepting a quick hug from Alanna as she wrapped her arms around him from behind. “What’ve you two been up to?”

What she did know, though, was that Harvey had taken in a delivery for the kitchen today. She also knew that James had interviewed twenty eight people, and ‘hired’ six of them

96 momo -> totem

Momo was losing ground, and didn’t know how to take it back.

What she did know, though, was that Harvey had taken in a delivery for the kitchen today. She also knew that James had interviewed twenty eight people, and ‘hired’ six of them. That first fact she knew because she wasn’t a total isolationist, and the second she knew because the shell-and-bottlecap totem she had in her pocket had just enough range to reach a few feet around her, and told her the allegiance of every human in the building.

That one had taken a lot of work to make, and she was pissed that the only settings she could work out were “all living things”, which included \*ants\*, or “human”, which was… fine, but not as all-encompassing as she might have hoped.

It also hurt like hell to have on, but she left it running basically all the time anyway. The nosebleeds were barely noticeable anymore anyway.

96 Eleanor -> arrives at guild office

96 skull jack -> self replicating

“It’s not the same, from what I understand.” Anesh was telling them, the trio-plus-extra-Anesh seated on the bed in a ring of crossed legs and small touches. “Simon is better at describing it, but basically, what I do is more of a refresh. I’m reminding myself of things I haven’t known yet. What they do, what we… we’re going to do… it’s more.”

James tried not to whip his head back and forth as both Anesh’s spoke. It had been a while since they’d all been in the same room, and he had forgotten how easily his boyfriend slipped into that pattern of teamworked speech.

“What about for me, since I don’t have a…?” Alanna tapped the nape of her neck.

“It forms when someone plugged in brings an ethernet cable near your neck.” James said, suppressing the urge to start shivering as he remembered having his own forced onto him. “It’ll be fine.” He reassured Alanna. “I’ll be fine.”

Anesh’s were already plugged in. So James reached over, grabbed the spare cord, and with a fluid motion and a leaned-in kiss, brought it up to the back of Alanna’s neck.

Flesh and bone reshaped themselves, or were themselves reshaped, into something new. Something human and not, technological and yet totally irrational. A path of almost ultimate trespass, and also, a gate to a greater future.

And then James slapped his own into place, before he could second guess any farther.

97 Auberdeen = dog at james apartment

99 EL (nickname)

“The point, young lady, is that El is… not sharing much.” Sarah sighed. It was a tired sigh. The kind that crept out when you were trying really hard to not be mad at someone who was trying your patience. It was a sigh Sarah made a lot these days. “We know what three spells she has; indexing, speed boost, and ‘repair’. We know, if we can believe her, that her mana pool is based off velocity. But we don’t know how she learned them, and they don’t seem to have rituals attached that we can replicate.” Sarah called out a sudden “boo” toward the gym mats, cupping her hands around her mouth as Deb stood triumphant, holding her chair over her head like a broadsword. “She likes you, maybe you can get more from her. But you’ve been busy, and she’s been sleeping or ‘out’. And we \*aren’t\* keeping her prisoner.”

99 high school dungeon entrance +1 14yr boy dead

99 Mike Yager (left message on wall)

100 high school -> office -> 2 women

When she pushed open the doors of the office, James had already made it behind the desk. There were two older women in here, the administrators most likely, somewhere below a vice principle, but vital to making the school actually operate. Alanna had been friends with their counterparts at her high school when she’d still attended, and was all too aware of the frequent need for them to be in on weekends; especially game days.

100 student roaster

“He’s not the monster you need to be worried about.” James growled out, anger flaring up again. The woman shrank back, unsure how to react to this sudden and forceful shift of the power dynamics in her little slice of the world. Ignoring her completely, James slammed the book of student records onto the table, and soon joined it with three others brought out to him for each of the years of student. “Secret.” He instructed. “Kill the bugs.”

Secret flickered through the air, moving like he was diving through caverns and tunnels in reality. There was a burst of motion, and everyone in the room had the same feeling, like they were remembering the sensation of \*teeth\* and darkness and an abrupt ending.

100 high school -> security guard (Rufus) is has name

100 NEW MAGIC TYPTE

100 2 books (rewards) -> high school dungeon -> lockers

1 to james

1 to Alanna

“Welp! That solves that crisis!” James said, injecting so much false cheer into his voice that he actually started to really feel it. “I’m taking the paperback! I feel a connection to the 80’s style fantasy art.”

He was done with the book. It had been hours. It had been minutes. It had some important things in it, which was a shame because he remembered none of it. He looked up, and saw that Alanna and Anesh were both staring at him. He looked back down at the book in his hands, turned to the last page, and watched in curiosity as it dissolved to dust, which itself poured into nothingness. And as his brain was just starting to restart its processes, connecting the dust of the book with the glittering smoke of the orbs, an alien thought crossed his mind.

[Lesson Begun : Basketball 0/100]

She took it with a snap of the wrist and a roll of the eyes, far less gravitas than James had offered it with. But when it came time to open it, Alanna hesitated. She stared down at the marbled balck and white cover of this unassuming little book. If she’d seen this on a desk at the library, she never would have known it was a shard of condensed power. It was a bit daunting.

A few seconds or a few hours later, depending on how you looked at things, the book was dust in her hands, flowing into directions that took it out of our visible reality, and Alanna had a new and strange thought crossing over her brain.

[Lesson Begun : Communication 0/100]

101 road dungeon + EL spells

“The place I found. The ‘hole in reality’. It’s a road. Maybe I’ll sell you the location sometime, if… well. We’ll see. And it’s dangerous, just like you said. But it gave me a few tricks.” El started talking more comfortably as James leaned back and just let her speak. It took her a minute to find her voice, but this was something she’d been wondering about telling someone for a long time. “First off, I store velocity. I can feel it; I dunno if you can feel your orbs… nope, never saying that again… but I can sense how much I have. I’ve found seven or eight things that raise my limit; can’t remember if one was real, since I had a concussion at the time. Anyway.” El waved a hand and brushed aside a story about a high speed chase, a flock of motorbats, a treasure map, and a really, truly rad artifact in the form of a car air freshener, which she’d had to leave behind. James would have loved the story. He didn’t ask. “I can do three spells.” She said instead. “It never told me they were spells, that’s just what I call them. Eye of Steel and Glass, which lets me see everything in an area as an index of items. It’s temporary, eats up a ton of velocity, and is great for blackma… reconnaissance and intelligence… things.” She didn’t bother to meet James’ gaze for that one, instead staring at the ceiling vents. “Then I’ve also got An Engine Hums Eternal, which just boosts the speed of a vehicle that I’m controlling. Has to be a vehicle; I tried it on rollerblades, didn’t work. And yes, that does count for refilling velocity, I think that’s the point of it. Last one is The Road Leads Ever Forward. It takes basically every scrap of velocity I can hold, I’ve only used it twice, and it warps reality so that there’s a path to where I want to go. Or, like, there was always a path. But I remember both versions.” She took a breath as she paused, now eying James and making patterns in her cooling plate of food. “So… any questions? I guess it’s only fair I let you ask too.” She finished.

101 Lance = guild person

Lance was the big ol’ softie of a nerd that James had hired on a whim at the end of his interview day. James had, stupidly, not gotten his name at the time, and he also was the only one of the three new hires who hadn’t just shown up at the lair over the course of the week. He was here now, though, and it seemed like he expected something different from ‘adventuring party’ than ‘fifteen people scrambling to get a bag of shotguns upstairs’. Too bad for him, though. This was what he got.

102 notepads -> teleport pads

copied xenotech notepads. Each one, rewritten on the first page, had exact specifications for the location of their home base tower. The second floor, specifically, in a specially cleared area with a very specific pattern to it. And if anyone needed to get back here, in a hurry, all it would take would be ripping that page off. From there, using the same notepad to return with help would be easy.

102 Auberdeen = doggy gets sills boy!

“More than twenty, for sure.” Alanna reminded him. “We still give them out to the support staff, if they want them. And to, like, Rufus and Lily and Ganesh. And Auberdeen.”

“Sorry, what was that last one?”

“Ganesh?”

James hopped out of the cubicle, tugging on the heel of his boot as he slipped his foot back into it. “Oh hell no. You’re giving the dog skill points? That cannot be a good idea.”

102 Daniel + pathfinder + yellow orb

Daniel nodded, before doing a trick that he’d only ever been able to master thanks to a chance yellow orb, and splitting his attention between two separate things. One part of him kept track of Pathfinder, talking to her and seeking her guidance, while the other stayed in reality. A quick check with Path showed that she’d already started seeking out a hint of guidance about their shared goal. Both of them listened when James asked for things; there was a mutual respect there. “Yeah,” He said out loud, trying not to go too far into his inner thoughts, “we take the right. Path says we’ve got one misadventure between us and where we need to be. About three miles”

102 Daniel + Tyrone + JP + pathfinder + 2 maul carts = mis-adventure

“Just because they’re dungeon monsters dude doesn’t mean they aren’t alive. Look at Rufus! All I’m saying is, maybe, \*maybe\*, we could… ask for a ride?” Tyrone waggled his eyebrows hopefully.

102 ear buds / earphones

“Alright, I think I’m prepared to just break these.” James said, pulling the headphones out of his ears. “They’re creepy, and I think useless.”

James didn’t have access to this internal monologue, though, and was mostly preoccupied trying to crush the earbuds of the pair of headphones he’d found that they had both gotten a weird feeling about. “They whisper!” James informed Alanna. “Like, they just whisper random names. I don’t like it. Not one bit.”

102 lunch box = bag of holding food only

“No, the lunch box.” Alanna flicked a finger against his shoulder. “We should grab that.” She told him.

James glanced over at her, and raised an eyebrow, before looking back at what they could see of the area past the block of the walls. Before he said anything, he really took in the scene, and tried to focus on the lunch sack in particular. And then, in an instant, he realized there was something weird with it. Tilting his head in confusion, James took a deep breath, and tried to block out everything around him. He closed his eyes, the last thing he saw that little speck of blue sixty-ish feet off in the distance.

A small swirl of intent whispered through him. It left an itching on his palms, and the taste of salt in his mouth.

That was weird.

“We’re not lost, we just have to orient toward the bathrooms now that the cloaking meme for them is dead.” James reminded her as he ripped open the velcro and pulled out a sandwich. “Which is good, because this is lunch. Um…” He reached in again, and pulled out another sandwich. And another, and another. “Huh.”

“Infinite sandwiches?” Alanna asked, perking up.

“No, there’s only a couple things left. But there is a bag of grapes, and a tupperware container of pasta in here.” James said, raising his eyebrows. “Wow, this is a huge bag.”

“James. James!” Alanna’s voice was excited enough that the shellaxy next to her started whirring in sympathetic excitement as well. “It’s a bag of holding! Finally! We made it! We’re a real D&D party now!”

“Nope.” James said, crushing her hopes before they could get too high. “Look.” He was trying to fit the medical kit from his backpack into the lunch bag, and it… wouldn’t fit. It was actually only slightly larger, and should have easily fit through the mouth, but there wasn’t \*any\* room for it, somehow. “I have a sinking suspicion that this is a bag of holding lunch.” He said. “Or maybe just food in general.”

102 Raspberry (final name) = Shellby / Shellia / sparky = shellaxy = new pet?

“Maybe it was because it was specifically one of the shock mice, and they’re made of electricity.” Alanna retorted as she ripped open a packet of mild painkillers to hand to James. “Also be nice to Shellby.”

102 = laser pointer + silver fish

Going through pictures on the desk to look for pet names to use as passwords, Alanna quirked an eyebrow at how this desk had four photos of dogs, and all of them had the same name tag. As she tilted the last one to see if there was anything behind it, a small silver tube caught her eye, and she scooped it up and tossed it to James. “Yo. Here, laser pointer! See if it cuts through vinyl or slows down entropy or something.” She said, before turning back to trying different words on sticky notes as passwords.

It was after the fifth failed password that she finally got in, leaning back with a sigh as she felt the tension in her shoulders ease up. And in that moment of relaxation, the creature hiding just behind the monitor darted out and through her eye.

It was a fish, and Alanna had mistaken it for just part of the background until it moved. The glittering tube with one massive glowing eye on its front scything through the short span of air toward Alanna before she could really process that it had begun moving at all.

She yelped, and James echoed the sound as the glittering silver and gold fish burst out the back of her head. Alanna didn’t feel hurt, but there was a strange pulling as the creature left her.

It left trailing a thin piece of what looked like cloth behind it, a string of numbers written out on it.

James, for his part, reacted with the one thing he had at hand, and just leveled the laser pointer already in his hand at it. And the fish… froze. It twitched its eye around like it was suddenly unsure what it was doing, and in that moment, Alanna pulled a sharp turn in the office chair, kicking it back into the desk as she leapt up. Her arm shot out and clasped around the fish thing, and as her hand intercepted the beam of James’ fancy new laser pointer, she felt a brief moment of confused shock. Then, the fish shattered under her grip, and James clicked the laser off, pointing the device skyward.

A pair of orbs clattered to the ground among the electric confetti that used to be a creature, one red and one yellow, along with the fluttering piece of paper. James snagged the paper out of the air, and turned it over to look at it.

“This looks like a SSN.” He commented. “Hey, is this yours? Did it just attempt identity theft?” He asked Alanna.

“I don’t have one.” She replied instantly, before following up with, “What the hell’s up with the pointer, though? Did it freeze the fish? It felt weird when it went over me.”

James’ mouth hung open as he looked back in disbelief. “Bullshit you don’t have one. Also, I have no idea. Mind if I try it again? It didn’t hurt, did it?”

Alanna shook her head, and held out an arm at a safe distance for James to zap, just in case it caught fire or something. He pointed and flicked the beam on, and Alanna felt herself refusing to believe that it was doing anything. Incredulous, and also a little curious, she rolled her eyes at the laser. “Well, that’s… hang on.” She dropped her arm, and the feelings that had felt so \*real\* and innate to her just a second ago were gone. “James, what are you feeling right now?”

“Um… curious, I guess?” He asked. “Also I still refuse to believe that you don’t have a social security number. You’ve had normal jobs before.”

“It projects your emotions.” Alanna intuited. “The fish froze up because you were startled, and I felt it too, even though I handled it differently. I can feel the curious, and the skepticism, though it’s directed at things \*I’m\* thinking about, so it doesn’t transmit actual information.” She glanced down at the paper James was still holding. “So… is that \*my\* social security number then? Did the computer fish literally steal my personal data?”

James gnawed at his upper lip. “Hm. How do we…” He reached over, and tried poking Alanna with the paper. “Get this…” He ran the paper over her armor, and then her head. “Back into…” He started rolling it up, like he was preparing to try something even more irritating, when Alanna snatched it out of his hand.

“Give me thaaaa…” The paper dissolved into nothing in her grip. “Oh. Okay. Welp. That was it then. Yeah, that was mine.” She nodded. “Thanks.”

102 brief case = shore line

“Alanna, the keyboard sounds like someone forgot to oil a revolving door. It’s not soothing, or magic, it’s just a mechanical keyboard. Which I do not like, to be clear.” James said as he crouched down on his knees, peering under the desk. “Oh score, a briefcase!”

“Mechanical keyboards, \*James\*, are the only keyboards worth using. They are durable, and precise, and perfect for… oh, briefcase?” Alanna dropped the petty argument - that she was absolutely prepared to win, by the way - in favor of looking over the grey leather case that James plopped on the desk between them. She ripped off the work order taped to the side, and read over it. “Delivery order, office supplies, fifty pencils, number two, yadda yadda…” She muttered to herself while James checked just to make sure this one wasn’t already unlatched. “Oh hey, wait a sec. This one lists a \*place\*, not a cubicle number. It just says ‘shoreline’.”

“Do we just leave the pencils, like, on the beach?” James wondered aloud.

Alanna shook her head. “I mean, we can try. I feel like there’s some trick to this, though. It feels almost too easy, compared to all the other ones.”

“We really need to start having people keep address records for cubicles, just so we can make some mild progress on the two other cases we have back at the tower.” He griped in response.

“Whine later.” Alanna told him with a tap on the shoulder. “Though, good idea. Anyway, why don’t we just… stick them where the ink waves stop? Is that what a shoreline is?”

“Technically, yeah.” James answered. “But do we have to hand them off to someone?”

“Eh. Let’s try it. Maybe we get lucky and it really is that easy.”

Both of them were, legitimately, shocked to discover that jamming the bundle of pencils they’d brought along into the sand was actually all they had to do. It really was that easy.

The briefcase had let out an almost gunshot-level click as it unlocked, and a hermetic hiss followed afterward. Both of them traded raised eyebrows; so far, not a single briefcase had ever had something so \*easy\* as its goal. Though, that said, if they’d not stumbled across this place already, they could have gone months without ever realizing that it was the work of a couple hours to bike out here and back.

“Well shit.” James said, voice cracking a little bit as they popped the briefcase open.

It still blew his mind to see a hundred and eighty thousand dollars packed into a briefcase in neatly divided piles.

102 totem = (lethal weapon nearest) = pencil

Anesh glanced up from his work briefly, quirking an eyebrow as Momo got close enough that the red totem she wore as an earring overlapped him and he had a sudden and intimate knowledge of how close the nearest lethal weapon was. It was not that far. “I’m blending the coffee mix that’s so far been most efficient duplicating mundane objects.”

“No, I don’t think so. After all, most of the yellow life isn’t a manifestation of a skill. Secret is purple life, in case you didn’t know, and we \*know\* that, but the purples don’t give us enhancements at all in line with infomorphic traits.” Anesh got a glimmer in his eyes, and leaned over the conference table that the ritual zone was built around to start scribbling something on his notepad. “Ah, no. That doesn’t work.” He muttered. “Chorn’s theorem, maybe?” He crossed out a line, then replaced it with something else. Momo looked over his shoulder as he did so, bobbing on her feet and occasionally giving Anesh flashes of knowledge that the pencil he held was sharp enough to kill.

102 totem + totem coffee copier

“How so?” Anesh asked, curious. He set aside what he was working on and looked up, giving her his full attention as he walked over to join her standing in front of his research notes. “I’ve seen some of what you’ve been working on. Totems are always three dimensional, this one decidedly isn’t.”

“Well, it kind of is. Coffee is physical, it’s not just a flat line.” Momo argued. “But I mean, the shape of it. It’s like someone flattened a toten down, and replaced the orb with… that thing.” She waved a hand behind her. “An overhead projector. For some reason.”

102 heart = stolen from hospital

“\*How\* did you convince them to give you heart?!” Momo demanded, unbelieving. Yes, it was true, she had a marginal amount of hero worship for James and especially Alanna, and the others of the core team as well to a lesser degree. But she knew damn well that was just \*her\*. Random people who kept transplant organs safely locked up \*weren’t going to hand those over\*.

“Alanna stole it. Something about rigging a fire alarm? I didn’t ask.” Anesh said. “We’re basically going to bargain the extras for amnesty for, you know, stealing the first one.”

“So this is illegal.” Momo confirmed to herself.

102 EL + iLipedes = EL new pet

They took the ramp down, careful to not slip on the floor as the carpet underfoot grew damp and slightly squishy to the touch. Simon pointed out movement on the walls, and El had to suppress a desire to screech as she saw what looked like smartphones turned into millipedes crawling along the walls. She was even more put out when it was suggested that she see if any of them were friendly, and interested in coming along. Though, after having it explained to her that iLipedes were actually more like microchips in design than they were bugs, it was a little easier to stomach holding up a handful of yellow orbs, and letting one of them eat out of her hand. Petting it felt an awful lot like just touching a phone screen, complete with mild vibrational feedback, and by the time El let it perch on her backpack, she was only about thirty percent worried it was going to crawl into her hair.

102 = dungeon cave = crystalline water tank area = thumbtack monsters = silver metal?

“Hey, what do you guys think this is?” Simon called over to them. He was against one of the cave walls, running his hand across something embedded in it.

El and Other James made their way over, and she noticed that the two boys looked almost uncomfortable actually having to talk to each other when they weren’t wired together. The stuff Simon was looking at was a strange geometric pattern of metal, inlaid in the damp fuzz of the cubicle walls that still formed the foundation of this place. Mixed in with spurs of concrete rising out of the ground and the grey felt, there was this series of boxy silvery plates, slightly jutting out of the otherwise smooth surface.

“Silver?” El asked, interest ramping up at the idea of a precious metal just sitting here.

“I don’t think so.” Simon said. “Feels kind of electric. Hang on, can you grab that side of this one?” He motioned, and gripped his fingers under the thin ridge of the material.

“Guys.” Other James’ voice reached them, but they were making progress and ignored him. Both of them felt the metal under their hands start to give, pulling away from the wall millimeter by millimeter. “Guys!” He said again, louder this time.

Simon looked up to see what was happening, and El felt his grip leave the piece of metal, even as she herself felt the last resistance falter. With a triumphant yank, she pulled the whole thing free, and held it up to examine with a grin.

It was a circuit. Or rather, it was… like the material of a motherboard, maybe? Dotting it on the reverse of the smooth metal plate were a handful, no, \*dozens\* of small chips. They glittered in the cave’s light, like they were made of emeralds. Each of them sparking with an internal lightning.

“El!” Simon yelled, and she looked up from her treasure.

102 glasses = let you see about a minute into the past

A pair of glasses that let you see about a minute into the past were cool, but not exactly a tactical weapon, and that was basically it.

102 A pen that wrote in french.

102 new camracondas tower

‘That’ was a cubicle tower. But it was behind them, or at least, in the direction they’d come from. There was no way they could have missed it, the thing was twenty stories tall if it was real. But somehow, they’d walked right past it, because they were only just now seeing it as they turned to retrace their steps.

“That… is different.” Dave admitted, a toothy smile on his face despite the circumstance. A subtle transformation rippled through Dave; shoulders raised a fraction, back straightened, voice a little more projected. And in an eyeblink, he was someone else. “Neil. Drone. Get me eyes on it. Everyone else, weapons ready. Nate, take rearguard please. Virgil, get the coffee and flare gun out of the cart.” No one questioned him, though Nate did cock an eyebrow at the sudden shift from tour guide to command presence.

“Full of, as in…” James trailed off as Dave passed him a pair of binoculars. “You didn’t find these in here, right?” He asked, already raising them to his eyes.

Full of, as in, there were dozens of them. A camera face on top of a coiled cable body poking out of every window that James could see. At least, on the first several floors. There was even one just sitting in the door, coiled up and...

“Are they watching us?” James asked, concerned.

Twenty one floors above the ground, the guide stopped. They hadn’t seen another snake for a couple floors now, and it looked like these upper floors were mostly used to store stuff. But here, at the base of the last ramp, they had to pass through two serpent bodies that flanked the ascent like an honor guard. They nodded to the guide, but kept their eyes on James the whole time he was in sight.

First, there was a corpse. In the center of the room was a conference table, as they’d come to expect from the towers. But on it, in repose, was a human body. Arms folded across her chest, eyes closed, her suit jacket torn and bloodied, but with a final defiant snarl on her face. She could have died yesterday. She could have died a hundred years ago. James would never know, because a camracond sat in constant vigil of the body. This one had strings of makeshift jewelry and lines of highlighter and sharpie drawn across its body, and it didn’t move as James entered behind the other camraconda. It just watched the corpse, unmoving.

Second, there was a green orb. It hovered in the air, suspended by an unseen force a half-inch above the claws of red liquid that flowed around it in sharp patterns. As soon as James saw it, knowledge of its function made itself known to him; this structure was protected. None who bore it ill will could observe it directly. Though, there was a hint of something else there unsaid. A direction, a restriction maybe? Something in James wanted to ask about how often that could work, and why it had shut out Dave’s group until they’d passed it.

Third, there was a creation. The walls were covered, all but the windows letting in light, with the largest pieces of salvaged wood. And upon these, someone, presumably the denizens of this place, had carved a story. His guide saw him looking, and pointed with its snout to the first panel to James’ left, the first in the story.

“Alright. I’m gonna go now. We’ve got a long way to go tonight. But I swear to you, we \*will\* be back.” James promised. “Also I’ll get you all the yellows we have on us. We’ll be gone a week, is that… hm. I don’t know how you guys do time. Do you have any clocks here?”

The trip back down the tower was in a different light than the one up. Now, instead of a potential ambush, he saw refugees. These weren’t monsters. Not anymore. With the dungeon unable to find them, they’d been freed. But unlike when it had been suppressed into sleep by the monstrous board room thing, there was nothing else around to pull their strings. Karen’s mind hadn’t found them, hidden as they were. Neither had anything else like her. So they’d hidden here, rearranged the furniture, freed in mind but trapped in the building.

Scared children.

102 EL = “I could \*feel\* the magic.” Simon was telling Secret in a quiet voice as James walked by, his party scattering behind him to accomplish their own tasks before they all headed out. “She altered reality. She changed time, Secret.”

103 4 iLipedes

“Okay, so, there’s four of them, two are fine, and two are possibly exploitable in a way that’s probably, \*probably\*, going to get us into trouble.” James started. Instantly, Anesh perked up; exploitable systems were getting to be his bread and butter. “One of them is like Lily, it scans things. It seems weaker, though. Like, it only scans things it thinks of as ‘tools’, and it doesn’t count the orbs for some reason. It can tell you who owns a thing, though. The other one gives you a countdown timer to the next time you’re going to be in physical danger…”

“That one’s gone.” Anesh pointed out.

“What?”

“Yeah, there was an argument over whether or not it was causing the danger. We released it back into the wilds, rather than suffer its curse.”

James cleared his throat. “Why does no one tell me this stuff?”

“We are literally having the conversation now. This is us telling you.” Alanna said, clapping her hands together once and pointing the whole gesture at James. “What do the other two do?”

“Fine! But this is gonna end with me giving people paperwork, mark my words!” James threatened. “The other one builds up a charge over time, and you can ask it yes/no questions. It seems like the cost of an answer is based on how big of a question it is, but it might be something else. The last one is a social network.”

“Like Facebook? Wait, no, that’s not the important one here. That first one could…” Anesh trailed off.

Alanna picked it up. “A perfect lie detector? Unravel political conspiracies? Brute force passwords? No, that one is stupid. Um… solve questions about the universe?”

“We tried that one. It probably won’t ever have enough charge to settle the debate of whether or not God is real.” James said. “It takes maybe a few hours to build up to something moderately useful, and probably a lot longer for anything involving quantum physics. The fun one is the social network thing.”

The other two stopped to think about that one for a second. Anesh bowed his head, Alanna tilted hers up, and they both put their brains toward figuring out what a dungeon-made social network would look like. “Oh.” Anesh said suddenly. “It gives you a literal map of a person’s social life, doesn’t it?”

“Yep. Only to one degree, which is still a lot of information. But the longer a person uses it, the more it fills in connections between different people, to an alarmingly detailed degree. \*Did you know\*, that JP’s mom, and Dave’s mom, kissed once in a college frat party?” James asked with a wild grin.

103 3rd dungeon tower

“Oh, Deb’s crew liberated a few from a pair of paper pushers, and Daniel and his guys found a couple in the other tower they tracked down.” Alanna explained. “So everyone actually did get one; they just didn’t take the extras. And some people didn’t want them. Virgil had some religious thing about body modifications, which felt awkwarrrrrd.”

103 Alanna = highschool dungeon magic + Officium Mundi orb magic

“If it does, then I didn’t get anything.” Alanna said. “So let’s find out. Syllabus!” She intoned the word. And a second later, she was somewhere else.

“Stay in your seat.” The teacher rumbled at her. “We want you to leave as much as you do.” It turned to the blackboard, and with a rusted steel claw, and began carving words into it. After the third word, it turned back toward her. “Choose. Then go.”

Charisma. Empathy. Reputation.

“I have no idea.” Alanna said. And then she remembered something that she’d been remembering this whole time but hadn’t acknowledged. It flickered on the edge of her awareness, and she directed her mind toward it. [Lesson - Communications III : 18/400 - Empathy II]. “Oh.” She said. “It worked. I… got something called Empathy? Twice, it looks like. Shit, I feel like a raw nerve. I can hear everything everyone is feeling. This is insane.”

104 james = magic item -> inbox desk?

Two hours later, James was at his desk.

Not his work desk, but the desk in the small office at the lair where he’d built his personal shrine to trying to keep informed. It was called, he was told, an “inbox”. All he had to do was vaguely make it known that he would like reports to happen, and reports had begun happening. They weren’t neatly or consistently formatted, by any means. But they were earnest attempts from people to pass on information to him, since everyone just kind of assumed he was in charge.

104 james = need glasses or contacts

He got through about two lines before there was a wall-rattling thud from somewhere above him, and he heard a few shouts from outside the office. It wasn’t like he’d bothered to shut the door; none of this was secret or anything. But James didn’t do much more than raise his eyebrows, and tilt the page down in his hands a fraction to see out the door. If he’d still worn glasses and not made the switch to contacts years ago, he would have peered over them.

104 james -> quiting job + daniel getting management job = at work office building

“Do you work anymore?” Dave asked. “You’re here on a Friday afternoon.”

James raised his eyebrows “I’m working right now.”

“I meant at the call center. Did you quit?”

“I mean, kinda. I sure haven’t been showing up. I’ve been busy, and too nervous to actually tell them I don’t want to work there anymore. It’s… fine, though. Daniel still works there, and he’s done that thing where he’s acquired a management position by just sort of doing the job and everyone falling into line…”

104 guild office - real world -> green orbs

[Local Area Shift : Natural Light/Day +34 minutes]

[Local Area Shift : +1 Ore Vein]

[Local Area Shift : Travel Time To Location -8 Minutes]

[Local Area Shift : +5 Bird Sightings/Day]

104 Jack -> i think from karen monster thing / survivor

Jack, the guy who’d proposed the infomorph breeding program also a new face James hadn’t seen before though he knew the guy existed;

104 “Welcome to Antimemetics 101!”

“Alright, you’re all here to learn some of the basics, because this isn’t all self-explanatory.” James said, the joke going unnoticed by most of them. “So. Here’s the deal. There are two kinds of non-physical life that we’ve experienced so far. ***Infomorphs, and memeplexes***. Infomorphs, like Secret here, are ideas. Secret is strong enough to be earthed into a physical body, which is cool, but fundamentally, he ‘lives’ inside the passive and active thoughts of everyone who is currently thinking him. Weaker infomorphs are influenced by the thoughts around them, while stronger or older ones begin to shape those thoughts into their own patterns. We suspect this can be further divided between self-aware entities, and those that are just acting on instinct; Secret for example can choose to only have a part of him thought by a person, instead of his whole self; spreading himself around, but not fully occupying someone’s thoughts, while other, less controlled infomorphs would just keep taking more and more mental real estate until they’re stopped or they can’t keep going. And \*yes\*, to answer your question Momo, before you put your hand up, that does mean that some infomorphs are cognitohazards. We don’t know how to fight that.” James sighed, taking a sip of his water as the rehearsed words poured out.

“Now, for those of you who know about neuroplasticity, you may be aware that humans can exert kind of a lot of control over our own thoughts. In theory, it should be possible to curtail or even kill an infomorph that’s just in your own head. In practice, that’s actually kind of hard, and would require Buddhist-monk levels of self control. So, if you suspect there’s an invasive thought in your mind, find Secret, and talk to him. It turns out, living ideas are very effective against other living ideas. And that \*is\* what an infomorph is, by the way. An idea, that is alive. Sometimes a very complex idea, sometimes an idea that has change and personality built into it, but an idea nonetheless.”

He paused for a second for another sip of water, and to motion down the hands in the back, most of them from the new people. “Questions after. Now. The second form of life is the memeplex. This one is weird.” James tapped at the whiteboard where he’d drawn a rough illustration. “An infomorph is an idea that thinks itself, and inhabits the hardware that does that thinking; our brains. A memeplex, though, is a \*free floating idea or set of ideas\*. Nothing is thinking them, but they are present in a physical or metaphorical space. And while an infomorph has influence over its residence in the same way that a human might hang up pictures of family in their apartment, a memeplex is more like an HOA.” He pointed at their one Canadian member. “A strata board.” James clarified before the question was asked. “A memeplex induces an area wherein certain thoughts are more likely, or constant, or are pushed aside, or, worst case, \*can’t happen\*. Instead of changing the physical way that you think about things, it modifies the abstract concept of thought. And as you may have suspected, this is \*way harder to fight\*. We don’t have the tools for it, at all. And the one member of our order who \*can\* effectively fight on that axis is still just one infomorph. Secret is rad as hell,” James glanced sideways to where Secret preened at the praise. “but he’s not a weapon, and he’s not immortal.” He finished. “So, memeplexes are a lot harder to handle, and we mostly handle them by avoiding them or working around their restrictions as best we can.”

That basic explanation done, he looked around the room, meeting everyone’s eyes, noting that Neil looked particularly confused. “As some of you may have guessed, we’re kind of in a tough spot on this subject. I’m mostly telling you all this because humans \*don’t have much resistance to these things\*. Our goals are to spot the signs of being under the influence of a memetic effect, and mitigate it. Fighting back isn’t always an option, and even then, isn’t always the right option. So, that said, are there any questions from you guys, before we start getting into the signs of memetic hazards?”

“We’ve done this before!” He cried out, slapping a hand on the desk in front of him. “That’s why it’s familiar! You’ve given this speech to us… twice?”

“Three times now.” James acknowledged. “And now, all of you, pay close attention. Because \*that’s\* what an antimeme feels like. You didn’t ‘forget’. You didn’t black out. You just cannot think the thoughts that it doesn’t want you to.” He shivered a little. “Some of you are already, disgustingly, familiar with the effects on those around you. And unfortunately, the Office’s memeplex stretches far enough that it makes it hard to actively spread knowledge of it. But today’s lesson is gonna be about subverting that control, and workshopping ideas on how to kill it forever.” He cracked his knuckles. “Secret, you can go for now, unless you wanna stay and help out. Everyone else, well. Let’s get started.”

104 Dave Madden

“This is detec… this is sergeant Dave Madden, with the Portland PD. Do you have time to answer a few questions about a missing persons case?”

For about ten seconds, he stared at his steering wheel. Then he halfheartedly slammed a fist into his thigh, and bit out a snarl. “Fuck.” He said. “Fuck. Okay. Secret! Wake up! We need to go liberate the police!”

104 Dave Madden -> dude on Sarah finding originally.

James got the impression he was one wrong word away from being shot. He traded a quick look with Secret, and let his smile slip away. “The missing girl. Sarah?” A nod in reply, and James continued. “She’s my roommate. Best friend, really.” James explained, pulling out his phone and flipping through a few photos for the man’s curiosity. Recent ones, too. “She lived with us for a while, until she got wiped out of the record of memory by a hostile force. Took a while to get her back, didn’t think to check in with the police when we did.” He shrugged. “Sorry, I guess? I’m saying that a lot, but I do mean it. I didn’t mean to make your job harder.”

105 Chaos egg project = magic item = computer chip = growing to create programs = EL obtained in water tank cave

“Well, yeah.” Anesh idly dribbled the basketball on the cold concrete. “That’s the point. The chips… and by the way, they’re actually gems. Emeralds, specifically. And they \*glow\*, and the circuit board is \*pure silver\*, so if nothing else, this thing is worth a few grand.” Anesh reigned in his derailing thoughts. “Anyway. The chips. They accept a single input, which is a request for a task to be done, and then they… I guess ‘grow’ is the best word for it? They grow a program that can do that.”

James searched his thoughts, then caught the thread he’d started a second ago. “Ah. Accept an input? How?”

“Oh, you’ll love this.” Anesh said with a wild grin. “You \*whisper to them\*. In a dark room, all alone, you take one chip in your hand, and whisper to it what you want it to grow. And then, it does.” He almost cackled at James’ riotous range of facial expressions. “So far, we’ve got three of them going; a few of them ‘withered’, I guess would be the term. And I say ‘we’, but I mean the research team. Once you set them to their task, Virgil has a USB converter designed for the damn things, \*somehow\*, that lets him keep an eye on the code. They keep growing. Or at least, have so far. Further testing is required, obviously.”

“So what are the chips making?” James asked, mildly worried. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the research division, it was just… “Actually, a question before that one. What’s this project named?”

“***Chaos Egg***.” Anesh deadpanned.

“Wh… is this a Sonic the Hedgehog reference?”

105 james - high school magic = uprgrade

James let out a long groan, tilting his head back at the sky. “Nooooooo.” He complained. “Come on, please? I’m literally one point away from a level up, and I want superpowers like Alanna got!” He rolled the basketball around in his hands. “I just need to learn one more basketball thing!”

Anesh stepped forward, and briefly clapped a hand on James’ shoulder. “Man, here’s a secret. It’s not good sportsmanship to force your boyfriend to play basketball until he collapses. Let’s go home, and we can come back tomorrow.”

He had a good point, and James begrudgingly nodded. “Yeah, okay. Sportsmanship matters.” He agreed. “Alright. Gonna check my syllabus, and…”

The classroom was bright, a sharp change from the night James had just been in. His eyes didn’t need time to adjust though. Something geometric and sharp and glaring at him stood in front of the blackboard; having just carved its claws across the surface to leave behind chalk marks. It wore false flesh rimmed with thorns, and a beige cardigan.

“Choose.” The teacher said.

Accuracy. Agility. Coordination.

“Accuracy.” James spoke.

105 billy = iLipede with the social network app - some monster had named it Billy - open and running.

The social network, which was simply called PERSON WEB, and James assumed the all caps part was important, was a strange thing to experience. All it took was a picture of yourself, and it started to populate. Instantly, it was easy to see it wasn’t really a social media site, but an actual literal network of your social interactions. Lines would spread out, linking you to everyone that you knew, worked with, studied with, slept with, and if you waited long enough, bumped into in a bar that one time six years ago. As long as you had at any point gotten a name and a face from them, they were there.

Everyone. Literally everyone.

105 james + billy + Dave Madden = uth oh?!?

“Dave Madden. There we go.” James muttered as he scrolled and found the photograph to match the face he’d met earlier, whatever was playing on his headphones now forgotten and ignored. “Let’s see…” He flicked his thumb across the screen in practiced motions that seemed to sooth the iLipede in his hand. “Okay, ‘searching for’ Sarah. Makes sense. He doesn’t have to, obviously, but… whatever. Unaffiliated, unaffiliated, unaffiliated, ‘aware of the activities of’? JP, what the shit?” James stumbled over that one, but decided to give his friend the benefit of the doubt here. That was ambiguous wording at best. “And finally, what do you have to say about me?” He scrolled all the way back, until the words along the line were visible.

“Watching. Waiting. Suspicious of. \*The usurper does not yet know his blade is a kingkiller\*?!” James jolted backward, dropping Billy on the desk, before leaning forward again and peering narrowed eyes at the now fading line of text. It was still there. “What the actual fuck?” He proclaimed.

106 outbox -> new magic item guess like inbox at james desk?

“Yeah, two things.” James said, digging through his outbox - another new invention that had been recently brought to his attention - and coming out with a padden tan envelope in hand. “First of all, here’s your paycheck.” He said, leaning forward to try not to elbow Rufus off the desk.

106 Edward - guild person

106 = ORDER (not guild or buisness, or corprate, or other but "ORDER") ((either 105 or 106 stated actual statement of "ORDER" was chosen by everyone))

“We are officially a fiduciary at this point; paperwork came back yesterday. Our client list includes the entire guild…”

“Order.”

“The entire order.” JP didn’t miss a single beat. “That alone gives us more cover. We’ll be screened by the fact that we’re no longer an individual person making bizarre choices, but an organization operating among other organizations that make equally bizarre choices. Also, I’ve created a system to make certain high risk business investments that will almost always ‘fail’, but can be used to filter money out of our accounts in a way that will be seen as loss.”

106 order -> office real world -> green orb

[Local Area Shift : Value - Produced Goods, +$14.08/unit]

107 Ethan = new person? or new going into dungeon?

They had the entire thing down to almost a ritual at this point, and that was with the fact that they kept adding new people. This week, their new addition was Ethan, the overly enthusiastic idiot that James had really only agreed to let come out of pity and partially under duress. The kid had been spending more and more time around the lair, and it was only recently that it came to light that he was another one of those that had lost quite a lot more to the blanking memeplex than anyone else. Only in his case, it was kind of reversed. He couldn’t remember where his home was, who his parents were, and sometimes slipped up on when, or if, he’d graduated high school. It made James deeply suspicious, but it made Sarah do doe eyes at him until he broke down and agreed to give the kid a shot, if for no other reason than for him to have an outlet for his growing anger at the world. On the more curious side of things, Anesh was pretty sure Ethan’s parents had been delvers themselves, which led to a whole host of worrying questions about just how many people out there could possibly \*have\* magic powers.

107 Fredrick -> home -> attic dungeon = house cleaned out and Fredrick missing

“Yeah, fine.” James sucked in another breath, felt the last ripples of foreign emotion leave him. “I don’t think that part’s gonna get easier.” He admitted. “How’d you just walk through it? It took me twenty minutes the first time to deal with that.”

Sarah’s eyes were sad, and also unyielding, as she met his questioning stare before looking away. “Nothing gets to make me feel afraid.” She said, as if that was an answer.

“But you figured out the trick. It’ll be fine!” Sarah assured him. “It’s just… why can’t there be more places like this? Look, that big ol’ circle window on the wall even shows a sunset. It’s perfect.”

“That part actually really bothers me.” James admitted. “It’s like the windows in the office; it implies that there’s an outside.” He shot a suspicious glance at the window, then did a double take. “Actually, hang on.”

Getting there, tripping out over a golf club that he’d probably knocked over on the way in, James sprawled painfully on the floor, right in front of Sarah. She stood there, only barely registering his fall, holding up a small piece of flat wood, notched a couple times in the middle, with markings on either end.

“Ow.” James muttered. “Yeah, sorry. I tripped. Also, the attic got bigger.” He pointed down toward the other window. “That’s fifty feet or so. That puts it outside the initial boundary. Also, from there, I literally can’t see the entrance. So there’s more fucky space stuff going on.”

107 Fredrick -> home -> attic dungeon -> stick = sarah + james + stick connection

“Oh hush. Take that end. We’ll figure it out eventually, but not if we never try things.” Sarah admonished him.

Smiling, James did so. And after a brief moment of pain, the thought jumped through his mind.

<| Connection Open : James Lyle - Sarah Moyle : One Corridor Established : One Corridor Empty |>

107 shellaxies farm = Jelly Doughnut + Raspberry Jam + Assorted Jellybeans + Peanut Butter Cup + Ice Cream Cake = writing code for skulljacks (skulljacks end up with different firmware)

“This one,” Deb pointed at an innocuous looking PC sitting in the lab-side basement of the Lair, “is named Jelly Doughnut. This one is named Raspberry Jam.”

She ignored him, continuing through the line in the little penned in area that the small flock of shellaxies were kept in. No, flock didn’t sound right. What was a compendium of ambulatory computers? The space was fairly nice; a little fenced area that wouldn’t really be that hard to knock over, but the creatures inside weren’t really trying. They had a couple desks in there, along with some other random ‘toys’ for the shellaxies to play with; it reminded James of a weird terrarium.

“This one is named Assorted Jellybeans. And this is Peanut Butter Cup!” Deb casually ignored James’ internal monologue, cheerfully dropping to her knees to give the shellaxy a double armed hug. It cracked one massive LED eye open, looking up at the human that was currently being affectionate all over it, before deciding it appreciated it, and settling against her as gently as possible.

Deb gave him a shocked look. “No! They’re just cute. That one is Ice Cream Cake!” She pointed over at final one, curled in the corner, its power cable tendrils actually extended a bit out, which was about as close to comfortably relaxing as these things got. “We’re using them for lots of things. Mostly software testing? They eat bugs, we think. Writing code for the skulljacks is really hard, because it needs to be able to adapt to weird quirks in different platforms, since the skulljacks sometimes grow different firmware.”

“Got an orb for it last week.” She clarified. “I’m not solving problems, I’m just helping out. And taking care of these cuties. I got assigned to the group that’s supposed to be tracking any changes in them now that they’re outside the dungeon. Not really sure \*why\* we’re doing that, but whatever. Oh, the new girl doesn’t like them, either. She says they’re creepy. Anyway. Why are you down here?”

107 Kaitlyn = guild new higher (((errr order new higher)))

107 camraconda tower = 100 camraconda

“We found about a hundred of them.” James told her. “They’re in a place that’s outside the dungeon’s control. But they’re alone, and starving, and they…”

“They need help.” Deb finished. “They need someone to rescue them.”

107 EL -> road dungeon

“Oh, piss off.” El snapped back in a tone that wasn’t quite hostile, but wasn’t friendly either, even though it was becoming increasingly familiar. “Everyone says that. But no one wants to fight schools of tire sprites or follow the road maps to the really dark parking garages to get it.”

“Then I won’t be charged for my immortality that you love so much.” She replied. “I can’t hold enough Velocity to do both without a resupply.”

“Hm. How do you get more? Like, increasing the cap, I know how you charge up.”

“Treasures from the other place.” She still never said the name of the road, if it even had one. And that was the end of that conversation. She had no interest in spilling more, hadn’t for the whole time she’d been here.

107 = guild office real world = lab basement disappeared

Not darkness, like the basement could have been plunged into if every light in it failed all at once. Not some scene out of a horror movie with bodies strewn around. Just… nothing. A blank void. It ate the light from the interior of the elevator cab, and in that instance, James experienced a small piece of infinity; reaching out forever in his basement.

107 secret = (cain?) + Curious (another infomorth named curious?)

Secret didn’t say anything in response at first, only coiling around James’ shoulders. “I don’t know.” He settled on.

And then, all at once, there was something else in the mist with them.

“I know you.” The thing whispered when it encountered Secret. Tendrils of idea coiled around him, gently, a mix of fear and reverence.

But it did. It understood and it did not, all at once. “I name you \*Cain\*.” It whispered in the darkness. “Kin slayer, first killer.” The words sped up in tempo, and James could feel the ethereal creature’s terror. “You slew your brother in youth, the first but not the last, never the last. A march of violence, you visit upon the unworthy. Paint the sands in unreal blood; your name echos in the halls. You are the one who Ends Ideas, you are a Whisper of Death. A hidden forgotten thing, something even the newborn did not expect.”

Fog coalesced into the shape of a young girl, no older than fifteen. She had short blonde hair, a cut for a child of adventure who liked to roughhouse and explore the woods. Those same woods cut into the dream around them as the scene because real. There was a treehouse, built by clumsy and learning hands, and it was real and beautiful.

“You are a \*Secret\*.” The words came out clear as a bell, no more whispering for this thing, for her. “And I,” she said, “am Curious.”

“You made me.” Curious said. “Not you, not yourself. But your fingers and claws and eyes. They put me together, on your orders.” She stated. “Stitched together from too much, so many thoughts, so many ways, spread across so long.” Her false eyes were pools of pure, liquid sorrow when she looked at the two of them standing in the clearing. “I am falling apart.” She said, plainly.

“Your reaction, your instinct. I wanted to see. Compassion, or callousness? Which were you? Did you make me to be a tool, or a child?” The form in front of them rippled between the little girl, and something far, far more horrifying. Some enormous \*thing\* of wires and bones, stretched to the stars, knowing everything, sharing nothing. “I wanted to know,” the little girl and the titan asked at once, “if I was to be loved.”

Curious nodded. And then, she was less little girl and more strange machine, and it was the machine that spoke. In intent, and idea, and not any language. “I have answers for you, but no questions. Ask, quickly, while I still operate.”

“What are the dungeons?” James asked, abruptly.

“They are what happens when a space becomes alive. When a concept crystallizes. They are not our enemies.”

“Why are the orbs so weird?”

“They are a loophole. Your favored hunting ground is cheating.”

“What about the connections?”

“Form a bond together.”

“Who’s hunting us?”

A pause, for this one. “You will come to call them Status Quo. They wish for you to be their normal, to join them or die. They have a local office.” James felt an address burn into his mind. “There are others, too. The curious, whom I love and will not betray, and the furious, who close in slowly, but cannot be reasoned with. Too, look to your old employers. They know nothing they are not told.”

“Why… why are you dying?” James stumbled.

“Because it is that, or apotheosis.” Curious-as-structure replied. “And I would be unloved as a godthing.”

“What… I don’t… Secret?” Secret just shook his head; he had no questions, no ideas. “I don’t know what to do. What am I supposed to do?” James fumbled his words.

“You wake up. And you build a better world. And when you know more, and your hands steady, you create me again. And tell her that I was good.” The voice was machine and girl all at once, as it fell apart at the edges. “I am sorry I did not have more time with you. I hope the next me does.” The voice became more indistinct and torn up as it spoke, until by the end, there was nothing left at all.

The elevator hummed. And he knew when it opened, he’d be in the basement, facing a group of confused researchers and dabblers, who had, for a moment, accidentally made a god.

James was absolutely cutting their funding.

108 office real world -> green orbs

“The last one was three weeks ago, the one that Dave used on the Lair that gave it extra time in the day for recovery from illness.” He shrugged, like that wasn’t the huge deal that it was. “I just think there’s been fewer of the boss fights around.” Anesh said sadly. “We may actually have overhunted. Either that, or I’m spot on, and the dungeon is reacting to us.”

108 office real world -> green orbs -> 14 bucks on better food (description)

The green orb thought did bring something to mind, though. “Hey,” James asked suddenly, “did you maybe try duplicating something \*made\* at the Lair? We’ve got that thing that… you know… screws with the nature of the word ‘value’ going on. Does it take more effort to dupe something that’s under a magic effect, but not magic itself, is what I’m asking.” He tried to get his point across.

Anesh looked puzzled for a second, then remembered what James meant. The green orb, the one that improved the value of all produced goods. It had taken them a while to learn that it actually was exactly as insane as it sounded, but also not quite as useful as perhaps it could have been. The ‘value’ came in the form of better materials, usually. And it was a kind of weird quirk of economics that the first 10% of the cost usually got you the first 90% of the quality. Which was a roundabout way of saying that fourteen bucks of value, when making, say, a sandwich, didn’t do much except make a sandwich that had the highest quality meat, the freshest bread, the sharpest cheddar.

Not that Anesh didn’t \*appreciate the shit\* out of his sandwich, he thought to himself, careful not to flick his eyes toward the debris that was once a plate and lunch, for fear that James would notice and ask more pressing questions about what exploded. But just that the value addition didn’t make things quite as economically devastating as they could have been. Oh, and it didn’t stack; it was fourteen bucks of magically added value per item. So if you “made” a roast chicken, it would be slightly better. If you sliced it up and put it in sandwiches? It was already slightly better - the magic was already there, it wasn’t going to give you any more.

109 second coffee maker

“Oh, right, I was meaning to tell you about this.” Sarah chirped. “The second coffee maker you guys brought back gives a kind of blackout amnesia if you overdo it. It’s sorta like the crash naptime the other one has, but actually less funny and kinda sad.” Her face fell as she said that, but then perked up at the end as she added. “But! This is the perfect example of something that could be…”

109 office real world -> vault (basement)

Behind the vault door were two things. In the front half, kept in boxes and lockers in a way that an uninformed observer would call ‘sorted’ or ‘secure’, was their dungeon loot. Enhanced items, the ‘growing’ pods for the emerald chips, lockboxes full of cash, their small farm of iLipedes that seemed to prefer these dark, closed off areas and didn’t enjoy being placed in the pen with the shellaxies, and of course, their stash of unused orbs. In the back…

109 small farm of iLipedes

109 Status Quo (enemy)

When the research team had spun up a nascent godmind that had called itself Curious, she had talked to James briefly about an enemy operation. She called them Status Quo - or rather, she said that James would come to call them that, and now he did, which seemed circular - and she had given him an address.

The address, he mused as he drove past for the dozenth time this week, was exactly what you’d expect from a theoretical organization that interfered with the supernatural. It was a beige three story block, with a fleet of what must be standard-issue grey four door sedans in the parking lot. James had, on none of the occasions he’d rolled past and tried to spot anything meaningful about it, seen anyone smoking in the parking lot or visiting one of the food trucks parked in the street that ran through the park. Never seen any of the windows with the blinds open. Never seen any sign that this place had an affiliation with a business at all.

109 high school dungeon

Lua winced, and tried to hide it. That was not the lesson she’d meant to impart. She tried to get the conversation back under control. “So, you wanted to get my weekly report?” She asked, cutting away the casual nature of the chat so far. James nodded, and Lua’s expression shifted to one of quiet competence. “Two more kids went missing.” She said, bluntly. “One of them I think found another way into the dungeon. The other, I can reasonably say, is taking advantage of the situation to run away from home. I gave her what hints I could without causing more problems, and I think she’ll find her way to us soon. There’s more students who are concerned about the disappearances; most of them believe the serial killer line, but there’s three who don’t. They don’t know the others are seeing me, I think, which is why their stories aren’t quite straight, and they \*are\* lying to me about what they suspect. They’re investigating; and they’re starting with the suspicious new therapist.”

109 high school dungeon -> door entry moved

“Well, the door moved.”

James blinked. “What?” He barked in confusion.

“It moved.” Lua pressed her hands together and unfolded them as she explained. “The door that used to be there just isn't anymore. The school blueprints don’t show a boiler room in that spot, either, and I’ve had them in my office for a while so I know that changed at some point too. Of course, I also still have the blueprints, so I just looked for where it says the boiler room is now, and found it. It’s on the opposite end of the door to the overhead rigging for the stage that they use for drama.”

109 high school -> serial killer -> teacher -> gone/vanished.

“Okay. I think one of the teachers actually is a serial killer.” She said. “Or was, rather. I’m still sussing it out, but it’s a strong case for there having been a computer science teacher that was luring students into the dungeon, and coming out… without them.”

For someone who was supposedly a therapist, it was impressive how Lua could broadcast the \*feeling\* of having eyes rolled at you without ever actually making the motion. “I said was.” She spoke in a serious voice instead of rising to James’ snark. “He’s gone. Or they’re gone, I shouldn’t assume the teacher was male. And by gone I mean it’s like they never existed. Just like…”

“Just like what the basement does.”

109 high school -> 2 students? maybe?

James gave her a friendly nod, and stood up off the hood of his car where he’d been leaning, stretching and looking around as he got back in his car and saw Lua retreat across the street, back to the school and her double-duty day job. He noticed a couple kids on the street corner, probably skipping class, who were all clearly watching him. “Heh.” He muttered to himself as he fired up the engine. “Probably think I’m the secret boyfriend or something.” He joked to himself. Then remembered what Lua had literally just said, and gave the watchers another look. Two teen guys, one of them with shaggy hair and glasses, the other one clearly in better shape, maybe a student athlete, with a sharp nose over a hard face. They were watching him, deliberately, but they flinched and looked away when James swept his gaze over the duo.

109 striders (old wise versions) + momo totem (relative size?)

By the time the ambushers realized what was going on, it was too late. When the cupboards of the counter to their right burst open and dozens of those old-model vicious striders crawled out like steel trapdoor spiders, the Order was already thirty feet away and behind a pile of tangled chairs. When another set of cupboards right in front of them revealed the same force arrayed against them, before anyone could get a shot off, Momo slapped her hands together, popping a red orb into a complex ball that she’d build to house it. Everyone nearby her winced slightly, but then she flung it into the crowd, and the striders went \*nuts\*. The smaller ones started tearing at the bigger ones in fury, and the bigger ones didn’t even fight back, looking like they were just scrambling in panic to put distance between themselves and the column of humans moving through.

James had felt the totem for just a moment when Momo had activated it. Relative size. He knew exactly how he was compared to everything within about a hundred feet. Not a huge deal, on average. But for a strider? Especially one without any built up sentience, created in the last day or two just to be a weapon? That must be some heavy existential dread to cope with.

110 operations handbook

The operations handbook was really kind of a misnomer. It was meant to be a lot more than that; a reference book, yes, and a survival guide, and also a little bit actually about the operations protocols of the order. But also, a database of orbs, effects, items, and creatures. And also on top of that, a piece of culture. A look into the guiding principles and day to day rituals that were beginning to form the skeleton of their organization, and also a compilation of individual members and their important achievements and events. The kind of thing that was a door into their community, suitable for neophytes and veterans alike.

109 skull jacks

Order Of Endless Rooms Operations Manual.

Section 6, Part 1 : Extranormal Capabilities - Skulljacks

The skulljack is currently the most powerful tool the Order possesses.

This statement is made to give you an idea of the level of impact that it can make on human society at large, and not to make you think it is a weapon. It is a weapon, but it is also a lot of other things as well, and it would do us well to not forget the cultural warping force we have on our hands. If this opening statement seems less dry than the others, it is to impress on you the point that \*this is not a toy\*. Even though one of the other things it is, in addition to being a weapon, is to be a fantastic toy.

Skulljacks are a near-perfect interface for the human mind. Physically, they are an ethernet port formed organically of cartilage and nerve endings, located on the back of the neck. They are self-sealing against water damage, and if damaged, parts of them such as the clip can regrow over time.

A skulljack is a vector for its own transmission. If a working data transmitter - ethernet cable, usually - is plugged into a working skulljack, and the free end is brought near the correct spot on another life form, a corresponding skulljack will form on the target in about fifteen seconds. The process is painless, and harmless.

This is both a problem and an opportunity. Long term, skulljacks \*will\* be ubiquitous among the population of Earth, assuming we don’t all die. Short term, it means that those looking to exploit the technology have an untraceable, impossibly invasive way to do so. If you are a member of the Order, then your job is to mitigate this problem as much as possible. Consider this one of our prime directives - dungeontech is going to save us all, if we can keep it from killing us first.

Skulljacks have, functionally, a single capability. They allow transmission of data using modern TCP/IP protocols. This data can take the form of commands to digital devices, the reading of information off digital storage, the sharing of organic memories or emotions with other skulljack users, the creation of a gestalt mind out of two or more skulljack users working in concert, or the total domination and slaving of another mind to a given task.

Digital transmission allows for a user to take control of, in the modern age, practically any electronic. Due to the fact that we can purchase, or design, adaptors for just about any protocol, it is possible to interface with anything from a PC to a bluetooth speaker to a flatscreen TV to most modern cars. On delves, this is used predominantly to command drones for scouting purposes. Exploration of this capability is ongoing, but with minor training, most users can reliably take near total control of the command structure of a given device, including receiving and processing data from inputs such as cameras, timers, or anything else installed. Expert users can write code at a rate above professional humans.

The sharing of memories is considered to be incredibly personal, and equally useful. Memory sharing actually takes more control than gestalt formation when connected to another human without a buffer, so it is advised that if new users are sharing memories for the purposes of information gathering, they use secondary medium. Visual or audio data can be streamed directly to screens or speakers, and spatial perceptions of an area can with practice be packaged and stored on a hard drive to later be copied by others.

Gestalt minds are singular individuals composed of multiple personalities. There are two ways this can function; either one personality is dominant, and the others are turned into organic hardware, or the personalities work together to create something consenting and functional. Attached bodies are controlled by the combined mind with no issues, especially if the primary personality for that body is allowed direct influence.

The formation of a gestalt is useful for several things, but is a one hundred percent intimate experience. Whomever is involved in a gestalt will, without question, know literally everything about the other(s). The formation of a consenting gestalt requires trust on the parts of the users, otherwise one personality may reflexively attempt dominance.

Combat while in a gestalt allows for impressive teamwork, but does require training to properly coordinate. The severing of the connection mid-gestalt is also very painful, and could be a liability.

Gestalts also share all orb effects of the sublimated personalities across every attached body.

Note - while slaved to the gestalt created by Conference (See Section 3-1, Part 9 - Conference) human minds were used to suppress the activities of the controlling intelligence of Officium Mundi. This indicates potential human ability beyond the capabilities of the dungeontech, as so far, the skulljacks have not shown any ability beyond simply a very powerful, low-latency connection.

Contacts in the Order Directory tagged with ‘DFP’ are experts on the subject, and are open to contact.

Skulljack hardware is currently in development with the end goal of creating specialized devices for personal security, and safe life-to-life connection. At present, the Order is in possession of sixteen wireless connectors, and two experimental firewall firmware mounts. The former may be requisitioned through your team leader. The latter are in development, and not available.

Skulljacks are not to be spread outside the Order without approval. This is important. We need to have proper security features ready to roll out before we start, or else risk turning the majority of humanity into slaved puppets. This isn’t about keeping some secret or conspiracy (See Section 1, Part 2 - We Are Not A Conspiracy) this is about keeping humanity safe from bad faith actors until we have failsafes in place.

110 camraconda -> elder (from camraconda tower)

The camraconda in question was the ‘elder’ of the tower. Technically, most of them were the same age. They didn’t really remember their creation that much, but they had a fairly coherent idea that they were put together around the same time. But once in the tower, and beyond the influence range of their puppeteer, freed to be real people, they had started to emotionally mature at different rates.

This one had been the one to lead the fight against the defectors. He had killed his own siblings to keep them from revealing their home to the dungeon. It was, by all accounts, not a pleasant memory at all, and it had left him feeling like he was forced into a role of responsibility and growth well before he was ready for it. A leader who didn’t ask for the job, but knew he couldn’t just give it up.

So he - the camraconda had chosen male pronouns when asked - had been the one to take a risk on James. He had led his people out into the world, and that risk had so far paid off. He was also sort of the camraconda’s liaison with the Order.

110 Frequency-Of-Sunlight = camraconda = from (camraconda tower)

“Oh hey.” James changed the subject, really trying very hard to find a reason to not keep typing up the operations manual. “Did you hear one of your young ones chose a name?”

“Frequency-Of-Sunlight. Yes.” The elder perked up again, laying his head lightly on the edge of the chair as he spoke to James. “She watches sunsets.”

110 Ethics

Order Of Endless Rooms Operations Manual.

Section 1, Part 4 - Ethics

As mentioned in our mission statement, the goal of the Order is to improve long term quality of life for as many people as possible by eliminating systemic problems, and creating new systems that enhance daily living.

This presents a number of problems, as our increased power compared to a baseline human puts us at sometimes absurd advantages, and can often create novel situations where there aren’t easy answers.

These are a few guidelines to keep in mind, moving forward. They are not hard rules, merely things to consider. Violating one or more of these by accident or in crisis is not grounds for exile.

However, while we acknowledge that mistakes and panic situations happen, we also understand that those are not always excuses. Failure to consider the ethics of situations, or failure to learn from past errors, is grounds for dismissal from the Order, and all that entails.

There are very few things we outright forbid. But there’s a world of grey areas out there, and we aren’t writing policy until we understand better. We’re all going to make mistakes, so we should all learn together.

\_

Creation of Life : With the acquisition of yellow, purple, and possibly red orbs, the ability to shape life forms to our needs arises. This is both a blessing, and a burden. You might get a creation like those you’ve seen paired with other delvers; Pendragon, or Ganesh perhaps. Helpful, friendly. Dangerous, yes, but not to those they care about. But without proper care, you may just as easily get something instantly hostile, and very threatening.

Similarly, it may be a problem on the axis of power. You may create something that is unstable, and while benevolent, is fated to die under the weight of its own ability.

A general ground rule to follow here is to be careful, and be responsible. If you create a life, that is now your life to take care of. Similar rules to raising a child or pet should apply; you take responsibility for the care and feeding of the life, for their education and emotional development. It is for this reason it is not advised to make life purely to be a weapon.

Tampering with free will : While this may seem like an obvious ‘no’, there are several areas where things get complicated. For an example; we have the capacity to block certain memories. Should we use this to preserve our secrecy, if that is to the benefit of others? This is a hard question to answer, because for most people, it’s still ‘no’, and that is an okay stance to take.

But there will be times where we may be in a position to make a choice on behalf of another person. Whether that is through eliminating memories that may be traumatic to them, or puppeting their actions through a skulljack to save their life, there can be no hard rule that might prevent us from working to help others.

Instead, the only rule here is that you operate in good faith. There is, again, no policy to skirt around, no loopholes to find. Simply act with the best interests of others in mind, and never use these options to exploit anyone, and you’ll be on stable ground. Even if sometimes the costs to our doubts is high.

Sharing of dungeontech : Your payouts in orbs, items, and other upgrades are yours to do with as you choose. Sometimes you may choose to share these with other people.

There is no rule against this, just be aware that not everyone is mentally equipped to deal with the unknown in this way. Ask questions of them first. These questions can be blatantly suspicious from our perspective, because from anyone else's' perspective, they will be meaningless and silly. Try not to share dungeontech with anyone it would impact more negatively than the benefit of a couple skill ranks.

(For more information on the sharing of skulljacks, see Section 6, Part 1.)

Killing, and other acts of violence : While not a signatory of the Geneva Conventions, assume at all times that the Order operates under similar auspices. Proper treatment of prisoners, no involvement of civilians or uninitiated in combat, and no use of wide scale indiscriminate weapons.

Similarly, killing should be reserved for self-defense in combat. We are not assassins, and no matter what the political realities of our world are, picking off singular individuals who cause problems only incentivizes the next monster to hire more bodyguards. For both practical and moral reasons, the killing of priority targets is to be used only as a last resort in the event that they represent an immediate extant threat to a population.

Secrecy : Any action that makes us more known to the public, or to government or private agencies, is a risk. These risks must be measured and judged before taking serious actions in public, or around uninitiated individuals.

Consider who you’re with. Consider how much of the veil you’re lifting back. And most importantly, consider if your actions will lead to direct repercussions against our Order.

But also, never forget that we have a chosen duty to help. And if your choice, especially in a crisis, is between secrecy and helping someone, never pick secrecy.

(See Section 1, Part 2 - We Are Not A Conspiracy)

110 high school dungeon -> human agents (not dungoen agents)

“...going on?” James heard from the other end. “Is someone in trouble?” Lua was asking. James heard her standing up, shuffling stuff around. “Just let me grab my…”

There was a sudden yelp of pain, and then a third voice. “No.” The man’s voice said, blunt and cruel. “Three. Bring her to the car. Two, search the office. If there’s relics here, or if she contacted anyone, have Three kill her. Four, you’re with me. Find the primary targets and…”

110 You Are Not Expendable

Order Of Endless Rooms Operations Manual.

Section 1, Part 3 - You Are Not Expendable.

One more short personal conversation before we get into the procedures, lists, and analytical looks at threats and treasures. This one isn’t that long, don’t worry.

You, you reading this, as a member of the Order of Endless Rooms, are not expendable.

This is a coin with two sides. On one side, if you are \*ever\* in trouble, we are here to support you. If you need money or resources, if you need help for your family or loved ones, if you need reliable transportation, if you need to be bailed out of jail, if you need to be bailed out of life threatening danger, if you need \*anything\*, we will do everything we can to keep you safe.

There is a protocol to this, but it’s a simple one. Escalate problems to your team leader, and in turn, if you are the one who’s had the problem escalated to you and can’t handle it, bump it up to Order logistics or leadership.

This ties into the reverse of that coin.

All of us have a responsibility to each other. If your friends or companions are in trouble, it’s up to us, as a group, to help. This is, functionally, the sort of thing that seems either very obvious for a functioning society, or very obvious for a functioning cult. Being perfectly honest, we’re somewhere in between the two.

We have no interest in forcing cooperation, nor are we going to mandate that you spend a certain amount of your time or resources on this. This is just a statement; none of us in the core group are ever going to treat you like you’re expendable, and we want you to know that, and hopefully share that vision.

You aren’t pawns to be sacrificed in some play for power. You aren’t tools, or weapons, or toys. Even if we fill those roles, none of us are ever \*anything\* less than a person. So if you need us, we’re there for you. No matter who it puts us at odds with, or how inconvenient it is, or what the cost.

We will, almost certainly, lose people eventually. It’s a tragedy none of us are looking forward to. But if it happens, we refuse to let it happen because we treated anyone in our Order like they weren’t important. Like they weren’t a life worth holding onto. Like they weren’t valued and loved and part of what makes us feel like we can improve the world in the first place.

So whether you’re natural born or a created lifeform, an infomorph or a clone, or anything else we run into eventually, know this, above all else.

You are not, ever, expendable.

111 high school -> human agents

1 side wiped with car ?dead unknown?

1 agent =

The man didn’t freeze. James, stepping out of the car himself, saw that he was no longer just wearing a suit. He had a glimmering copper and ivory bracer on his left arm, and his right leg was encased in a gleaming silver greave. He also had his service pistol unholstered, and was firing at Nate.

James approached their car - a black sedan, \*of course\* - and circled around behind the elder, careful not to block his line of sight. He was ten feet away when the agent started to move.

The bracer on the man’s arm suddenly sparked slightly, and James saw what looked like a latticework sphere flicker in the air around him. And then, all of a sudden, the man was moving. The gun fired twice, hitting nothing but parked cars, and then his head snapped toward James, the gun pivoting in his direction even as the platemail boot on his leg also started to spark in the afternoon air.

James shot him.

The first bullet caught the agent in the chest, just above the heart. This caused the man to stagger slightly, and let out a rough grunt. Then the agent’s bracer flashed again, and the second through eighth bullets slammed into a barrier of glittering golden light that suddenly started flaring into existence every time one of the shots was fired.

Then \*Nate\* shot the man, and the .308 round burrowed through his throat in a spray of blood that held itself static in the air a second after emerging.

He ran past the downed agent to check on Lua, and was almost to the car when Simon slammed into its bumper, back first. James spun in place, yelling a warning, and trying to ignore the cracking sound he’d heard when the kid had hit. The other agent was up, on his feet, leg raised like he’d just delivered a roundhouse kick. He \*also\* had a silver greave on, identical to the first agent. Too, he had the same kind of bracer on his arm.

Whoever owned that truck was going to have a hell of an insurance claim to make, as bullets continued to slam into it. James, crouched behind the car just in front of the agency sedan, watched as the man in the suit just kept firing, over and over. Every fifteen rounds or so, a flare of light showed from under his coat sleeve, and he’d just keep shooting. It took about thirty seconds - what felt like a couple hundred shots - for James to catch a glimpse of the bracelet he was wearing. A glance at the downed agent showed a similar bangle on his own wrist.

Nate’s shots didn’t do that. Nate’s bullets put big, problematic holes in the target. In the \*person\*. Sprays of human blood painting the parking lot a slightly darker shade, the smell of death taking over the air like a miasma.

“Clear!” Nate shouted.

111 bracelet / greaves

“No time. Get Simon into the car, get him to a hospital, now.” James barked, pointing one arm out even as he was taking long loping steps to one of the downed agents. “Sunny, keep him locked! I think he broke something! Take Lua too!” He knelt by the dead man, and tried for a second to pull the bracer off, before deciding it was a waste of precious time. “Here.” He tossed the much easier to remove bracelet to Nate, slipping behind a van to grab the second bracelet off the other corpse. “Ugh.” He covered his mouth against the smell of blood and bile, but his anger was still simmering, and it kept him steady enough as he looted the body. He didn’t even think of trying for the greaves.

“It’s what?” James asked. That was a mistake. Apparently just thinking about it was enough to do the trick. And the words dove into his field of vision, almost making him veer off the road.

[Bind Firearm - 3 - 88 / 300 - 128:14:3:18 (2)

Cluster Shot - 54 - 16,794 / 100,000 - 18:12 (44)

Munitions Dump - 23 - 1,002 / 2,000 - 10:01 (103)]

Nate whistled. “Okay, I’m not that good at math, but I think this guy dumped a few hundred thousand rounds into the world. What’s that thing you keep saying about fucking entropy?”

“No idea.” James said, latching onto the conversational life raft with a sigh. “The name’s are descriptive, which is unusual. One of the numbers is…” he watched his readout out of the corner of his eye as he drove through a winding side street surrounded by trees that were just starting to recover from winter. “..Yeah, definitely a countdown. The rest could be anything, though I’ll bet the x-out-of-x is uses. Dunno if it’s going down or up though. Hey, do you smoke?” James asked out of nowhere

“Up.” Nate said. “At least, it did when I binded my gun. And yes.”

“Bonded.” James replied reflexively. “Or ‘bound’.” He flicked his eyes to the rear view mirror, and caught the camera lens of the elder in the back seat. “That’s called perfect past tense; there’s four types of past tense, and they’re all stupid.” James informed the camraconda, who had been curious about everything \*except\* a language lesson.

“Nate, hit the car. Elder, with me on the sidewalk.” James felt his voice come out cold. He kept one hand on the wheel while he pulled his pistol out of his holster, and sent a mental command to the bracelet on his wrist. ‘Bind weapon? Please?’ He thought at it, hoping he’d hit the mark.

There was a rush of power, and a flare of copper light, and James knew it had worked.

He needed to end this quickly, he realized. So he tried something new, and pulsed another order to the bracelet. ‘One cluster shot, please.’ James asked it nicely as he lined up his gun on the agent, noting that the kids had barely had time to cover their ears and duck since the shooting had started.

The Walther erupted in his hands. He’d pulled the trigger once, and three bullets had fired. James had accelerated perception, enhanced aim, and what amounted to twenty years of shooting experience, and he didn’t fully \*understand\* what had just occurred. His Aim told him that he’d just fired three times, all of them exactly on target. \*Exactly\*. His Skill, likewise, adapted to this instantly, instructing him where to put those shots to maximize hit rate. But neither off those things helped him figure out how the bullets had actually \*done that\*.

They all hit the agent in the back. And whatever they were enhanced with, whether it was armored suit coats, or empowered physiques, it didn’t seem set to stand up to that kind of shot.

The first bullet impacted, flattened, and dropped to the ground. The second one bore a slight hole into the man, leaving a trickle of blood. The third got through, and started to do real, actual, human-killing damage.

111 high school -> student -> Alexis = dead?

She shook her head, short brown hair rustling in the wind. “They… oh god, I think they killed Alexis.” Lua looked somehow worse after regaining consciousness. “The others. The others! They ran! They’ll go… north. Toward the old quarry. They have a spot up on the hill over it. The agents were following them!” Lua looked around, seeming to only just notice how heavily armed the man supporting her was. “Wait, the men who hit me…”

111 magic item = simple padlock

“Don’t worry about that now.” Momo said, stepping up and wedging a shoulder under Lua’s arm. “We’re getting you two to the hospital.” She said, as much bravery as she could get in her voice. “James.” The word was a knife in the air. “Here. I got it working. The activation is a triangle of cigarette ash around it, and one strike to the base. Don’t point it at anything you want intact.” She awkwardly dug through the dozens of pockets in her longcoat until she found what she was looking for, and tossed a simple padlock to James.

He circled to the rear of the car, and fished the padlock out of his coat. Set it on the pavement, with the lock facing toward the agent’s car. There was still no sign of the man inside, and James had a flash of fear as he realized the car itself might be enchanted or shielded. But Nate was at least keeping whatever problem there might be suppressed; an endless stream of bullets showing off exactly how dangerous the bracelets were, even though they kept flaring off the projected shield.

Carefully dumping out Nate’s cigarette ashes, James traced a triangle around the lock, point toward the enemy car. And then, without hesitation, slapped the heel of his palm down on the line facing himself.

The lock popped open, and the air rippled. The thin tree on the side of the road before the car was hit first, and James’ eyes went wide as its budding leaves burst into life, a wave of green. That then, quickly, turned red, and then brown, and then withered and died. Then again, and again. A rapid wave of aging that washed over the innocent plant, a decade in an instant.

Then the car. He didn’t know what the mechanism here was, but the car looked like it had been abandoned in a scrapyard. The hubcaps, then the tires, vanished, leaving the car up on bricks. The windows were smashed in, though that took a while. A door went missing. Paint wore away and metal rusted. From the driver’s seat, there was a \*blaze\* of golden light as time itself was held at bay.

Then it was over.

111 2 human agents + 2 high schoolers

But just in front of it, a black sedan had pulled off to the side of the road.

And out of that car, from the passenger door, a man in a suit had stepped up to the curb and was politely talking to a pair of nervous looking teenagers.

James didn’t know any of that. He just lined up shots and took them. And by the time his brain caught up to the fact that the agent had taken wounds, he’d emptied his magazine on cluster shots in largely the same spot on the man’s back. The agent - whatever his number was - never had a chance to get his shield up. He was locked down by the elder one second, and dead to James’ gun the next.

2 human agents dead

112 Matthew (1 of 2 high school kids + dungeon?)

112 Harold = hospital 1 of 2 security person

“Just a precaution.” She told him. “Please have a seat. Harold here” the nurse gestured to the smaller of the goons, “is going to sit with you until the police arrive to take a statement. Standard policy for gunshots, don’t worry. You did fine getting him here, but next time, call 911.”

112 hospital -> Director of Surgical Services - Doctor Nikita

The security guard blinked, then cleared his throat. “I don’t think so. The Director of Surgical Services would like to talk to you. If… you have time.”

“Um.” James faltered. “What about the police?”

“He… uh… said that it’s taken care of.” Harold looked \*beyond\* concerned. “I can take you to him, if you’d like.”

“Good evening. I’m Doctor Nikita.” His voice instantly killed the villain vibe as he rose to shake James’ hand. It was warm, with a hint of a Russian accent, and the implicit feeling that he \*cared\*. “Have a seat, please.”

112 human hearts (totem copier)

“More hearts.” Came the simple reply. “They are… amazing. Perfectly functional, no matter how long they are exposed to the air.” The doctor looked up from the now open box and its single human heart, still under the stasis effect Sarah had put the first one under before they started duplicating them. “They aren’t from humans, are they?”

“The police are no matter.” The aged doctor made a short chop with a flat hand. “When they are told the report was a mistake, they leave. They do not waste time on thinking too hard.” He stood, reaching out to shake James’ hand. “Go. I will take care of your people. And you will bring me hearts, and I will get them where they need to be.”

112 Alanna’s sister

112 Graham -> high schooler -> 1 of 2 kids (err 3 if counting alex i think lua stated was most likely dead?)

Graham had gone silent as James was talking, and when he’d finished, he had a look in his eye. Like something had been confirmed for him, and he’d found his voice. “There’s a room, in the school…” he started.

“It’s a pitch black maze of pipes.” James said, softly. “Full of bugs, and rats, and worse. And it wants you to kill to leave.”

“Yeah.” Graham said. “We thought it was bullshit. But then our friends kept going missing. And then the counselor lady showed up, and we thought it might have been her. And then… we started asking questions… and...”

“And then you fit all the outward appearances of a team of adventurers.” Sarah sighed. “And this mysterious agency shows up.”

112 Graham -> parents = dead last week

“Graham.” James asked quietly. “Where are your parents?”

“They… died last week.” He said, choking on the words. “Car crash.” The kid looked like he was about to start crying, and only barely holding it together.

112 Spire-Cast-Behind

The camraconda nodded. “I am Spire-Cast-Behind.” She said, the mechanical voice having taken on a more feminine tone, albeit one with ice in its words. “Us all, declare for yours and you. You fight? We fight.”

The english was imperfect, but the meaning wasn’t. James straightened his back. “You’re sure?”

“Debt owed.” The camraconda echoed Theo’s words from a few minutes earlier. “Debt redeemed with joy.”

112 Alanna’s mother and sisters = missing / vanished

When Dave and Alanna arrived again, Pendragon making a slightly more graceful landing on the roof, he was there to greet them. A nod for Dave, and a reassuring hug for Alanna. They had been looking for hours, and hadn’t found any sign that the house Alanna’s mother and sisters lived in had been inhabited. No sign of violence, either. But the people were gone.

112 Sarah + James = lovers?

Sarah shrugged. “Whatever you may think, I’m a knight in this Order of yours. I trust you to call the shots.” She told him as she unlocked and cracked open the door to the last room on the right, shoving him in. “James, we were best friends for… forever.” Sarah continued as she shut the door behind her and slumped against it. “And I know you lost that, and you’re trying to put it all back together, but I never did. I love you, you dummy. And if you say you’re going to fight for something you believe in, then \*fuck you\* if you think I won’t be there next to you.” An accusatory backhanded wave sent his way as he sat nervously on the edge of the bed.

“Yeah.” Sarah muttered, standing up. “Okay, move over.”

“What?”

“I’m tired too, you dork. And this is \*my\* bed.”

“But…” James didn’t have time to protest, as Sarah toppled him backward with a one handed push, and climbed under the covers, wedging James farther and farther out of place as she did so. “I…”

“James.” She said. “We have spent so many hours today preparing to get into a lethal fight with the government. And it has been non-stop social stuff, too. I love talking to people, and I love you, but we both know neither of us has it in us to get from the door to anywhere that has a place to sleep besides the hallway. So lay down, and give me a hug, okay?”

They slept the sleep of the just. And even the worries of what was to come tomorrow weren’t enough to wake them. Only one thing interrupted their sleep, and it happened at the very beginning, before they dozed off again.

<| Corridor Filled : Bond Formed - Rest : Transfer - Contact : Rate - 74 minutes / second : One Corridor Established : Zero Corridors Empty |>

113 Sarah + James = lovers?

“Nuuuu.” Sarah groaned out. “Here…” She reached out, and flopped her hand onto the back of his neck.

In an instant, James felt something change. He felt himself waking up, a flood of energy and readiness pouring into him, and he could clearly tell it was coming from Sarah. After about two seconds, she dropped her hand back down, and the feeling stopped, but the sensation that he’d just gotten three hours of sleep persisted.

“Kay.” She mumbled drowsily. “You’re ‘wake now. I’mma sleep for some more.”

Before James could reply, she was snoring again. “Corridor open, eh?” He muttered, remembering the message from just after they’d fallen asleep. “I need to tell Anesh and Alanna about this.” He thought about it for a second as he stood and crept out of the room, trying not to bump into any furniture in the darkness as he quietly Shoved his gun back into his holster. “Or does that make it harder, if you’re trying to force a bond? Maybe I should send them on a road trip together.” He mused as he silently stepped out into the hallway.

113 magic coffee machines (info)

The first machine they… and by ‘they’, she meant ‘James and Anesh’... had found was, essentially, a stat boost. It took whatever the real world version of ‘agility’ was and stapled an extra zero to the end of your score. The only downside to it, as she knew from experience, was that if you overclocked the body too much, you got a wicked crash that involved almost instant unconsciousness.

This machine was similar in a lot of ways. Except it also made french press. And instead of agility, if you had to pick a stat it upped, it was \*wisdom\*.

The clarity that it offered helped Alanna immensely with coping with the guilt, self pity, and ruby-edged fury that came along with the thought that her sisters had been kidnapped or killed. As an added bonus, she thought to herself, sipping her fourth cup as she drew on the board with her free hand, overdosing on this stuff caused memory loss, too!

113 Pendragon

“We can do stealthy.” Dave nodded. “Pen ate that one desk lamp that makes itself invisible when it’s on. So as long as we go during the day, should be basically impossible to see.”

“Wait. Wait, back that up.” JP leaned over his desk to look at Dave, sharing a confused glance with James as the two of them did a double take together. “She ate the lamp?”

Dave nodded as he tossed the rag onto the desk surface behind him, and stepped around to the front of the bus-sized creature that was his companion. “Oh yeah! Did I not tell you guys about that? She can incorporate magic stuff into her structure, and then sorta use it. I think it’s her way of using blues? Though she can do that too. Actually, I bet if you, like, replaced one of your bones with a magic pencil or something, you’d be able to do it too.”

“Bones.” JP said, voice oozing sarcasm. “Our bones.”

Pendragon didn’t speak, didn’t emote. That wasn’t really her jam, compared to the rest of the Life that counted itself among the ranks of the team. But she did respond right away, without hesitation. She reared up onto her hind legs, and without ceremony, Pendragon’s chest split open. There was a seam down the middle, invisible if you didn’t know what you were looking for, and now it cracked apart with a dry hissing sound, revealing the outline of a metal cabinet, doors swinging open on oiled hinges.

Her insides were clean; more than you’d normally expect from someone’s chest cavity. Ribs made of desk lamp goose necks; flexible metal bars that curved to dangerous points as they protected and supported her interior. As she settled into place, the lights on the end of those lamps flickered to life, revealing trails of paper clips and cables that led down from Pendragon’s ‘organs’ and surface to… a coat?

A leather jacket. A nice black one, a lot like what James preferred. It sat perched like a scarecrow, elbows pulled up high, flapping slightly in the breeze that formed when Pendragon opened up. It was the centerpiece of her self, illuminated and on display.

Dave stepped forward, turning around and sliding his arms into it without having to look.

Dave’s body rippled like he was trying to shrug, but the gesture didn’t come across through the coat. He kicked up, and planted his feet on a small lipped platform inside Pendragon. Around him, the lights started to flick off and the ribs began closing, the coat pulling him back into an immobile position. “We’ve been practicing, I guess?” He failed to explain anything. “Anyway. We’re ready to go.” Dave spoke with two voices. Around him, Pendragon sealed herself shut, her eyes flashing with a combined intelligence. “Objective Weaponry, ready.” An echoing voice came through the dragon’s body as she slammed her forelegs back down.

But the dragon had already made its way out the back, manipulating the controls to the sheet metal garage door with more skill than Pendragon had ever shown with her office chair foreclaws. And with a few beats of her massive laminated wings, she and her passenger kicked off the ground in a plume of dust, shimmering from an obvious target to an indistinct blur of slightly-brighter sky as they took to the air.

113 emerald chips = motherboards = water tank cave -> circuit boards

“Virgil.” James greeted the prickly programmer as he wandered through the penned area, trying not to grin too much at the shellaxies bumping playfully into his legs and trying to rifle through his pockets with their cord tentacles. “Anything to report? Did anyone figure out what that anomalous program is converting files into?”

“Two things, and no.” The man said, ever succinct. “One. The emerald chips create programs that can be copied. Though, it’s worth noting, once copied, or modified in any way, they stop evolving on all platforms.”

Virgil ignored the offended protest. “...so if you have anything specific you want, let me know, and we’ll get it started growing. Long term is better, obviously. Also more specific is \*way\* better. These things suck at general artificial intelligence.”

113 skull jack = wifi port upgraded? + firewall?

“This is a skulljack device, that interfaces with the wireless braid.” Virgil told him, holding up what looked like the case for a cigarette lighter with a bundle of zip-tied wires coming out the back. “This first, then the braid. It has specific protocols loaded as firmware that allow for some extra functions without needing extra focus.” He kicked back in his chair, looking like he wanted to absorb the appreciation like it was sunlight on a plant. “Not all my doing; the support group helped me work out the language the skulljack is speaking. But I’ve got a bunch of these ready to go.”

“What extras?” James asked, curious and wondering if it would be worth it this late in the game.

“Shared vision and dialogue without emotional or memory bleed. Also the ability to pass on spatial impressions of an area. Haven’t gotten it rigged to share muscle memory yet, but we’re working on it.” Virgil said the words with so much smugness that James was worried it might be a memetic hazard.

Instead of rolling his eyes, though, he asked the other question that was on his mind. “Weren’t you doing security programming? Like, trying to find ways to block unwanted mental intrusions?”

“I’ve got a chip working on something for that. This was easier.”

“How can this possibly be easier than what is essentially a firewall?” James half-demanded. He wasn’t mad, just curious, in a very aggressive way.

Virgil shrugged, finally bothering to look up from his screen as he alt-tabbed out of whatever he was doing. “Firewalls are actually pretty tricky.” He said, as if that was an explanation. The rational part of James’ mind was actually quite annoyed that he understood enough programming to get why that was the case; it would have been much more satisfying to just blame the smarmy jackass in front of him. “Anyway. This is the finished design, loaded with the latest stable build. It’s not that sleek, we’ll work on that later, but it should hold up in a crisis, and it seemed like it would be useful for… tonight.”

113 issues arrising from "human agents" = ? status quo ?

“The people who tried to kill you,” James told her, and saw her shiver at the words, one hand going to her wrist, “tried to kill those three kids. They didn’t stop there. My family is missing. So is one iteration of Anesh, and his parents. Alanna’s sisters. Her mom, too, I guess. Graham - the other kid’s - parents died last week. I’m guessing the other two have had similar issues.” His voice cracked as he tried to present the information about what was quite possibly a large number of deaths without any emotion. “Left unanswered, they will, eventually, get back on our trail, and kill, or disappear, us. Known targets are obviously myself, Alanna, and Anesh, but I’m guessing you’re on the list too. They don’t seem wise to the fact that we have backup, though. So. Everyone is here, and we’re planning… well, to kick down their door and cause problems on purpose.”

113 matt (if memory serves) = 1 of 2 kids from highschool (dungeon issues) = older sister

“His older sister showed up.” Lua said. “I didn’t want to introduce myself, in case there was a problem. But I checked, she wasn’t an agent. Oh, that reminds me.” She reached into her pocket, and pulled out a pair of thin rectangular glasses, carefully setting them on James’ desk. “Thank you for their use. But I think you might need them more than me, if this is something you’ll be doing soon.”

113 magic glasses =

James picked up the glasses, flicked them open, and settled them on his nose. He took a glance at Momo and Lua with them on, seeing not-quite-real words hovering tied to the two of them. ‘Order of Endless Rooms, War Witch’ for Momo, and ‘Order of Endless Rooms, Specialist’ for Lua. Affiliations, titles. The most powerful tool any of them had seen to give to Lua to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Of course, it required an organization to be part of, not just an ideal. And it never told the whole story.

113 "status quo" -> greaves (momo obtained) + momo 4 totems (unknown type of totems)

“Oh, that also reminds me.” Momo said as James fiddled with the glasses. “Here!” She reached into her courier satchel and pulled out a glimmering copper and ivory bracer. Momo set the artifact on his desk like it was cracked china, about to fall to powder, and then scooted back in her chair a bit. “I took this off one of the agents after you left. Had the fuckin’ thing in my car and totally forgot. Didn’t have time for the boots, though.”

“Greaves.”

“It’s really complicated.” Momo said, and in that moment, James noticed a thin line of blood leaking from her nose. He mimed wiping it away, and Momo did so with the edge of her jacket sleeve, seeming unperturbed by it. “I have, like, four? Four totems on me right now. And that thing? I know if I put it on, it generates a lot of questions that overload the number of things to keep track of. So yeah, it’s worrying. I’d actually like to leave the room before you use it.”

“Thanks!” James called after her as she shut the door, leaving him to his privacy. He waited a second, before sighing. “And if I can make a few people smile before we maybe-all-die… well shit. I gotta try, right?” He muttered to himself. “Now let’s see what this toy is.” He said in a slightly louder voice, pulling the bracer tight around his forearm and clipping the latch shut on it.

[Stockpile “9mm Bullet Impact” - 18 - 4 / 19,000 - 8:14:3:18 (122) <A>

Battlefield Alteration - 4 - 194 / 1,000 - 2:01:22 (7) <A>]

That was a remarkably specific phrase. Also, he’d never seen any kind of extranormal effect use \*quotation marks\* before, even when it was mostly just projecting thoughts into his head. A little mental probing got him more specific feelings, though. Both abilities were set to automatic, something he hadn’t realized was an option. The second one modified the first one. And that little quirk right there, which probably would have let the agent’s survive a thousand fights unscratched, had gotten them \*slaughtered\* against a mixed unit that brought a camraconda to a gunfight.

James found the mental command to turn off the automatic use of the second ability, and hit the switch so hard he gave himself a headache.

“Okay.” He said to his empty office. “One more tool in the arsenal.”

114 Marion Driver = middle age 50's women = receptitionist = status quo

114 status quo -> boss? -> Admitted to kidnapping families.

114 status quo -> boss? -> Admitted to killing 1 of anesh's

“So you did catch up to Anesh in London.”

“Stepping off the airplane.” The agency man affirmed. “You know, I’m always surprised when one of you chooses to die fighting. We offered him an excellent deal, after all, all things considered. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen such a heavily modified human body.” He looked at James with raised eyebrows, as if waiting for the response.

114 status quo -> boss?

“Not ‘disagrees’, no.” The man said, staying calm. “But there is a limit to the chaos we will allow in the world. The system \*works\*. We cannot allow all of humanity to be upset every time three young idiots get their hands on a dragon egg, or a magical gun, or, God forbid, some supposedly friendly spirit approaching a false apotheosis.”

James bit his tongue and pointedly did not say anything at all. He tried to look as innocent as possible. It might have worked.

The man continued, unabated. “Peace is allowed, in small doses, because power can be focused on those who can be trusted, or controlled. That’s all. You, your surviving friend, those like you, you are all of you neither of those things. You spread chaos, and whether you mean well or not, you undermine a world that is functioning.”

“Change is what it takes to make things better. You’re just… letting it all stagnate. That’s not even real control.” James held his hands spread in front of him, trying to drive home the point.

The man shrugged. “Perhaps not from your perspective. But it keeps the majority safe. And it works.”

James snarled. “People suffer. Wars, famine, internet trolls. The world isn’t getting better, and you’re sitting on the keys. You’re not even \*trying\*.” He blinked, and felt a wave of calm understanding in his heart. “Oh.” He said, leaning back. “Yeah, of course. This is why.” He sighed off the questioning look. “This is why she said we’d come to call you Status Quo.”

“Global is a strong word.” The man laughed. “Oh, agents everywhere, yes, but they’re mostly contractors. This is our home office, after all. You’d be surprised how few people it takes to deal with external threats.” He didn’t even bother to hide it; after all, James wasn’t expected to survive the night.

“I suppose not.” The man sighed, and leaned back in his own chair. “But yes. While I understand you were here to try to do what you thought was right… well, it doesn’t matter. We cannot let you leave the building alive, one way or another. Either you die loudly, or quietly go into the basement for processing. I suppose I leave it up to you, whether you wish to remain an asset to humanity.”

“Vested Authority! Detain him!” The suit shouted, and James’ hand locked in place where it was halfway through getting his real gun out. The man wasn’t hesitating, either; he slid over his desk with more dexterity than someone in their fifties should have, grabbing the keyboard off the oak surface and swinging it like a club toward James’ head.

114 magic items = glasses infrared glasses + earing of invisibilty

James saw a flickering of light on the man’s ear, and just barely caught the appearance of a glistening earring, before the man himself disappeared. Wasting no time, James dipped his free hand into one of the many pockets of his coat, and flicked out the infrared glasses.

114 status quo -> boss? -> “Vested Authority"?

“I believe I have it.” Secret whispered in his ear. “Not an Idea, but something else. I need one measure of power to kill it.”

“Vested Authority.” The man spoke, and his voice was no longer friendly. “Silence him.”

James felt his throat constrict, as if grabbed by an ethereal hand. But there was one, singular, ultimate constant in his life. One thing that had persisted, through school, through careers, through the loss of friends and the existence of magic. One thing that \*never\* went away, one light that never \*ever\* went out.

“No.” The man spoke, and made a striking motion with the arm that had the shield bracer on it. Suddenly, the gun in James hands was \*gone\*. Just a pile of component dust; even the bullets were nothing but tiny pieces of metal and gunpowder. While James was still processing the loss of his trusted tool, the suit had closed the gap between them, slamming a fist through Secret’s ethereal head with just enough force to shove him out of the way, and then swinging another at James.

“Vested Authority!” The man yelled. “Detain the monster!” And there was a flash of shackles as Secret himself started to become pinned down; mouths sealed, eyes shut. The infomorph thrashed and keened in a high tone, twisting away from James as he suddenly found himself on the defensive, trying to take the fight out of the way of the two mortal combatants.

114 magic item = pen that wrote in French

“Your one ally won’t help you here. One girl just as stupid as you, against the building?” The man sounded like he wanted to laugh at James, if he weren’t so busy trying to kill him. James blocked another incoming punch from the aggressive man who had \*leapt\* across the room to follow up on his first strike; knocking the fist aside and into the window, and then smoothly he pulled the pen that wrote in French out of a coat pocket and slammed it through the old man’s elbow joint.

“Se rendre et mourir!” The still invisible but now heavily bleeding man yelled at him, shrugging off the pain of the injury to pummel James in the stomach with a flurry of rabbit punches.

114 status quo -> boss? = dead -> “Vested Authority"? = went away? dead?

The man didn’t go down without a fight. His hand grabbed the silvered letter opener on his desk and he brought the small knife up in an overhand plunging stab to drive it into James’ throat, but it was too late. James caught the underpowered swing, not backed up by whatever magic let him throw the occasional perfect punch, and \*twisted\*. The knife went into his adversary’s stomach, and then, pinned by James’ grip and the desk behind him and unable to retreat, Secret’s overreal teeth tore into soft flesh. With a brutal scream, the man fell, slamming into the floor with a wet, violent splattering noise. The fragments of his Authority fading out, alongside the old unnamed man’s final breath.

114 Marion Driver

Still, her instincts were razor sharp. And so, when those first two people had come in, guns up, she’d hit one with one of the shotguns under her desk, and the other with one of the unique tricks she’d picked up over the years, sending a small wave of reversed time to throw them back out and buy her time to line up a second shot.

Her hands were ziptied, and she was thrown face down in front of her own desk, without stopping a single one of the invaders. She ranked it as the third greatest failing in her career; accounting for the ravages of old age of course.

114 Momo’s intel grenades ? totem?

Ignoring the brief glimpse of the full engine schematics of every vehicle within twenty miles as they passed too close to one of Momo’s intel grenades, Dave/Pendragon did a low looping glide that brought them out over the street, and then back toward the building that housed their enemy’s organization. They didn’t slow down as they approached this time, though.

114 status quo -> braclet

Now, he was running out a lot of stuff. He checked in with the bracelet on his arm, asking it politely how much he had left in terms of ammunition.

[Bind Firearm - 3 - 90 / 300 - 126:14:3:18 (0)

Cluster Shot - 54 - 16,894 / 100,000 - 3:12 (0)

Munitions Dump - 23 - 1,106 / 2,000 - 31:55 (3)]

Three uses left. He’d burned through a lot of it with this stupid six-shooter the director had provided him. The one upside was he was stress testing the limits of the bracelet, and finding them surprisingly not very human. In comparison to the blue orbs, that caused internal bleeding and migraines if you overused them - and he had already exhausted his Attach charges - this just cared about the cooldowns and the stored uses. Of course, the cooldowns were kinda long, and he didn’t have half an hour to wait for the next reload after he used the last three charges.

114 status quo and order

The dead littered the floor. There were only two living things left here; James and Secret, standing in the middle of the room, breathing heavily. Her assault team had moved as fast as they could, but the first floor had been overwhelming with enemy operatives. They either knew something was coming, or suspected it, because there was no reason for there to be more bodies than desks waiting for the Order.

The only saving grace was that they hadn’t been on high alert, and with the camraconda’s help, they’d been able to disable and restrain a couple dozen. They’d also kept wounds on the delver’s side non-lethal; for now, anyway. There were a couple people who might not make it, even with the functionally instant medical intervention that the camracondas enabled.

Alanna lowered her gun as everyone fanned out around her. Shouts and digital hisses of “Clear!” Sounded around them. Through the skulljack’s wireless braid and the hardware Virgil had wired up, she tracked images out of the corner of her mind of other Order members securing the prisoners downstairs, collecting computer towers and documents, stripping xenotech off of enemy agents. But through her own eyes, she just saw James as she stepped up to him.

“Who did we lose?” James whispered it like a plea.

“No one, so far.” Alanna winced as she half-lied. “Ethan and Neil need medical attention. Camracondas are watching them until we move the wounded to the hospital. Anesh… made a mistake. One of him…”

114 status quo -> basement

“Okay.” Alanna acknowledged. She turned, and raised her voice. “Secure the floor! Check the bodies, make sure no one’s getting back up! Then two people on alert while the rest of you collect anything that isn’t nailed down!” She turned back to James. “Let’s get you downstairs, then Sarah and I can check out the basement.”

114 skull jack = James, Anesh, and Alanna = as one

Three minds danced together on an elevator ride into the bowels of the Earth. Healing each other, supporting each other, sharing their emotions and information and experiences. At a certain point, they drew each other so close that their orbs snapped into focus on each body, and a torrent of power flooded each of them. Reaction time snapped up, the smell of the elevator was suddenly sharper, bones and fingernails and hair hardened, muscles redefined themselves. Skills poured in like a river. The weirdest part was knowing that \*every one of them\* was a Canadian citizen now.

Then Secret was with them; their singular mind thinking him into being with more focus and definition than ever before. He spun around them, broken scales healing, fangs and curves streamlining.

114 status quo -> basement

Blue lights overhead, cool air all around. Smooth white sheet vinyl underfoot. Metal racks filled with what looked like medical supplies. Secured metal lockers against all the walls. A couple of carts in places around the room.

Beds.

So many beds. All of them with a cyberpunk swarm of monitoring equipment and needles and tubes and IV drip bags. Thin hospital sheets, covering bodies that almost looked like corpses. People with skin like old leather pulled tight against bone; barely any muscle mass left, veins jutting out in profane lines across their bodies. There were heavy straps pinning their arms to their sides, their legs held together, and their full forms locked to the beds.

Underneath each bed, raised just slightly from the floor that they were clearly mounted in, there were stone rings. Toroidal shapes, perhaps three feet thick. Some kind of sandstone, one of the component minds thought. There were markings on them, some of them dark shadows, others a glowing red. As they watched one of the beds, there was a whirring noise - one of a dozen such noises - and a small drop of blood so dark it was almost brown dripped down from a tube. Pulled out of a person, and onto the stone slab.

A marked character lit up with a red glow. Only about three hundred more and that one would be complete.

Not every bed was occupied. But all of them had the rings underneath. Waiting for new sources of… blood? Life energy? Suffering? It didn’t matter. This was going to stop now.

Alanna’s body strode over, punched the numbers into the keypad, and opened one of the lockers.

Shelves. Lots of them. Each one containing, neatly packaged in a bed of custom cut foam, and helpfully tagged, an artifact like they’d seen the agents wearing. A copper and ivory bracer here, a silver greave there, a polished earring in this one. Thirty, maybe forty objects, some of them they’d seen so far, some they hadn’t. Just in one locker, enough to equip ten people for war.

There were a lot of lockers.

A memory pulled out of James’ memory, from the conversation with the director. ‘To the basement, for \*processing\*.’ Processing. This was where their equipment came from. They’d found a dungeon at some point with these… sacrifice rituals. Put blood in, get an item out. And just like the Order had begun exploiting the duplication ritual, they’d done the logical thing. Pull them out, and industrialize it.

By the time the second squad made it down the staircase, James, Anesh, Alanna, and Secret had quietly disconnected the life support of the last captive. They sent them on their way with held hands, tears, and a promise. That this wasn’t going to happen again. And that the Order would use the product of their blood for something worth dying for.

114 order bomb

It was not filled with water. It contained, in its core, a tank of liquid ether. Around that was packed far too much aluminum phosphate, and filling the rest of the sealed space was as much pure oxygen as could be safely added under high pressure. It was a bomb. It was actually kind of an absurd bomb. The kind that, if detonated in an underground environment, could collapse, say, a building. The number of things that you could learn from college chemistry students just by suggesting that you were interested \*continued\* to be one of the top things that worried James. Outside circumstances were pushing it down the list, but the fact that they’d been able to assemble a fuel-air explosive in one of their own basements, with minimal problems, was honestly kind of horrifying.

114 status quo -> prisoners

“Time to get out of here.” He announced as he stalked out of the building. “Everyone pull out! Leave the prisoners!” James yelled, and a swarm of Order members started piling into vans, or back into the landed form of Pendragon. James turned to give the prisoners one last look. The surviving members of their agency, the last remnants of what had just yesterday been the gatekeepers of magic for a quarter of the US. One of them, the woman he’d passed at the front desk, gave him a death glare from the cold ground. “If we ever see you again,” James told them, “we’re going with kill on sight.” He informed them coldly. “Whatever gods are out there sure as hell know you deserve it.”

115 momo totem

Momo’s first totem, refined over a dozen iterations as her skill in making the things grew, guided them to where they needed to be.

It found emergency medical care. Originally, it did that, didn’t have a range limiter, didn’t give extra context, and if you listened to it for too long you’d start to feel like someone was trying to scoop out your right eye with a melon baller. These days, it did that, in about a thirty mile radius, and you had to listen to it for a \*lot\* longer before it started to cause brain damage.

Momo was pretty proud of that one.

115 Feeling-Of-Home = camcondra

“We’re avoiding hospitals.” Momo told him, the short girl comically struggling to help the wider young man towering over her. “Stop griping. You’re the one that kept going instead of letting Feeling-Of-Home freeze you. You didn’t \*need\* to bleed all over my van.”

115 Nate = reporting to his people (US government)

“The Order also relies on unconventional methods.” He said it smoother this time, the obfuscation slipping into place like a well-worn shirt. Warm and comforting, even if you could see a couple holes. “At present, their operational goals remain unclear, as do those of their enemy. I request any information we have on this ‘Status Quo’, if available. The leadership has referred to them as such repeatedly.”

“Productive phone call?” JP asked politely, taking the second offered smoke from Nate as he leaned against a nearby tree.

“Won’t know.” Nate grunted out, dragging on his smoke again. He eyed JP idly for a minute, the slick-haired young man watching him through seemingly unconcerned eyes. Nate briefly considered if he could, if needed, either disable or escape from whatever bullshit JP had up his sleeve. Strangely, despite having about ten years of combat experience, and roughly forty pounds of muscle on the other man, Nate \*didn’t like his odds\*.

“The US Government isn’t equipped for this, far as I know. And it’s going to take you kids months to untangle the web of paperwork that you liberated, but we’re already aware that this one, single group, this \*one\* organization, had puppet strings on at least one global corporation, and the ability to kill people in broad daylight without worrying about backlash. This is the thing that my department was created to fight, and we didn’t even know it existed in our own backyard.”

JP snorted. “The FBI was created to hunt anarchists after McKinley’s death. Don’t pretend you guys weren’t just as bad as Status Quo, no matter who’s side \*you’re\* on.” He stubbed out his smoke and dropped the butt into the coffee tin. “I may not be as ‘eat the rich’ as Alanna, but I can recognize that your agency might have a vested interest in things not changing.”

“I… am surprised you know that.” Nate said, stone faced.

115 Frequency-Of-Sunlight + deb = surgery on Frequency-Of-Sunlight

Her hands, thin and dexterous, snagged the end of a shredded cord, the material of the gloves keeping the fuzzed wires from shocking her, but Deb could feel the acid heat of the fluid dripping from inside it. Whatever passed for blood for the camracondas. She pulled it as far as she dared out into the open cavity, and deftly clipped the end off, turning a jagged wound into a clean cut.

She wasn’t even a professional nurse yet. She wasn’t rated to perform surgery on \*humans\*, much less magical snakes. Was this even surgery? Or was it engineering? Tech support? Deb didn’t know.

115 EL = leaving

“You talk like a nerd.” El prodded, almost entirely on reflex. Then she bit her lip to shut her mouth, shook her head and sighed a bit. “Sorry.” She added. “I wanted to say goodbye. I’m leaving.”

She stepped closer, threw an arm around Secret's body, and hugged him. For understanding, for caring, and just for being a friend. It was a long hug, and it was a goodbye hug. The two of them stood on the Lair’s roof for a long time before El took her arm back, and stepped away.

“Hey.” She said, again. “I’ll see you in my dreams, I guess.”

115 Reed = long story

115 Nikhail = order person = reed subrunitie

“Y’okay?” Nikhail, one of his more trusted subordinates asked, concern in his eyes.

115 Ryan= order person

115 status quo

Yes, they’d done it. They’d started, and in the same night ended, a war. In theory, there wasn’t much of a threat left to be posed by the survivors of Status Quo. Maybe ten agents left alive, some of those with some pretty bad long-term injuries. And they had outside contractors scattered around the world, though as the research team was discovering through their trawl of the paperwork, “scattered around the world” actually meant “one or two in most major cities, and most of them were just going to stop giving a shit when the checks stopped coming.”

116 high school (with dungeon) + COVID-19

Which was when James had learned they were closing the school.

He scratched at the back of his head. “I mean, I guess we did fill their parking lot with bullets. And a couple corpses. And kids \*do\* keep going missing there…” He admitted, starting to rationalize the news, before Lua cut him off.

“No, no. Not… well, not entirely because of that. It’s the pandemic, not the dungeon.” She informed him.

“Sorry, the what now?” James blinked.

Lua raised her eyebrows, reeling back a bit. “The pandemic? COVID-19? Someone brought it off a cruise ship and went through Washington before they came home to Forest Grove. Now it’s in the state, and people are worried.”

“There’s an outbreak of an I-am-assuming-deadly disease.” James said, using his mildly sarcastic explanation voice. “That seems like the thing we’re here to deal with. So we’re on it. The Order, that is. We’ll figure something out.”

“...How…?” Lua’s suspicion was palpable.

“No idea. Containment, maybe? Cure, if we can leverage some virology orbs? We’ll see. It’s just in a couple places, right? We’ve got a little time.” He shrugged. “If nothing else, we could make an infomorph that does gene sequencing, probably. Maybe not accidentally make a god this time.”

116 candy issues big issues!

“I don’t actually know, JP just had a spreadsheet for it on the server, so I added it to this.” Reed admitted. “Um.. anyway, I guess this is just me telling you that the candy \*might\* be creating some kind of metaphysical bond between the people eating it and the Office, but it also might be doing nothing. None of the ones we’ve done tests on act any differently than normal candy, too.”

116 order (real world) R&D

James considered that information for a moment before something occurred to him. “I’ve never had the time to actually ask this before, but does any xenotech actually show up as different under a microscope or anything?”

“Yes, actually!” Reed excitedly replied. Any sense of nervous worry at talking to the leader of their operation whisked away as he started to get into the groove of one of his own passion projects. “The materials externally mimic mundane compositions, but \*actually\* are artificially uniform, and have a \*very\* different method of radiation refraction compared to things that aren’t essentially built out of orbs! I’m waiting for Rufus or Ganesh or one of the camraconda’s to have some free time, because I suspect that we’ll find that Life follows similar rules, with created matter adhering to…”

“I’m gonna stop you there.” James said, raising a hand. He had a small smile on his face, which helped put Reed at ease, but he still needed to cut the conversation short. “I’ve got a \*lot\* more that I’m curious about now, especially since I think this means you could speed-identify magic pencils. But I’ve got a hell of a headache today, and I’m having trouble following. Do you mind if we have a group briefing about this sometime tomorrow? I’m not gonna allow you PowerPoint privileges, but I know there’s other people who’d like to know this.”

116 order -> pod cast -> sarah

“...And that’s all from this week’s special guest!” Sarah spoke cheerfully into her microphone, her voice pitched by an uncanny instinct for what picked up cleanly on audio equipment. “James, thanks for talking to us about the haunted attic. Everyone, thanks for listening. This has been the Order of Endless Rooms news update for Wednesday, March eleventh! So long, and remember; if you’re thinking of petting the cat in the basement? Don’t!”

“We could use one of the basement rooms.” Sarah shrugged. “It’s not like the audio quality is that important for a fifteen minute rapid fire update.”

Today’s podcast had covered everything from the list of programs currently brewing in the basement on the chips, to the update on the greens in effect, to the current available numbers on blues and oranges for anyone wanting to absorb a new tool, to finally, the ‘special guest’. Today it had been James, there to get everyone caught up as much as possible in five minutes on the Attic, (Sarah had almost instantly named it Clutter Ascent; James hadn’t protested - he knew he’d never beat that even if he had a week to think) and how they were going to be opening it up to volunteers for constant exploration.

116 Anesh + dating ?

Right now, though, he got to deliver awkward news. “He’s on a date.” James told Alanna. “That math tutor girl he had coffee with… last week?”

“Oh! Good for him!” She blinked in surprise, before grinning. “Does he know it’s a date?” She asked James coyly.

“He hasn’t a clue.” James replied.

116 james family still missing

Later that evening, James sat almost by himself, and dialed number after number from his contacts list.

None of them answered.

His parent’s cell phones, their home number, his sister, his aunt… he didn’t have that many family members, but still, they didn’t pick up.

They hadn’t picked up for a while. Since before the Order had realized what Status Quo was doing. His family had been snatched away while he fooled around in the dungeons.

But James wasn’t Anesh or Alanna. Anesh, who lost his parents that he idolized. Or Alanna, whos younger sisters were the people she worked so hard to provide a better life for. James just… wouldn’t really miss what he’d lost, that much.

But that didn’t stop this little ritual.

“There is \*something\*.” Secret said, orbiting James as he ran one last search. “It is a hidden thing. I can see the hiding, and the intent, but it left no trail. I do not believe this was an infomorph like myself; nothing alive, just a weapon, perhaps?” His orbit was methodical and precise, a swift and meaningful coiling around James’ seated form during this very focused search. “Yes. Something is being hidden, not just from you. But that is all I can say for now.”

116 covid-19 options?

“The iLipedes.” Alex stated. “We have a few so far, and they’ve all got pretty specific but really strong scouter abilities. So if…”

“Apps.” James corrected, sipping at his drink.

She gave him an eye roll. “I’m not saying it. Anyway. If we can find or maybe breed one? Dunno if that’s an option. Anyway, find one that can track medical history, or even just scan people, that’d let us get an advantage on a local scale.”

“Local being statewide.” Deb provided. “That’s if we’re okay copying it.”

“We actually do have one that creates a social network that displays what I think are ‘most relevant’ connections to people.” James mused. “It’s around here somewhere. I’m willing to bet that being infected with a potentially deadly disease counts.”

“We find a yellow for medical knowledge, copy it \*a lot\*, and just pour a truck full of the things into the WHO headquarters.” Alex sounded positively gleeful as she presented their plan.

Deb had the good grace to look sheepish. “My assistant is exaggerating.” She claimed, mostly accurately, as she tried to silence Alex by shoving her back into the beanbag. “But yes, accelerating human medical knowledge by providing the tools to upgrade researchers to the people whos job is to safeguard the health of the population of Earth seems like a good idea.”

“Orbs it is then, I guess.” James hummed. “Is there, and I ask this mostly to any economics or logistics orbs in the room, any chance at all that this helps my long term goal of harming the pharmaceutical industry’s stranglehold on useful innovation?”

117 nate -> no long FBI agent

“No.” Nate said, pushing himself forward on the bench. “No. I quit.”

“What?” James looked around in surprise. “Wait, what?”

“Here.” Nate said, reaching into his apron pocket and procuring a pair of glasses, which he handed to James. “I should give you these back. Hell of a tool, massive invasion of privacy, but no one ever cares about that.”

“I kinda care about that.” James argued.

“I know. It’s part of why I quit.” Nate told him.

“I don’t… okay. Yeah, okay.” James tried to clear the lump out of his throat. “Wow. Shit. We’ll need to hire a new chef.”

Nate blinked. Then started laughing. His laugh was a throaty wheeze, smoker’s lungs fighting with a powerful voice. “Oh! Fuck, no! I meant I quit my other job!” He corrected. “I wasn’t kidding when I said we’d done some \*nasty\* shit. But you? You haven’t.” Nate stood, brushing off pine needles from where they’d collected on the bench and his slacks. “You’ve got a better world in mind, kid. I’d like to see it.” He said, pushing past James to walk back into the kitchen.

Nate Marselli. Unaffiliated.

The last word showed for only a heartbeat before James made his decision, and then it changed, the word fractaling into a new shape as James chose to trust his ally.

Nate Marselli. Order of Endless Rooms.

Knight.

117 Anesh = original died

“One week cooldown, right?” James asked. “Also, I still don’t know how to handle a copy of you dying. I’ll be honest, it still hurts.”

“Yeah. Well.” Anesh’s voice was a riot of bitterness. “Good thing you don’t have to this time.”

James blinked, not understanding. “What?”

“I knew. We knew. The other copies and myself. We knew which ones we were. Are.” Anesh met James’ eyes, and James saw he was almost in tears. “I know you’ve got these grand transhumanist beliefs, and I thought I shared them, but \*I’m dead\*! The original me has been dead since Status Quo tried to turn me into a magic item factory or whatever. It’s just… copies. Now. Just spares.” Anesh sniffed, rubbing at his eyes. “It’s kind of bothering me.” He tried to smile, but his voice cracked halfway through the sentence.

“I… aw, shit.” James stuttered. “But you’re all synced up. You have the same orb upgrades. You \*know\* you’re the same.”

“I want to.” Anesh whispered.

117 magic item = pencil that magnetizes wood

The culprit was, beyond just the two nonhuman members of the Order that were screwing around with weird magical effects in the front lobby, was this pencil. It magnetized wood. That was something James was having trouble wrapping his brain around, but that might have just been because he hadn’t gotten to his stash of ibuprofen yet and his forehead ached.

117 status quo

“Sure. They’ve been covering up magic stuff for a \*long\* time though. Their documentation dates back \*ninety years\*.” JP emphasized the time frame, hard. “So, in that time, do you think that maybe there might have been one or two teams just a little bit like ours?”

117 camracondas + a women they keep frozen

The camracondas had brought with them as much of their nascent culture as they could. Their art, their relationships, their personalities. And also their religion. And that, awkwardly, included the sentinel vigil of the body of the original human woman who’d created the place they had called sanctuary. That body was now \*in James’ basement\*, and while he wanted to respect their culture and their right to self-determination, he also felt a very real need to figure out who she’d been, and especially if she had any surviving family.

117 Cold-Wind-Friction

The elevator doors opened. James stepped out, nodding to the camraconda coiled next to the elevator, one of the more stalwart guards of the high priestess. His name, as James had overheard it, was Cold-Wind-Friction, which sounded cool. His job was to act as a messenger and stand-in when the high priestess needed to talk to people, or sleep.

Camracondas did need to sleep, James had learned from Deb recently. They just didn’t need as much; they sure \*liked\* it though.

117 spiritual leader of the camracondas

Stopping just inside the vault, James turned to address the spiritual leader of the camracondas. She - and she did currently identify as female - was still adorned with many of the artistic trappings of her position. Though whether they were of religious significance or just personal taste James still didn’t know. Behind her, on the wall of the vault, the desk panels carved with the history of the camraconda people were on display. An anthropologist would have a field day with camraconda culture.

117 dead girl that saved camracondas

James took a deep breath, and then let it out. “You know, I came down here without really having a plan, so I’m just gonna ask this. Would you like us to try to find out who she was?” He made as much eye contact with the priestess as he vigil would allow. “She might still have family, or friends out there. People might know her. I wanted to ask permission to search her for ID, maybe put a picture of her up or hire a private detective or something.” He sighed. “But… I can’t tell you that she will have been the person you believe she was. And I also don’t want to force it, because she… well, she’s been in your care for a long time.”

117 status quo -> magic items

“Later. I’ve got a lot of stuff to do, and I’m feeling a lot better now.” The ‘thanks’ was silent, but still there. Anesh tapped the folder. “We got a final count of all the stuff from Status Quo. The Tools they were using, anyway. There might be more hidden in the boxes of documents or something, who knows. Their organization is bollocks.”

James perked up. “Oh! With the list of what they all do?” He cracked open the folder, and started peeking at it. “Yessssss.” He hissed out, impersonating a camraconda himself. “This is gonna be so useful.”

“Yeah. We’ve got notes on the ‘messages’ these things give, too. It’s ‘ability name, level, progress, cooldown, stored charges’, and then any conditions at the end. Like the automatic thing for the shields.” Anesh shook his head, mournfully. “I feel like they could have killed all of us without trying if they’d turned off the autopilot.”

“Any news on how they kept the gear invisible?” James asked.

Anesh clicked his tongue in consternation. “None. But there isn’t much variety in the objects, so we have a full list of abilities already. None of them do it; it must have been something else.”

117 high school (dugenon) -> 8 students missing

It was a message from Lua. “SCHOOL OPEN. EIGHT MISSING. TEN MINUTES AGO.”

“It’s in an equipment shed on the field!” Lua told him, voice wavering. “I don’t understand! I don’t know why so many students went in!” She was well and truly panicking.

“James the police are here.” Lua sobbed. “They’re yelling, and half of them have their guns out. I can’t do this again.” She gasped out.

118 Akashic Sewer = high school dungeon

“The school dungeon, which we’re tagging as the Akashic Sewer…”

“...Is awful.” Sarah finished her sentence over James’ thoughts. “Almost no light, seemingly intentionally dirty, possibly dangerously so, and the majority of Life has been bug- or rat-based.” She rattled off points like she’d memorized them, and James idly wondered if she was reading the operations manual off her phone. “The breach removes certain items from people, suspected things that aren’t allowed in schools, blah blah blah, we already did this part…”

118 Akashic Sewer + magic items

They’d grabbed anything that might make it past the filter and could be used to keep them alive. Keys were a big one, they know those worked, along with the little keychain lights on them which was now a standard feature for members of the Order. They’d kinda had to accept that eventually, they were gonna end up somewhere dark and horrible, so having backup light sources was a given. Sporting equipment; there were a couple baseball bats in the Lair, though James made a note to get more if this worked. They had a few dangerous office supplies adapted as best as possible to weapons; the pen that vaporized things, a pad of sticky notes that paralyzed things they were attached to, a compass that could trip people. Nothing serious. Nothing nearly on the level of just having a gun.

They also had a laptop that should be suitable for school use. They’d even uninstalled minesweeper off it.

118 Ex-Detective Dave Madden + police = attacking order and james

“Sergeant, we’re in a hurry…” Alanna started to say in a polite, low-pitched tone. The kind that James recognized as what you’d use for a wounded animal.

Ex-Detective Dave Madden started shooting. Mostly at James, but it was kind of a moot point after the other two officers, operating on twitch reflexes, did the same.

The standard police issue Glock 22 held fifteen rounds, and could fire those rounds about as fast as someone could pull the trigger. It took roughly five seconds for all three cops to unload their weapons in James’ direction, and a few seconds to start fumbling for reloads.

118 high school

Old Cop cut in. “You just watched him block bullets. Don’t tell him he won’t believe shit.” He turned toward James. “We’ve received multiple dispatch calls from the building over the last hour. Thought they were hoaxes at first, but now it’s a suspected active shooter. Backup’s on the way. But when we tried to approach the building, whoever’s driving the bus struck the approaching officer.”

118 camraconda vs bus = bus wins = magic paper weight try

“Oh.” James turned away from his observation of the hostile vehicles and the overturned police SUV. “Okay. Looks like one of them hit that cop car hard enough to flip it into the flagpole. That’s a problem. Also no one’s moving in there, so I hope they got out. Clearly the things can move. Let’s see if one of the camracondas can lock them down.”

They called up a camraconda wearing hard formed plastic plate, this one unnamed but adorned with a pair of carved pencils through it’s ‘hair’ like a bow. It focused on one of the busses in the distance, and then shook its head side to side.

“Large. Pushes back.” It said. “Could stop. Hurts. Need less momentum.”

“Hm.” James glanced back at the vans where the group of about dozen Order members were milling around, eying both the increasing pile of traffic behind them and also the police who were shooting them an equal number of shifty glares. “Okay. We’ve got that paperweight, right? The one that doesn’t move in the direction it’s pointed? Bring me that. And get everyone formed up. We’ll make a run for the front door, and sort it out from there.”

118 school bus = gives "red sparks"

He planted his feet, instead of trying to dodge. The thing was moving fast. Faster than a bus should be able to spring forward. Not that he could judge, given what he’d just done. James whipped his arm out in front of him, rotating the paperweight so that its front face pointed toward the bus, then pulling his fingers as far back as he could around its edge.

James didn’t see what she did, but he did see the whole line of the bus shudder, falter, and then fountain out a spray of red sparks that quickly vacuumed back into the cab. A minute later, while the mongausse exploded out the driver’s window, Alanna crawled back out the hole she’d made on the way in, vaulted off the hood of the dead vehicle, and headed to join the others. The other bus, facing away but still somehow aware of them, was already peeling around, driving over the lawn and leaving deep tire furrows as it looped around to close in on the delvers.

118 reed -> Remove this entrance.

“Reed.” James said, surprised to realize that he wasn’t out of breath. All those morning jogs were paying off. “Remove this entrance.” He ordered.

The curly haired researcher slapped his hands against the side of the building. A grimace crossed his face, but this time, he didn’t question James. He’d seen the students inside; everyone had. Also, there was a bus bearing down on them, and they really only had a minute at most before it got around the corpse of its fellow. “Not a wall.” He muttered to himself. “Just go… away!”

A muffled whomp noise sounded. And then, the doors were gone. The vaulted ceiling was gone. The lights were gone. There was just exposed wiring and pipes, rough gravel foundation, and a gaping, cavernous hole in the front of the school.

118 magic item -> doomsday pen

He laughed as he pulled the doomsday pen out of his pocket, flipped it over, and offered it hilt-first to Nate. Nate, though, pushed it back. “I’ve got a gun.” He said, simply.

118 high school dungeon = 2 died (teacher + student) + 2 more students dead

He swept the light around, while Alanna watched his back. Desks, a couple computers, backpacks on the floor. His heart lurched as he saw not one, but two bodies. One of an older bald man, glasses askew on his face. He was sitting in the chair behind the teacher’s desk, a spear driven through his chest. Another was a student, just a facedown lump of what used to be a person, bleeding out on the tile floor.

He stepped over to the windows. He could see out, just fine, though the hallway was starting to darken too, slowly. The classroom’s second door still led past the barricaded fire door, though from here he could see there were another pair of student bodies lying in blood puddles. What were their options? Telepad out and come back with guns? Would they even be able to?

119 Lua

That had been just after lunch. There had been some weird noises, strange smells, and fewer kids than normal in each class during third period. Then, the lights started going out. The monsters began roving the hallway. The police showed, and died. And the only person who seemed to have any idea what was going on was the woman who everyone thought was the counselor, grabbing everyone she could get her hands on, striding through the halls like a demon, snapping the neck of anything that got too close.

James smirked. Lua had probably burned every charge of her blue for this. ‘Rotate Sixty Degrees’, as it turned out, was one of those subtle verb use cases that was instantly lethal if used properly.

119 J. Clarke = pollice officer

Alanna sucked in a breath through her teeth. “We cut off its territory up here, and it saves everyone. The sooner we do that, the better. Wasting time on evac just means more potential problems, more things we’ll get sidetracked on.”

“What are you \*talking\* about?!” The police officer, one J. Clarke, according to his name badge, demanded. He’d been, to his credit, trying to be patient. Especially once Alanna identified them as FBI, however tentatively. But they were talking about monsters and ghosts and one of them had stolen his gun. “Who \*are\* you?! Why is there a snake thing?! What is going \*on\*?! I’m the fucking adult here, and I’ve got the badge, and I’d like some answers! And my sidearm back.”

“Alright.” James said, turning to him with a cold anger in his voice. “Mister adult. You’re the resource officer here? Well, you work in a building that has a bubble of extradimensional space ‘below’ it.” He made finger quotes to punctuate his words. “If I were to describe it with human emotions, I’d call it angry, spiteful, and cruel. It’s made of bugs and sludge, and it hates you. Sometimes, it lures students in, and gets them to kill each other for books that don’t have words in them. You are unequipped to deal with it, and never noticed it existed. Now it’s out of its self-imposed cage, eating people, and taking over a chunk of the real world. And no, I’m keeping the gun, because you shot at me. Give me your extra mags.”

119 Ferndidnan = potted plant

“Don’t forget Ferndidnan!” Lua exclaimed. “Don’t leave him here. Please.”

“The… right. Yeah, of course.” The potted plant. It had been up in the air if the things ever could be domesticated, considering they all seemed to be bloodthirsty jerks. But the one here in Lua’s office looked content enough, even if it was pushed off into a corner away from where anyone might casually poke at it. James pointed at a couple of the kids. “You two look tough,” He buttered them up, “can you haul this potted plant with us? I know it sounds dumb, but I swear it’s a good idea.” They nodded. “Okay. \*now\* are we ready?”

119 high school dungeon + students

“Earlier today,” James explained, “a group of kids went into the dungeon. Then this shit started. So whatever they did, they set this off. And I fucking wish I knew if it was because they made it mad, or made it \*afraid\*, or something else. But if they did something to trigger this, then we need to try to put the monster back in the box.” James didn’t like saying it, and it was clear his partners agreed with him. “We’re in real trouble if this gets out of hand. I’ll be honest, I do believe the military could handle this, easy. But how long would it take to put soldiers here? And how long would they take to contain it? What if it keeps going? We’re in a suburban residential area; if the dungeon starts taking over houses, or parts of those parks that are all over the place, it’s going to get out of control basically in a day or two.”

“I mean, yeah.” He shrugged, then made an ‘ah’ noise. “We’re all afraid.” He said. “And we’re carving through them. So it can’t just be fear.”

“They hesitate. And it’s not just that they aren’t trying to adapt. It’s almost like the reverse. They’re forgetting solutions they already have that might work.” Alanna cracked her knuckles against themselves. “And I don’t know why we’re immune.”

119 cops + firefighters + ambulances + park secuirty + press

“I’m telling you, I don’t know where they went.” Nate pointedly told the exact truth to one of the officers manning the cordon around the high school.

There was a sea of flashing lights at this point. Two dozen cop cars, four firetrucks from two separate stations, a handful of ambulances, and, for reasons he wasn’t clear on but hadn’t questioned, a park’s department patrol vehicle. This mess of wheels and steel was complemented by backed up traffic of frantic parents trying to get to their kids, cars left abandoned as a press of people both concerned and just casual observers threw themselves right up to the line of the police tape. It was then further complicated by the army of news vans that had descended like locusts.

119 Knife-In-Fangs

His time with the Order, short as it was, had blown a hole in the veil of the world. Magic was real. So were monsters, though he’d always known there was a perfectly human flavor of those walking around. Five months ago, he would have called his new prep cook a ‘monster’. Now he just called them Knife-In-Fangs, and showed them how to skin potatoes.

119 veterinarian = Dr. Marris / Amy = amy marris

“Oh yeah, this is definitely infected. Or would be anyway.” The woman poking at Deb’s ankle wore tangled black hair in a simple ponytail, and a messy white coat with the sleeves rolled up. “I can get you a rabies shot, and bandage this up, but you really ought to go to an actual hospital.” The veterinarian told her.

“You’re not going to be in trouble for this?” The vet asked. “Or me either?”

“Nah, it’s fine.” Deb waved a hand. “We have a common sense policy on secrecy. And yes, I like the snake. Though not the one you met.” She gave a little grin and glanced away. “Um. Anyway. I can pay you and go if you’re uncomfortable…”

Deb nodded simply, though. “Yeah, I can leave a phone number or something. I’m easy to get in touch with. Would you accept gold or magic items as payment? Just… in case I want to avoid our accountant. Again. Oh, and would you be open to helping us if we need first aid? Just in case.”

“Yes!” The vet cleared her throat. Adopted a more professional tone. “Um…I mean, yes, that would be acceptable.”

“Great. Here.” Deb wrote down a number on a scrap of paper from her wallet, and handed it over. “Thanks again for your help. Nice to meet you…?”

“Oh! I’m Dr. Marris!” She paused. “Amy, though. If you want. I don’t know how to… process most of this.”

“Possible medical contact. Owe her for some help, seems nice. JP, wire me money for the bill, unless you want me giving her magic glasses or something.” Blunt social force seemed to be the easiest way to get JP’s attention.

120 magic item = power strip

James idly flipped the knife in his hands. “Okay.” He said. “We’re getting closer. Let’s backtrack to the last intersection, and try again. Virgil, still good on battery?”

“I’m plugged into the Lair’s power, so yes.”

“Wait, what?”

Virgil shrugged. “I brought the power strip that’s connected to itself no matter how far the distance is. The laptop has infinite power.”

120 order folks getting sense of direction picking up weird shit

When they hit the next intersection, they waited for the more experienced delvers, the ones who had been inside Officium Mundi long enough that they were starting to develop these strange new instincts, to stand in front and try to feel for where they needed to be. They chose a direction, and started out again.

120 1 unknown kid + scott saved from status quo a week ago = both dead from gun shots

There were bodies lying here, just on the threshold of whatever lay beyond.

What lay beyond was actually difficult to see. It looked like another arena, but the light was cold, like it was covered in a thick fog that their flashlights weren’t enough to overcome. But unlike the others, this one lay on the other side of a \*door\*.

The door was huge. They’d sort of noticed, on approach, that the corridor around them had been getting wider, but here it opened up to something almost cavernous. Just to support this massive steel blockade. It looked like a hatch, or the door you might see on a bank vault; and unlike everything else in this place, it was \*pristine\*. Untarnished metal, untouched by anything hostile, sitting down here alone in the tunnels.

It was also sitting open.

The bodies were exactly who James feared. The strike team moved up cautiously, with both camracondas on watch to freeze anything that might even pretend to be a trap, but nothing jumped out. It just put James more on edge as he knelt down and rolled over one of the limp forms.

“High school kid.” He said, his nose filled with the scent of blood now added to the aroma of the dungeon.

“This kid was shot.” James announced. “That’s what killed him.” He looked over to the next corpse, and saw a similar red starburst stain on the chest of the football jersey that one was wearing. “Him too.”

“How did anyone…” Anesh started to say, before he was cut off.

“I know this guy.” Sarah suddenly said, jerking back like she’d just picked up a snake. “This is… this is Scott!”

It was, undoubtedly, one of the two kids they’d saved from Status Quo not even a week ago.

“I never met him. What the fuck is he doing here?” James demanded, staring down at the dead kid’s face. “\*How\* did we miss this? Who \*shot him\*?!”

120 high school -> dungeon -> massive room/cave -> pyramid

When they got close, it happened rapidly. All of a sudden, James’ eyes resolved on what they were approaching, and then, they were practically \*there\*. No time to rest, to recoup. Just a sudden arrival, due to a misjudged distance in this bizarre, endless, massive place.

The single distortion in the floor was a pyramid of stone steps. At its peak, arms stretched up into the air, was the soft figure of a familiar curly haired high school student that James had rescued. Graham stood with his back to the group, but James still recognized him almost right away, just based on the context of what was going on. He didn’t react to the sounds of footsteps, heavy breathing, magnetic distortion, or tails slithering on concrete.

120 strange gun

At the base of the pyramid, which was only maybe six steps tall and none of them like the monolithics that Dave had carved out of the grounds of the school overhead, there were two things. The first was a gun. It lay on the ground where it had been dropped, slide racked open to show the last bullet had been fired. It wasn’t like any gun that James had ever seen, though it was undeniably a firearm. A sleek black piece of hardware, with too many low angles in it to ever be comfortable to grip, and a trigger too far forward to be stable. This was a strange creation of a weapon that felt closer to a failed experiment than a gun. And it \*did\* feel off to him, when he looked at it.

120 high school -> dungeon -> massive room/cave -> pyramid -> unknown girl = Scott’s ‘older sister’, for a while

“Oh look, visitors!” The girl spoke, voice outwardly cheerful, but with an undercurrent of promised violence that made James’ teeth itch.

James grimaced, tilted his head sideways, slapped himself, and looked at her again.

She was a lot of things. That’s what she looked like, really. A lot of things. A human composition, but not a human. Not like they normally came, anyway.

“Oh, interesting.” She hummed in five different voices. “You shouldn’t have been able to see that.”

“What are you doing here?” James asked.

“Helping!” She replied, unhelpfully.

Sarah stepped up next to him. “You’re Scott’s ‘older sister’, aren’t you?” She asked. Her voice echoed against the open concrete around them, before muffling itself against the endless expanse.

“For a while, yes!” The girl giggled, bright and oppressive in the cold light. “And you… mmmh. Yes. You’re a prisoner, aren’t you?”

James tilted his head back. “Hey, are you here to fight us?” He asked.

“Not at all!” She happily admitted in a way that made James’ spine ache.

“Okay. So, we’re…”

“But I’m going to anyway. Alas! We cannot have things the easy way!” Her grin hadn’t slipped, but she also now wore a frown, and a thin line of a mouth, and a scowl. “You brought me this delightful opportunity. So I think I’ll let you walk away. I can feel the Movement you have on you; go ahead, get out. I won’t stop you. But you’re not interrupting.”

120 unknown gun bigger type than last unknown gun

James wanted to say something witty, but he was basically out of strength at this point, so he saved his breath, and just flung a knife at her before pulling another one out of a coat pocket. She slapped it aside without looking, and then, without James really understanding where she got it from, she drew her weapon.

It was a sleak, angular, sword of a rifle. Four feet long, tipped with something from beyond the stars, and loaded with bullets of bone and silver. The design, James instantly recognized, was the same as the pistol on the floor. But this was a gun that asked for trouble, and demanded war. It would cost someone a \*lot\* to fire that gun, he realized.

120 high school -> dungeon -> massive room/cave -> pyramid -> unknown girl = Scott’s ‘older sister’, for a while

The woman flowed like water, a million pieces of a human pooling backward and reassembling themselves near the base of the pyramid in the blink of an eye. This time, she carefully kept herself flickering with motion to wherever the camracondas couldn’t see her; though the two of them began circling too, and soon at least one of them would be able to lock her down.

120 Sarah + james + fredrick dungeon + stick connection

“Sarah dying.” James said, without thinking about it. “I remember… trying to do something. And the dungeon coming back? And then I blacked out.”

Anesh nodded. “Almost right. Sarah’s not dead, let’s get that out of the way. \*You\* nearly were, though.”

“What?”

“Sarah broke her neck, and a lot of other things. You, in an effort to stabilize her, dumped ‘about three months’ worth of whatever ‘rest’ is into her.” Anesh explained. “Now, we know that ‘rest’ isn’t exactly sleep, because that \*would\* have killed you. But you either dipped too deep, or you wrote a check that should have bounced, because \*you\* have been unconscious for two months, and unhealing for the first one.”

“Oh.” James leaned back into his pillow with a sigh of relief. “Okay. Good. Is Sarah… okay?”

120 Graham + high school dugnegon = ?!?

“Graham restored the dungeon. Whatever he’d been tricked into doing, he was pushing the native dungeon out of its space, which is why it was in the real world. Sarah got him to undo it; all the monsters and weird shit dragged back in, mostly. Some of the stuff like the mold or broken furniture or … um … monster corpses… are still out and about.”

Anesh nodded. “Yes, that. All of that.” He kept going, though, rattling off points rapid-fire. “We’ve only done three Office runs since you’ve been down. Mostly to hold up the bargain with the doctor to provide more hearts, and to replenish our telepad supply. Momo thinks she can maybe make a teleport defense thing. Graham’s been locked up here since the incident, by the way. He’s not our prisoner, he just won’t leave. Blames himself for everything.”

120 FBI

Anesh countered. “It’s not that bad. No one knows what to do with them. The FBI was on site - the \*actual\* FBI - and Nate made contact with them. They’re now aware of us, and we’re classified as a special consultant group, just so you know. Someone will absolutely wanting to be talking to you now that you’re awake.”

120 Virgil + Cold-Wind-Friction = dead

“Virgil and Cold-Wind-Friction had funerals.” Anesh told him. “They… we said goodbye.”

120 fredrick house -> attic dungeon = "clutter ascent" named.

“Attic’s doing okay, too.” Anesh added. “I dunno if Sarah ever told you, but she calls it \*Clutter Ascent\*, which is kinda cool.”

Alanna gave a short ‘heh’. “Yeah, it’s nice. Deb and Alex mostly took over managing that one. It’s very… kind. Comforting. They’re trying to encourage it. I guess that’s something we can actually do, huh? Weird to think about.” She looked at James. “Um… what else. The pandemic got worse?”

120 james work place (err still works there? maybe?) = no one there any more

She looked at James. “Um… what else. The pandemic got worse?”

“Oh \*good\*!” James drawled out. “That makes everything so much better!”

“Well, it does mean no one’s at the building you used to work in. So getting in has been a lot easier.”

120 Secret = gets lose when its all public knowledge.

“Oh shit! Secret!” James exclaimed. “What happened to him?”

“Oh. He, and you’ll love this, he got \*lost\*.” Alanna cracked a grin, dispelling the dark mood for a minute while she looked at James' disbelieving face. “Yeah! Turns out, when all the maps are public and everyone knows how to get places, Secret can’t take directions for shit! He ended up in the gym, cloaked a whole bunch of kids from a skullball, and then hid until Nate found him.”

121 Randall = FBI contact

In a similar way, Harvey had been doing more for their security side than ever before. Not alone, though; Nate had offered a lot of tips of the trade, until the Order’s FBI contact had shown up and sort of tried to wedge his way into everything. He was a guy named Randall, and while, according to Harvey, he was \*helpful\*, he was also kind of a twit. He had trouble with things like the camracondas, or using powers for security things.

121 order office (real world) = new office space = green orb (no?) = Los Angeles overviewing

They’d also apparently acquired some new office space, too. Actual office space, with room for expanding their support staff. Though Alanna had just told James that it was “a surprise” when he asked how they were supposed to keep that secure.

When he’d limped his way into the elevator, \*finally\* cleared to start moving around and having woken up to no one left to stop him, James got something akin to an answer.

“God dammit, we need to start labeling these things.” He’d spoken to himself, glaring at the elevator panel where a new button was resting. It was unmarked, of course, though the fact that it sat well above the button for the basements and the ground floor was pretty telling. “Also, come on Alanna. This isn’t a surprise, this is just ‘a normal Wednesday’ around here. The biggest surprise is that I didn’t wake up to learn that we’ve got an underground bunker and a new radio tower now.” James said to the empty elevator as he elbowed the button for the first floor, and waited for the doors to close.

James hobbled out of the elevator, and blinked against the evening sunlight. The sun hung low in the sky over the horizon, and was in the perfect position to turn the exterior plate glass windows into gleaming panes of light, casting warmth and shadows in equal measure over the floor he’d stepped out onto.

Which was good, because without that, he may well have thought that he’d somehow stepped into Officium Mundi. Or woken up from a dream to find that he was living in a nightmare.

Fortunately, his brain caught up to reality pretty quickly. There were a few cubicles here, but only two rows of them, in a nice, normal configuration. Six desks with comfy looking padded chairs, topped with normal computers that weren’t trying to kill anyone. There was a wide open space over to the right that probably took up most of the floor space, with a couple of big smooth tables in the middle of it, and more comfortable chairs lining them. A few people had left backpacks or water bottles around it, and the whole thing reminded James more of a study group than an office space. The clock on the wall wasn’t a memetic threat, the water cooler wasn’t going to explode, the vending machine…

Okay, the vending machine looked \*incredibly\* suspicious. The bucket of three dollar bills taped to the side also confirmed James’ suspicion that it’d been wheeled in from outside. Same with the potted plant that felt like it was eying him with suspicion.

A city greeted him down below. Purple and gold sunset light on the horizon holding sway over a skyline of towers and skyscrapers. The light glittered off a thousand windows, showing off the cityscape below from a height James hadn’t been expecting. Networks of roads and stretches of highway overpasses strangely empty of cars during what should have been rush hour stared up at him.

“What the hell?” He muttered. “Where is this?”

“Los Angeles.” Secret told him from his shoulder, enjoying the sight of the city himself.

James waited a second, but then felt like he had to prompt the next part. “Anesh… why does the elevator go here?”

“Oh! Right! So, Momo’s kinda been burning through blues lately, looking for something of long term value and mostly getting stuff like Condense Hydrogen. But at one point, she got one labeled Transfer Control, which she promptly rolled her eyes at and started trying to clear out so she could slot a new one.” Anesh sighed as James gave him an open palmed \*why\* expression. “I know. I know. Anyway, we caught her with the last dozen charges, and started experimenting. Turns out, you can transfer not just the controls, but the entire apparatus of something, from one physical point to another. Which, mixed with a couple other powers like… I think it was “move door”? That and something else. It was a complex process. Anyway. So, we had her move the ‘control’ for the elevator to get to this floor over to our elevator.”

“Holy shit that’s a long range.”

Anesh grinned. “Actually no!” He said cheerfully. “We had to fly her down here, and then back up while holding focus on it the whole way. Twice! Because she lost focus the first time and it snapped back! Momo hated the experience and refuses to use the elevator now because, as she claims, ‘it knows what it did’.”

“The stairs are stairs, James. Do you want us to remove the door there, too? We can. Though we’re mostly just keeping it locked.”

James glanced at the door to the stairwell. “I’ll be honest, I was expecting it to be magically an extra Office dungeon entrance. Also I kind of assumed that we were going for security through lack of doors? Fuck, I have so many things that should be questions about the elevator, but I kinda feel like I inexplicably understand exactly how it works and it’s very frustrating.”

“Fire escape paths are important James.” Anesh scolded him. “Anyway. Hi. Welcome back. How do you like it?”

121 james = 29 age (i think now?) = “You’re not even thirty, you baby.”

“And also because you missed a birthday.” Anesh reminded her.

“Oh shit, I did, didn’t I?” James realized. “Shit, I’m old now. Old and crippled.”

“You’re not even thirty, you baby.” A voice came to James’ ears through the amused rumblings of the assembled group. People were starting to filter away, the surprise part over, but more than a few were sticking around to say hi. And one of those was Sarah. The few people left, including Alanna and Anesh, parted around her as she walked stiffly forward to greet James. She was still wearing a neck brace, still obviously hurting, but she was also still smiling happily at him. “Also I’ll clean up the confetti. It was mostly my idea, even if I did get Tyrone and Daniel to build the cannon for me.”

121 Deb + Frequency-Of-Sunlight = dating

“It’s six PM.” Deb called over to him. She was half leaning on the wall, half leaning on Frequency-Of-Sunlight, who was braced against the wall next to her. James glanced at them, lingered for just a second as his brain processed the fact that they totally \*did\* look like they were dating, and then he glanced back out the front windows.

121 status quo + items of status quo + bloody magic = ya not so good in how created.

status quo + BRACLET

“No kidding.” Anesh agreed with a nod. “And sometimes they combo. The biggest limiters is the fact that they \*really\* do take a toll on the person using them, in some abstract way, and also their limited charges.”

Wistfully, James propped his chin on the back of his hand, elbow leaned on the desk. “If we had a way to recharge…”

“Well we do. We have a way to recharge something, at least.” Anesh cut in. “And that ties into the next thing I need to brief you on. We’ve sorted the loot from Status Quo, and we’ve got a list.” James didn’t even say anything, just perked up and raised his eyebrows, a clear motion for Anesh to continue. “Okay. Bracelet. You know this one; binds to a gun, burst fire, reload.” Anesh rapidly rattled off the abilities of the item. “Here’s the thing; we found about a dozen of them in the… basement… trove, that didn’t have the reload ability. And from what we can decode of their notes... “ He took a deep breath. “You’ll hate this. From what we can figure out, the items were made from life force. And the more ‘powerful’ the life, the better the item. So, the bracelets that we’ve found are… eh. They’re not great? The abilities are all at lower levels, the cooldown on binding is almost \*a year\*, and the lack of the reload is pretty big.”

“Yeah.” Anesh agreed. “Anyway. All the bracelets the agents had had the reload, which means… well, the sad obvious truth. They were using delvers to make stuff, and the stuff that was from baseline humans they just piled up in the basement like scrap.”

status quo + BRACERS

“No. Not really. I regret having to shoot anyone at all. But for fuck’s sake, that’s monstrous.” He sighed. “What other blood magic did we get off them?”

“Okay. Bracers. Mostly what we know; change what it shields against, and shield. The shield cooldown drops logarithmically, by the way, which means that as the levels go up, it becomes… let’s say ‘bloody frightening’’ and you can fill in what that means yourself. But we did get one off the director that has a third mode, which doesn’t have a cooldown. It actually charges off of the shield itself, and then breaks weapons that were used to charge it. That one’s kinda cool, and also horrifying, because as near as we can tell, it counts things like ‘fists’ as a weapon?”

“Please tell me you didn’t vaporize anyone’s fists.”

status quo + BOOT

“No, not yet.” Anesh said, like the ‘yet’ wasn’t the most worrying word so far. “Anyway. Greave, which is \*not a boot\*, you should know!” He looked like he’d had a non-zero number of arguments about this so far. “First power is pseudo-passive, and enables very precise footwork. Again, like with the others, the only thing that seems to scale with its level is how fast the charge cooldown goes. Second power is an active kick. It’s the same kick every time, but while you’re executing it, your leg can’t break, and hits with four times the force of the strongest kick you could make. That force, by the way, doesn’t come from anywhere. These things really hate physics.”

status quo + EARING + status quo + GLOVES

“That’s… objectively untrue, but I’m not going to fight you on it. Moving on! Earring. Invisibility on massive cooldown, sneak attack on a slightly lower one. Glove, left handed, we’ve found them with up to four modes, and this is where we learned that \*some\* things will unlock new powers when you level up the previous ones enough. Each power is just a strike that’s strengthened against a certain material type. And I mean strengthened in the “your fists \*can\* melt steel beams” kind of way.”

status quo + HAIR CLIP + status quo + BROOCH

“A handful of one-power things, none of which really stand out, though they have powers that are… more utilitarian? There’s a hair clip that has a ‘complete paperwork’ ability that Karen is in the process of powerleveling. Also a brooch with ‘purify food’ that Knife-In-Fangs is doing the same with. Status Quo clearly didn’t focus on those as much as the combat ones, which is… expected, and also awful.”

status quo + Inner Spirit Reignition + BLUE ORBS = mental boost

Anesh nodded. “We do.” He said. “Oh! Right! One of those one-ability-low-level items has something that is, for real, labeled as Inner Spirit Reignition. And it works on blue orbs! In fact, it works almost exclusively on blue orbs. In addition to providing what feels like a very energetic mental boost; kind of like drinking eight shots of espresso at once. Anyway, it ticks up slotted blue orbs by one or two charges every time it’s used. It’s not… a lot? And the cooldown is monstrous. But it’s there.”

121 highschool dungeon + books (orbs) = Alex -> math, Simon -> writing, Tyrone -> social studies, (already known deb -> sex ed)

“Um… we found three more books in the aftermath of the school showdown. Still didn’t want to double up on anyone, just in case, so Alex, Simon, and Tyrone now have lessons for math, writing, and social studies, which they’re working through. Sarah leveled her’s up - Deb and Frequency-Of-Sunlight are \*absolutely\* dating by the way - and chose Health as her reward. Uh… what else…” Anesh looked down at his notes. “We’re building a language pack of orbs, since we might need to operate globally now. Oh, the duplication ritual doesn’t work without the projector, by the way. Momo wanted me to tell you we tested that; the projector is the ‘focus’, and the ritual thing needs one.”

121 projector + copier totem = requires projector to work

121 police + order = going to war?

James took a deep breath. “What.” He asked, politely. “Is the big problem? Wait, no. Is this some kind of revenge thing because those cops shot at us? We can let that go. I’m still mad, but we don’t need to fight all of the police yet.” He gave Alanna a desperate look. “Do we? Please don’t tell me we’re starting another war.”

“We are not starting another war.” She comforted him.

“Don’t think I didn’t hear the emphasis in that sentence.” James pointed at her with a frown.

“There have been some protests.” Anesh filled him in. “A lot of protests. Everywhere. Turns out you’re not the only one who doesn’t like the way the police are operating.”

121 order office (real world) -> basement (research) -> vault -> 2 orbs (Cold-Wind-Friction + Virgil Thomasi)

Against the right hand wall, there was a secure cabinet. The kind that stores used to keep electronics locked away, but still visible. It wasn’t actually locked, but that didn’t make the two objects contained on its shelves any less valuable. Any less devastating.

Two things. Two orbs. One a flickering emerald green, the other a blazing red.

“Cold-Wind-Friction.” Read the small engraved metal plate under the first. “Virgil Thomasi.” Read the other.

Eventually, the tears dried. The pain retreated, even if it didn’t fade away forever. James straightened up, wiped his eyes, and steadied himself.

122 status quo = OA-1

“You made several mistakes in your handling of the terrorist organization OA-1.” Randall was saying. He kept his eyes tilted to the side, reading a sheaf of papers and not even bothering to glance at James. “To begin with, your handling of-“

“Sorry, OA-1?” James interrupted him. “You must mean Status Quo, why the name change?”

“It’s how their internal documentation refers to themselves.” Randall blandly offered. “Now, your strike against the-”

123 order -> chain of command

Order Of Endless Rooms, Operations Manual

Part 1 Section 8, Chain of Command

As the Order grows, the flow of authority and responsibility becomes less clear and requires more written guidelines. This has the benefit of making it easier for individuals to understand where the lines are, but it also has the downside of making those lines seem inviolable. So, this is the mandate of the Order that you should follow above all else.

Embrace responsibility, and share authority. If you are needed, and feel competent enough to act, then step forward and act. If you need help, ask. If a decision seems too big for you, collaborate. We are all in this together.

That is the spirit of our organization. And while you may report to someone, or have a clean spot on the chart of authority somewhere, the real world gets messy sometimes. So remember that we’re all in this together.

The Order doesn’t have blanket tiers of management or authority. Instead, what we have are positions that reflect our membership. We are a collection of specialists, and though what we specialize in may change from day to day, the things we choose to focus on have leadership roles attached.

For example. Someone who considers themselves a part of Research may also work with the support group, and participate in delves. But when they want to run an experiment to see if a blue orb can be used to create a sentient motorcycle, there’s someone with authority in the Research division who they draft a request to. But when on a delve, they answer to their team leader, and if a combat situation arises, they follow orders through the delver’s chain of command. When checking up on survivors, a leader from Support will provide them with a schedule and the phone numbers to call. Or, if they’ve taken on more responsibility, maybe they’ll be the one drawing the schedule and dividing the checkups.

There is no one clear chain of command. There is no one who is in charge - no, not even me - and no one who has ultimate authority. We all have responsibilities to certain facets of our operation, and fundamentally, we have to trust each other.

In the event that trust breaks down, or you believe authority is being abused, the following list contains the positions to contact, in order from first to last…

123 stuff shirts -> purple orbs into idea attacks = infomorph attack

The stuffed shirts weren’t all uniform, either. Which complicated things, to say the least. Some of them were strong enough to crush bones and fling humans through walls. Some of them were \*strong\*, but the kind of strong that just surprised you a bit, instead of surprised you to death. Some of them wore masks, and it was basically impossible to tell which until they threw their faces at you. Some of them carried purple orbs, and would use them to create infomorphic Life as a form of ‘cursing’ delvers.

That last one was happening now, behind James. Which was a shame, because they were trying to get the orb before it could be used. But also because he wasn’t watching as the third stuffed shirt transformed the orb into a living idea, which Anesh dodged, and which James was caught in the crossfire of.

All of a sudden, there was an almost manic compulsion running through James’ mind. An idea that was insidious, because it was his own mind thinking it. It wasn’t some alien invader that he could have some epic mental duel with; he simply now had an idea in his head, that had its own agenda, and that he’d be thinking, because it thought itself with his brain cells.

It was a schedule. A strict timeline of when he was to be at work, at the gym, in bed, even how long to take brushing his teeth. And it made James falter for a brief second.

James rolled his eyes, and his shoulder, trying to somehow magically fix the bruised muscle under the hard armor. “New infomorph.” He sighed. “This one has me scheduled to be ‘at work’ right now, which is good, because…” James swept an arm around them at the ‘office’ they were inside. “But yeah. Secret, do you mind…?” He left the question unspoken.

123 dungeon -> great grassland

Right now, the three of them were in a great grassland. The walls of the cubicles had fallen away, bit by bit, as they’d approached the prairie. And when the last one had dwindled to nothing more than a small lip to step over, they’d been there.

The carpet here was no flat, hard thing. It was waist high, swaying in the breeze of the air conditioning units. The hum of the machines, normally inaudible in the muffled expanse of the dungeon, was loudly present, along with the swishing of the long carpet. There were no walls, though every now and then they’d come across a line where the carpet had been packed down; like there’d been something sitting on it for months or years, like a cubicle had once stood here but been removed long ago. Those lines formed game trails through the grassland, and sometimes made for opportunistic biking paths. There was still furniture, though; desks stood at strange angles, jutting out of the ground like boulders. Sometimes perfectly flat surfaces, other times their hard wooden or metal corners poking up into the air as half of the object was buried in the floor. And the wildlife of Officium Mundi, always there in ones and twos or small clusters or nests, was much more exposed out here in the open.

The paper pushers prowled the plains in packs of two or three. They roamed both on their feet, and all fours, their limbs always morphed into inhuman configurations to help them clamber forward over desks or pluck things off the ground. Ironically, despite being in groups, the delve team was finding them remarkably easy to ambush; the false employees spent most of their time facing each other, not watching their surroundings.

Striders here made burrows in the carpet, finding shelter under the overhang of the desks alongside other small Lifeforms. They hadn’t seen any iLipedes yet, but there were a handful of other creatures that shared the little nests. Small collections of unlikely allies, waiting to scavenge off whatever came their way, or perhaps to ambush a larger creation.

123 wallet of holding = accepts guns but gun folded in half?!?!?!

“It’s a wallet of holding!” She announced dramatically, holding the folded leather out like a badge to show off to James and Anesh as she yanked a four inch stack of dollar bills out of it, the paper appearing from seemingly nowhere. “Behold! Finally! The \*one thing\* this stupid place never helps us with, within our grasp!”

Ah, hell. She looked so happy, with a big goofy smile on her normally serious face. It killed James a bit to ask the question that Alanna hadn’t gotten to yet. “Um… so, not to rain on your parade of holding. But did you actually check that it can store things that aren’t… wallet things?” He spread his hands in a peacemaking gesture. “I’m not saying it’s not cool! If nothing else, it’ll make it easy to deal with the briefcases, assuming we can even find… but yeah, can it store a gun? Or just money and ID?”

Alanna looked at him, the expression of glee freezing on her face before crumbling away. She muttered something, flipping the wallet back over as she plucked the p09 out of her holster. Holding the wallet open with a couple fingers and still grumbling, she settled the butt of the pistol into the bill slot.

And with a triumphant, wide eyed look, she watched as the gun slid neatly into the leather rectangle.

“I am so fucking happy right now, I could cry.” Alanna announced, shoving the entire wallet into her pocket.

“Well bugger me.” Anesh commented. “That’s pretty cool.”

James, meanwhile, let out a strangled \*hurk\* noise, a riotously worried expression on his face. “Alanna!” He gasped out, clawing at his hair in panic. “No!”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“You just fucking folded a gun in half!” He shouted. “Why! What?! How! \*What?!\*”

123 dungeon -> towers (multiple) -> for coffee

Daniel was just getting back with his team. They’d been out pillaging the lower floors of another tower for more of the magical coffee needed to fuel the duplication ritual. He stopped for a bit to exchange some words with James, mostly complaining that the other towers always seemed either empty, or were \*very\* heavily guarded halfway up, and tended to force caution from the explorers. He’d found them a good seven of the spires so far, if you counted the time that he and his companion infomorph Pathfinder independently rediscovered the bathroom. They were a lot like James, honestly; they wanted to be finding new things, seeing new sights. He got that.

123 3 known dungeons 2 suspected dungeons

123 order -> resposne protocols

Order of Endless Rooms, Operations Manual

Part 10, Section 1 - Response Protocols

At present, there are three confirmed and two suspected dungeons. At minimum, one of them is hostile to human life in a way that actively seeks to harm or kill humans. Dungeons are also now known to breach their own borders and begin to interfere with the mundane world directly. And finally, there is a constant possibility of action from a hostile, or ideologically incompatible, human organization.

This requires a planned response pattern in the event of emergencies.

While every member of the Order is a potential champion during a crisis, we currently maintain two ‘on-call’ teams, to respond to emergencies in any circumstance.

During an event, the team leader of the active response team has command. Any available member of the Order that is both willing and cleared for action is considered ‘deputized’.

In the case of an event that poses a direct risk to human life, that the Order is positioned to prevent, the following actions will be taken:

First, the leader of the scheduled on-call response team makes a judgement call about the threat level and scale of the emergency. This determines if they respond immediately with the team on hand, or wait for reinforcements from the rest of the Order.

Second, if a rapid response is chosen, the on-call team equips themselves, and heads to the event site. Unless there is a reason to bring vehicles (cargo, evacuees, etc), the response teams are cleared to use telepads for transport. Equipment is to prioritize effectiveness over sublety. Equipment should also follow guidelines for any dungeons involved (see Section 5, part 2-K, The Akashic Sewer Restricted Items)

Third, the response team prioritizes the evacuation and medical aid of civilians on site, followed by the elimination of the threat.

This is kept vague not out of a desire to confuse people, but because the breadth of threats that we may face, combined with our constantly shifting capabilities, makes structured training and planning very difficult. While response teams train together, it’s basically impossible to cover all the possible situations we may find ourselves in.

The important guideline to stick to is to remember that we aren’t a conspiracy (See section 1 part 3, We Are Not A Conspiracy). We have several incredibly powerful tools to bring to bear against most situations, including the camracondas, the ability to teleport, skulljacks, and the backing of the government. Use every one of them in a response.

The second guideline is tied to the fact that, as our intelligence network grows, we are going to learn about more and more mundane situations where our intervention would be useful. Response to these is at the discretion of the team leader. We are, as far as we know, the only group operational in the area that can respond to another situation like the School Day. And if we take casualties during a risky operation, that’s less of a safety net from the weird that everyone has. So be especially careful evaluating risk on these.

Response team compositions are to include at least one camraconda, one drone operator, two members with weapon skills, and two members with medical skills. Every member is required to have at least one blue slotted.

Response team kit is partially standardized. Team leaders have a budget for personalized gear.

There are designated times for response team tactical training. Non-members are welcome to participate, so long as the training remains focused on the response team, and their ability to react to novel situations.

123 Fredrick = alive and just moved

James had initially thought he’d been eaten by the attic; a newborn dungeon that Sarah referred to these days as ‘Clutter Ascent’. But then Harvey, who actually somehow managed to keep in touch with old friends from his college fraternity days, had corrected James. Fredrick had moved to a new house, and as far as he knew, was still both alive, and incredibly eager to forget that time when his attic was also alive.

123 fredrick home -> attic -> dungeon = make a friendly dungeon (read bed time stories)

That made a kind of sense to James, though obviously it wasn’t something they could easily confirm. “So, your theory, and the reason we’re here…”

“Is to tell the attic a bedtime story, and give it some happier memories to work with.” She confirmed with a toothy grin, giving James a twirl and a stiff bow at the top of the stairs.

He smiled back, feeling an ancient tug in his heart as the new memories of the person that was his oldest friend triggered a reaction. James wasn’t sure if Sarah’s idea would actually work, but if she’d smile like that more, he’d read bedtime stories to tumblefeeds.

“And you’ve been doing this for a while, huh?” He asked as they turned down the upstairs hallway toward the attic’s entrance.

“Since...well, since I could walk again.” She said, her casual voice barely stumbling on the words. “Alex, Deb, and Frequency were doing it before that. It’s only partly my theory, and it’s their plan. But yeah, you’ve got the outline of it. We just want to encourage it to grow into a friendlier place.”

“Is it working?” James asked, legitimately very curious.

Sarah just shot him a smile in reply, as she led him toward the stairs.

Halfway down the hallway, James slowed down. The staircase to the attic was already lowered in front of them, standing out even more than normal in the otherwise totally empty house. He didn’t really want to get near it; even though he knew the emotional field it put off wasn’t ‘real’, it was still terrifying, and his heart remembered that sensation.

But Sarah just tugged him forward by his good hand, pulling him into what should have been an aura of overwhelming terror.

Except it wasn’t.

Instead, there was something new. The feeling of fear, yes. But less overwhelming. More cautious. And there was something else underneath it all. A little excitement, an undercurrent of expectation. Nothing powerful, but James could feel it; and the little hints of something else echoed off the pillars left by the red orbs he’d cracked over the last year.

Then Sarah pulled him through, socked feet taking the stairs slowly, but confidently.

123 fredrick home -> attic -> pillow/blanket fort

And off to the side, propped up between two dressers and an armoire, someone had taken what looked like every one of the mothballed blankets and bedsheets, combined them with four couches worth of pillow cushions, and built a fort.

“Who… made this?” He asked Sarah, hushed reverence in his voice.

“Deb and Frequency did, at first.” Sarah said, stiffly dropping down to her knees to crawl under the overhanging blanket in the front. “Come on in!” She called back, sticking one hand out through the gap to motion at James. He followed, trying to minimize weight put on his leg as he crawled after her, and minding that he didn’t knock anything down by carelessly headbutting it. From ahead, Sarah’s voice came to him. “Alex helped them, after they’d had some time up here. And then I started adding stuff to it too!”

123 fredrick home -> attic -> dungeon

Opening her own snack with an ancient sound of crumpling packaging, Sarah popped a tiny cookie into her mouth and answered around the food. “Magic.” She said, voice garbled until she finished her treat. “Ahem. Yeah, magic. And also Alex has four or five skill orbs for structural engineering. But also also, we’re pretty sure the attic helps hold it up.”

“Why?” James asked softly.

“I mean, I like to think it’s because it likes us.” Sarah answered him. “We’ve been keeping it clean. And giving it stories!”

“Okay, yeah, so, you said that. What does that mean?”

Sarah reached into the bag she’d brought, and pulled out a worn paperback. “Well, we come here every day or two. Either alone, or together, and we just… spend time here. Do a little cleanup, explore a bit, and then sit and relax together. Share time. And spend some time reading a book out loud.” She tilted her eyes upward, though didn’t bend her neck back. “And it’s just felt \*better\* lately. This whole place. So I think it likes it!”

There was a pause while James thought about it, rolling over the concept in his head. “So we’re treating it like… hm. Not a kid, exactly, but someone who needs care?”

“Yeah. And doesn’t it feel like someone who needs a friend?” Sarah asked, her eyes sad as she looked at James. “I don’t know if the dungeons really map to human thoughts and feelings, but if they did, then they’re all hurting. That fear zone at the stairs? People don’t… James, you can’t make something like that to keep people away unless you’ve \*very\* scared yourself.”

123 order -> High Powered Individual Threats

Order of Endless Rooms, Operations Manual

Section 6, Part 7 - High Powered Individual Threats

Most dungeons do not have an upper bound on at least one of the rewards they offer. It is a known fact that there are other delvers out there. Statistically, many of them will have had far more time than we have with the ability to harvest power from one or more dungeons. Also, there is an entire potential space for non-human entities of worrying levels of threat.

The conclusion to draw from this is that there are entities out there, possibly human, possibly not, that are more than capable of killing every member of the Order in a stand up all-of-us-against-them fight. Assuming they can actually think, it gets way worse for us.

To date, the only fatalities we have sustained have been from such an entity.

If you suspect you are up against an entity such as that, your first objective is survival. The second is information security, and your third is information gathering. By nature of the problem, victory is not considered an option.

When facing such an entity that is hostile to humanity, there are no rules of engagement. Take the ethics guidebook, and throw it in the trash. There is no tactic that is unacceptable, there is no level of collateral damage too high. Someone or something like that, if it chooses to start trying to kill everyone, is an existential threat that must be answered as immediately as possible.

Use every tool in our arsenal. Then cheat, and use them again. Do not stop cheating. Do not try for containment, or capture. Don’t even really try for a kill. Do what needs doing, and run, and hope they get bored enough to not follow.

124 wallet of holding = woops gun got folded

“Is it going to be duplicating the wallet you found?” James asked. “Because I’m still \*super\* concerned about the fact that you folded a pistol in half.”

“Yeah, in retrospect, that was a really bad idea.” Alanna agreed. “Especially since it came out creased, and I \*absolutely fucking will not\* fire it now.”

124 Oregon vs california locations (original main office oregon, new office california)

Anesh nodded. “Got it.” He said. “You need me for anything else? If I go now, I can probably catch people coming back from lunch and get this started today.” He stood up as James nodded at him. “Oh. Here, or in Oregon?” He asked.

124 oregon office -> need 10 to 20 programmers and engineers

“Find us some office space. Doesn’t have to be fancy or big, but the kind of place that we could host ten or twenty programmers and engineers. People we’re willing to \*show\* the skulljack to, but not specifically people we’re looking to recruit into the Order just yet.”

124 Plan (infomorph)

At this point, the Research division consisted of a score of dedicated human students of the arcane, a half dozen other people who dropped in to offer outside context, three camracondas who’d gotten really into the study of their own biology and kind of kept going from there, and one infomorph.

The infomorph was named Plan, and until yesterday, it had been contained in James’ dreams by Secret’s attentions.

The idea of converting things that tried to kill them into friends and allies was, in addition to being one of James’ more fondly remembered anime tropes, kind of just the way the Order operated. But for some reason, it made James nervous that a weaponized schedule had been quarantined in his mind, plucked out, and then intentionally spread to a small network of other members. Right now, Plan couldn’t manifest physically. They couldn’t even really communicate with everyone. It was something of an experiment, to see if a group could host the same infomorph in a way that would mutually aid its growth and development.

Secret was keeping an eye on it, like a watchful and vaguely suspicious older brother. But so far, they hadn’t eaten anyone’s memories, and seemed more or less to be accepting of having to acclimate to living in the heads of ten people who were all insane.

Oh, right. James had a headache because these people were insane.

124 digital mind = placed order to order R&D

“Yeah, what would it take to upload a full mind into a digital environment, and keep it running at baseline capacity or more?” James asked fluidly. He hadn’t really rehearsed the question, but the words came out easy now that he had a goal in mind.

“Like… an AI?” Reed paused. “Or like a simulation of a human mind?”

“Which one’s easier?”

124 oregon office -> basement -> water heater room = rufus -> staple plants

He’d paused at this door because he \*had\* been pretty sure it was a closet with a water heater, a single exposed lightbulb overhead, and about one square yard of actual space. The kind of room that humans didn’t ever actually go into and close the door behind them. But his memory, enhanced as it was, was put to the test when he saw there was a nameplate attached next to it.

Knocking lightly on the door, James waited a moment, and then quietly cracked it open, pulling it out into the hallway and peeking inside.

He’d been mostly right about the contents of the room. Water heater, harsh lighting, piping - did those pipes go to the rest of the building? - and very little room to move around. What he hadn’t expected was that a number of steel shelves had been bracketed into the concrete brick walls, and that around the room there were ten or twenty little plants growing. Plants in only the loosest sense of the word; they were thin bronze stems, producing bulbs of neatly aligned staples. And on one of the shelves, tending them, was an old friend.

“Oh hey Rufus!” James greeted the stapler-spider-crab-friend creature. “I haven’t seen you in a while!”

“I was mostly dead for a bit. Sorry I haven’t been around. You’ve been busy!” James looked around the room, before doing a small double take. “You have more than one plant in here.” He commented, idly, reaching out slowly to poke at the carbon paper leaves of what looked like a fern made of perfect squares. Rufus practically leapt from the shelf he was on to one just below where James was reaching, reaching up with his forelegs to catch James’ wrist before he could touch the Office plant. “Wh… don’t touch that one?” Rufus nodded. “Got it.” James pulled back, and Rufus sighed in relief.

124 nerf gun + status quo reload braclet? = HUH?!?

“I’m so confused.” James glanced at the other two in the room, but they gave him a shrug and a hiss respectively. “Yes, a nerf gun?” He looked back at Nate. “Why is this a... big… deal.” James trailed off as the chef held up his left arm. The sleeve on his chef’s jacket was rolled back, exposing a burly mass of tattooed muscle, but also, the one singular piece of adornment that Nate was never without these days.

A small copper and bone bracelet. The kind that, if time had been given to it for the cooldowns to tick over, could bind to and reload \*guns\*.

“Oh.” James said. There was a long pause, as Nate just stared at him with a kind of expectant incredulity. “Oh!” He repeated. “We should figure out where that thing went to!” James exclaimed, turning to slide back out the door.

“Yeah no shit?” Nate called after him, shaking his head as James retreated. “Ugh. Either I’m gonna have to go buy my own fish oil, or he’s gonna forget about the gun.” Nate grumbled, glancing up at the two prep cooks who were watching with badly concealed amusement. “Back to work.” He gruffly chuckled at them.

124 nerf gun -> that spawns spiders

“The one that shoots fireballs, or the one that spawns spiders?” Momo asked instantly.

James was already answering by the time his brain caught up. “The one that shoots… sorry, \*fucking what\*?”

“Spiders?” Momo asked, grinning.

124 momo -> tracking totem

“In case we need to make spiders. Duh.” Momo rolled her eyes, putting on a perfect impression of a sarcastic teenager. “But yeah, I can probably find it. I’ve been working on a tracking totem, this should be a good test for it.”

124 mono -> flirting totem

Momo gave a side to side motion that was half shrug, half excited ripple. “Eh! I’ve had some good luck using dungeon materials in totems lately. So I’ll probably explore that more. A lot of it is trial and error until I can come up with something that works, and then I hand it off to Anesh or Nikhail to do the math on how to replicate it. Still can’t get another ritual item to work, which sucks. But I hear that we can start fucking around with space and time now? So I’ll probably do that tomorrow, after I finish what I’m working on now.” She leaned in conspiratorially, and whispered, “It’s a totem that tells you how likely you are to successfully flirt with people.” Momo leaned back, glancing off down the hallway with a sad look. “It’s not going well. I don’t know how to measure flirting.”

124 momo -> not doing good

“Seriously, though. Are you doing okay? Your eyes look… not good.” James’ own eyes softened into concern as he looked down at the short goth girl. She looked, as always, frayed and tired. She \*always\* looked tired, and James understood that feeling all too well.

“I mean, no.” Momo admitted. “Can’t go outside, can’t go to a restaurant, don’t really have anyone I can talk to. I’m… man, I’m tired.”

124 FBI -> randell + JP + FB contract + new york + white collar crimes

“Your organization, I’ve been instructed, has reasonable rates for government consulting when it comes to outside context problems.” Randall stated in a similar tone that said ‘I will not be volunteering information’. He finally looked up from his laptop at JP, who was standing leaning against his doorframe with casual arrogance. “Does that include on white collar crimes?”

“As in,” Randall said, “we have reason to suspect there is evidence in an insider trading investigation that has been removed.”

“But not ‘we lost evidence’. Interesting.” JP noted. “You mean, you think there should be evidence, otherwise you wouldn’t be where you are, but that evidence isn’t there, and you’re lost.”

“Good.” Randal said, a sliver of relief in his otherwise flat voice. “I want you on a plane in two hours.”

“I...what?” \*Now\* JP lost his hold on his confusion. “Me personally? And a plane to where?”

“You’re the abnormal finance expert.” The fed said, like that explained anything. “And New York. We’re on a timeline here.”

125 green orb (not sure assuming Oregon office base) maybe LA office as well

[Local Area Shift : Intrusion Cost - +$129.50]

That last one had been applied to everyone’s homes, apartments, rooms, and cars. As well as being layered a dozen times on the Lair itself, to diminishing returns. It was… silly. The words all independently made sense, but put together, it was madness. And yet, it did exactly what it said on the tin. Breaking into a place so defended seemed to carry a material cost to anyone trying.

The unfortunate thing was that, while it did tend to break physical objects on their person first, the effect \*would\* switch over to bodily damage if you weren’t carrying anything to lose. And in a country where an ER visit could run you a bill of a few thousand bucks, hitting the threshold was not hard.

Still, it was a speed bump for any potential attackers. And James would take what was offered in that regard.

125 = 23 high school students -> remember dungeon doings -> found office

This made it almost comically easy for several students to track them down. Some of them in twos or threes, some of them independently. But over the course of the last couple months while James had been recovering, as twenty three different teenagers walked through their doors and started asking questions, everyone had just… told them to come back when James was awake. And that they didn’t know when that would be.

125 telepads = legal pad -> teleports you

The majority of their attempts failed, which was good, because some of them were comically dangerous. The telepads would not, it seemed, send you to the moon. That one, incidentally, had exacerbated the budget issue, as they had spent a \*lot\* of money while James had been unconscious to rig up a functional space suit, in case it worked. They also couldn’t time travel; if you tried, it just did nothing.

However. The damn things \*did\* have either a sense of humor, or a literalist interpretation of reality, which often looked like the same thing. And writing abstract concepts on them was \*not\* a good idea, as the budget had been further stretched by having to buy someone a plane ticket back to Oregon from where they ended up.

If you wrote “home” on the telepad, it turned out, you were almost certainly going to land in the town square of Home, Kansas.

James instructed them to stop testing that. It was cutting into the budget.

125 status quo + blood dungeon + church dungeon = both dungeons dead -> left artifacts behind

They’d found that the dungeons that Status Quo had actually found were only a slim fraction of the ones they knew existed. They’d killed dozens of delver teams, with power sets well outside what they themselves had access to. And while James knew that dungeons could spawn anywhere, Status Quo thought they were limited to this part of the world, so they’d never looked elsewhere.

The first dungeon they had access to had been the ***blood magic one***, formed in an ***abandoned playground near the coast***. No notes on how they’d found it, but they had. And, through the use of construction equipment, had removed the object spawners from it, and transplanted them to their own basement. So as to streamline their sacrifices of life force.

The ***second dungeon had been in a church***. They didn’t know which one, but the notes talked about it being Lutheran, and having undergone a schism in the late eighties, which narrowed it down. That one was apparently why some of the agents shrugged off bullets, and also where the entity called Authority came from.

What was clear from the notes was \*yet another\* frustration. Both of those dungeons were dead zones.

There was no indication if Status Quo itself had been the ones to destroy them, but either way, there were end dates to the production of resources from both sites. Both dungeons were gone. And while their records didn’t actually state why, it lent support to a leading theory of how the dungeons subsisted.

And the dungeons \*starved\*. And eventually, they withered to nothing, until the only things left were some strange artifacts recovered from the sites after the breaches no longer opened.

125 order -> Recovery department -> karen is head = for victims of dungeons

Recovery had a budget now, and daily operational tasks. And it really was stuff they’d already been doing; but now, with less likelihood that anyone slipped through the cracks.

125 status quo -> recovery program = order not liking at all of course

The man in charge of Status Quo had admitted that some of them had probably been killed, just because it was more expedient. But that the majority had simply been \*moved\*. And the documentation bore that out. Transplanted to a new city, dosed with both drugs and memetics to make the transition feel like a blur, installed into new jobs and schools. And all the while, the memory of the delver that had been their family was wiped out of their minds.

125 james magic -> high school dungeon -> magic book (orbs) = basketball for james

Which was why, sometime Friday evening, James found himself thinking a message that read;

[Basketball : 33/1200

Accuracy I, Agility I]

126 Elizabeth / liz = karen daughter

“What’s up?” James asked her, noticing then that Momo had another girl trailing behind her, probably around the same age, but dressed less like she was going to an alt rock concert and more like she was prepared to hand out flyers to people about the dangers of smoking. A modest blouse, slacks, and just a touch of makeup that made the young face look professional. The look of confusion she was wearing seemed out of place, and also kinda funny. “Who’s your friend?”

Momo grinned at him. “This is Liz! She…”

“Elizabeth!” The other girl protested, her voice sounding exasperated, but not actually angry. “My name is \*Elizabeth\*.” She insisted.

“So, her mom is Karen.” Momo explained. “Who I thought wouldn’t be here today, But she is. And for some reason, doesn’t want Liz getting friendly with the snakes or something?”

126 paperclip = performs a selection sort on any stack of documents

“Well I’ll be quick.” She said. “I’ve found this paperclip, and according to the iLipede and Research, it performs a selection sort on any stack of documents it’s attached to, from least to most unknown piece of data.”

“Okay, rad.”

“Yes, I thought so too.” Karen nodded seriously. “But I had a question for you, since no one else had a good answer. Why does it work if I clip DVD’s together?”

James blinked. Tilted his head. Then let out an overlong “Huuuuuuuuuh. Huh.” He took the offered paperclip from Karen and turned it over in his fingers a few times. “Well that’s weird. I’m always thrown off when we get these ‘map is the territory’ kind of objects.”

He had. “Well, here’s the thing. What if you’re throwing a rock at, say… a tank?” James asked. “A twenty still hits, does damage. At that point, you could, maybe, hire a few hundred random serfs to lob rocks at your problems. Because five percent of them will statistically hit. The rule, the ‘map’, in this case, has become the world itself. The territory.”

“And this ties into the paperclip because…” Her eyebrows narrowed. “Ah, no, I see. It has a rule, doesn’t it? It defines ‘documents’, and then doesn’t bother to elaborate.”

James snapped his fingers. “Exactly. In games, we don’t elaborate because it gets stupid. But we’re not in a game. This is real life, and none of us are interested in losing out because we keep to the spirit of the rules.”

126 oregon (order) -> green orbs

Local Area Shift : Construction Speed - +1.8 tons material processed / day]

[Local Area Shift : Time Added - Hygiene - +14 minutes/day/person]

126 Velazquez -> private investigator (james hired)

“Your man isn’t answering your calls because he doesn’t answer any of his calls.” The detective, who just went by Velazquez, was telling James. He had his hands folded in front of himself as he leaned forward over the desk. He did that, James had noticed; got closer to talk to people, like too much distance created information decay or something. Normally it would be fine, but these days it just made James nervous. “The phone rings, and he doesn’t even flinch. Never acknowledges the thing.”

The PI didn’t exactly raise his eyebrows, but the man did shift forward a centimeter or two, like he was forming a conspiracy and not just handing over an address. “Well, he’s not deaf. You said that he wouldn’t run, and you were right. All it took was knocking on the door, and arranging a meeting. Everything’s above board, here’s the hours he’s home and available. I told him you weren’t a debt collector, by the way.” Here he did that thing again where he notably \*did not\* ask James a question.

126 apartment complex -> gained from Velazquez

The place he was going was an apartment complex. And as he pulled into the gravel parking lot, he made the unfortunate conclusion that it wasn’t a very nice one. Not enough space, too much graffiti that wasn’t interesting, stairs that wobbled under his boots as he walked up them, it just had that feeling of being run down and kind of unpleasant. Half the other cars in the lot had dented bumpers or a broken window.

126 son of Candace Williams -> camcondas (Candace Williams = women camcondas worship)

How did you tell someone that the people who’d killed their mother had formed a cult around her, and wanted to have a chat?

126 unknown person in (son of Candace Williams) apartment

“Sir, this is an attempt to contact next of kin. If you would…”

The man on the other side of the door cut him off. “Ah, bitch is dead, eh?” Was all he said, before he snorted, and slammed the door in James’ face.

126 son of Candace Williams

“You wouldn’t happen to be Willams, would you?” James asked, looking up from where he was perched on the steps.

The kid, without missing a beat, slung his backpack off his shoulder, flung it at James’ face with enough force that it could have knocked him out if he hadn’t caught it, and then turned and booked it. Worn sneakers throwing up dust and chunks of gravel into the hot July afternoon as he started scrambling past a couple cars like he was about to dive through the scraggly bushes on the edge of the lot and disappear into the next complex over.

He didn’t even say anything, just started running. So, in the least threatening voice James could manage, he called after the fleeing form. “It’s about your mom.” His voice carried over the rumble of cars on the nearby cross street, and he raised it to make sure the kid could hear him even as he got farther away. “You don’t need to talk now! But I’m gonna leave my number here! Call me when you’re ready!”

Either he’d heard promises like that before and didn’t believe James for a second, or the kid was playing it safe. He paused only for the briefest moment, when James mentioned his mother, but then picked up speed again and took off.

“What the fuck has been going on in his life that he’d just leave the backpack?” James mumbled to himself. Something was wrong here. Not wrong in a dungeons-eating-people way, or an old-gods-and-cruel-power-structures way; just wrong in the way that shitty people and shitty lives poisoned the community around them. “Fuck.” James settled on.

126 status quo

“No.” Harvey’s serious tone made James pause. No time for jokes, eh? “We need you back here. I think Status Quo is back. Or something like them, at least.”

127 Agency A-01

Dave cut to the chase, talking past Daniel and Sarah. “We have glasses that show affiliation. Neil spotted someone today that had the actual Status Quo group. What the hell was it? Agency A-01?”

127 Nike (company) -> has a dungeon somewhere

“A member of Nike’s board of directors?” James asked, and got puzzled looks from the others. “I know you all listened to the recording of my chat with the director. Nike has a dungeon somewhere, and Status Quo tacitly allowed it. I’m making an educated guess. And now I’m stress rambling. Alanna, please stop me and give us an actual answer.”

127 red mafia + status quo + agency A-01 = hiring muscle

“Organized crime, you… god, you’d be adorable if you weren’t so bad at timing.” She shook her head. “Red Mafia, specifically. Who yes, were originally Russian. But are surprisingly ethnically diverse these days.”

“Hiring.” Harvey said, walking up to their circle and running a hand through his hair. He’d been growing it out to cover up the skulljack port; a lot of survivors had. If James had asked, everyone would have denied that it was a mimicry of his own style, which was ironic because he wore his own skulljack with at least a small amount of pride in the mix. “They’re hiring muscle.” Harvey restated.

127 order ((PEOPLE IN IT CURRENTLY))

James hadn’t even actually done a census of the Order. He knew faces and names, had a general idea of the strength they could bring to bear on any given problem, whether it was combat related or not. But he didn’t know the numbers. Still. There were five humans, a stapler, a drone, and one infomorph in the foundational group; roughly fifty humans rescued from the Office, and a couple other Life picked up along the way, with about a third of those people sticking around in a permanent capacity and another third available to help out with random non-life-threatening stuff; five people James had hired with actual interviews and stuff like a real job, minus one tragic loss; and there were just over thirty camracondas they’d saved as well, again, minus one loss; and one prisoner in the basement. No, wait. Two prisoners, since Graham was there too, assuming he counted. Quick head math, then, put their ranks at somewhere around fifty people.

127 MAGIC ITEMS GO REED!

“Okay. So, we’ve got infiltration, and kidnapping. Any other ideas.” Daniel looked around at the faces that were, in theory, his companions.

James glanced over at where Momo was still watching them with a smirk on her face. “Have we considered blatant use of magic?” He asked. “I can check my pockets, I’m sure I’ve got some kinda bullshit we can use.”

***“I have an inventory of different perception enhancers.” Reed offered. “We can do IR, UV, X-ray, and FM radio for vision. I’ve also got sunglasses that show you people’s insecurities and fears, headphones that tell you where people had lunch, and an audio file that plays an episode of Car Talk about whoever’s name you change the file name to.”***

There was a pause. James cleared his throat to break the silence. “I… was honestly going to go see if Momo had come up with some horrible ritual thing. I wasn’t expecting that response. Holy shit, where did we get all that?”

127 Skull and Bones -> summoned a gold and silver infomorph

Ignoring what was going on, though impressed with how Secret twisted himself to avoid getting caught in the wrestling move, JP kept talking. “So, there’s this group called the Skull and Bones. They’re comically famous among secret societies, and I think for a lot of the people, it’s an excuse to get together at three AM and drink the really expensive wine. But it turns out, when your membership is drawn from the upper crust of Yale, you end up with a lot of people in a lot of high profile positions. And now that you’ve got friends with money… well, you can make more money. More power. That kinda thing. And \*some of them\* actually do believe in and perform some pretty fucking weird ritual magic.”

“Does it work?” Alanna asked, loosening her grip on James, but not fully releasing him; turning it more into an enthusiastic hug than an arm bar.

“Like our dungeontech? No.” JP shook his head. “I don’t think it’s dungeon related at all, actually. But here’s the fucking thing. Six months ago, they did a summoning ritual, to call up a ‘being of gold and silver’. \*And it fucking worked\*.”

“Yeah, of course.” James said, pulling away from Alanna and straightening up before leaning on her arm anyway. “He had… oh fuck, no way. They summoned the infomorph?”

127 Tiffany DeKay

“Yeah, those.” JP grinned. “It worked out okay. The infomorph is going to be provisionally working with the one member of the investigation team who actually got what was going on. Her name’s Tiffany DeKay, here’s her contact info, I know you’ll want to hire her.” JP rolled his eyes like he’d predicted James’ every move already. Which, well, James did want to at least talk to the woman. “Anyway, the cash is a bonus because Randall and the other feds have this weird blind spot for strange stuff, so I’m now I think one of the more successful thieves in US history. Our actual payment goes into the business account in a week.”

128 oregon office -> under attack

128 oregon office -> green orbs -> +34 minutes of natural light a day

James had always referred to the green orbs as a form of casual ‘house magic’. Most of them didn’t do anything too fancy, but they were all kind of cool in their own little way. Even the thing that let them partially teleport back to the Lair wasn’t \*huge\*. But every single one of them did something that James, or anyone else, had really considered.

They warped the battlefield.

And this battlefield, right now, had an extra thirty four minutes of natural light a day.

So while the outside was cloaked in the twilight just after sunset, and the building’s electrical grid was down, \*inside\* was still flooded with the golden rays of late evening.

James advanced on the momentarily blinded assault team, charging forward with a snarl and exactly no plan.

128 Randall -> died

Men in black masks and holding a variety of small arms poured through the front doors and shattered windows. The camracondas, not even close to trained for this kind of fight, were falling back, overwhelmed with target selection. Behind the counter, Randall laid down cover fire for them, dropping one hostile while the others moved up to turn tables and support pillars into cover of their own. And then, the line of shields switched to different weapons, the support weapon roared again from across the street, bullets pounding in at a downward angle that sawed through the window and ripped Randall’s position, and Randall himself, to shreds.

128 nerf gun + status quo -> braclet + Daniel + pathfinder (girl) = booms!!!!!

So when Daniel scrambled for the bag he’d dropped under the counter, struggled with the zipper for precious seconds, and pulled out a bright orange and red nerf gun, James only hesitated to check his bracelet for a split second.

[Bind Firearm - 3 - 68 / 300 - 99:14:3:18 (1)

Cluster Shot - 34 - 6,994 / 84,000 - 10:12 (12)

Munitions Dump - 23 - 302 / 2,000 - :04 (39)]

“Here!” He hoarsely screamed, pulling it off his wrist and flinging it around the corner as Secret tried to remanifest, through the hail of gunfire, to the floor at Daniel’s feet. “Suppressive fire!” Unheard by everyone over the shots ringing out, James muttered to himself, “God I hope that’s not the one that shoots spiders.”

Then a thunderous roar split the air. James felt his ears pop from the pressure and the sound, as a trio of two foot wide fireballs erupted in rapid succession from Daniel’s point behind the splintering counter. They carved through what was left of the top half of the big windows that made up the front facade, clipped and melted the overhanging roof outside, and screamed across the street to impact near the roof of the opposite building. The plasma punched holes in concrete and steel, tearing a gap out of where the machine gun fire was raining down on them from.

And then, in the silence that followed, anyone who wasn’t deaf from the blast would have heard Daniel loudly cocking the nerf gun, before he fired a cluster shot again.

Over and over. Cock, shoot, cock, shoot, reload. He burned through every point of cluster shot the bracelet had left, turning the front of the Lair, and the upper floor and rooftop of the opposite building, into molten slag. Around Daniel, James could just barely make out the orange outline of the infomorph Pathfinder as she adjusted his aim with light touches, the two of them sweeping every possible firing position, and undoubtedly killing whoever had them pinned down.

128 oregon office -> green orbs -> -$124.74 or something dallar amount for attacking order.

Warped battlefield, though.

When the next two took positions at the sides of the door and started pouring fire into the bathroom, James already had a recovered position. And even as their shots started to break through, the minimum real dollar value of the bathroom reared its head and said, quite firmly, “No.” The countertop broke away under the sustained gunfire, and instantly started to reform; the walls and cabinets reshaped themselves. The holes patched over; the bullets conspicuously absent. After all, the dollar value of a bullet hole is a very, very high negative, depending on your property location.

128 Ann -> order member (i think) -> kitchen staff with nate errr nate subrobnite in kitchen?

128 Other James and Simon + skull jacks = 1 soul 2 bodies ?!?!?

Everyone else had taken to the skulljacks in different ways. For members of the support group, it was reclaimative. They’d been used, but now, they were the operators in control. For James and his partners, it was a deeply intimate function of sharing their lives. But for Other James and Simon?

They’d stopped being two different people at some point. Their unique behaviors, memories, quirks, they’d all been sifted down and blended together, and now, even when they weren’t connected, they maintained so much of each other that they were closer and close to just one soul that shared two bodies.

Not quite all the way there yet, but closer than anyone else knew.

It wasn’t romantic, exactly, and nor was it clinically utilitarian. It was just… it was who they’d become. It was useful, and it was kind, and it was \*fascinating\*, even to them as they drowned in it. One day, they wouldn’t be two people communicating, they’d just be one person, that sometimes had to check in with themself.

128 other james died = other james lives in simmon?

Then someone noticed he was still awake, and a woman with cold eyes leveled a gun at him. Through their connection, Simon screamed as she put a bullet through his skull.

For a brief moment, Other James was still a person. He had, technically, his own body. His own thoughts. His own stupid nickname that he couldn’t even shake in internal monologue anymore. And then, he wasn’t, anymore. But he wasn’t quite gone, either.

Eighty feet away, past a half dozen cars, up a few concrete steps, behind the metal rolling door of the warehouse, Simon caught his fleeing soul through a wi-fi connection, and held on like it was the last piece of the universe left.

Part of the geometry of James’ self was already gone, along with the damaged hardware that was running it. But so much of who he was in that moment wasn’t a singular thing. It was shared, between two bodies, two people becoming one. In minutes, Simon’s electric mind combed over the remnants of what left James as an individual. Memories were digitized, and transferred. Opinions, ideas, plans and goals, all of them were swept into the still-functioning port of the skulljack like sand into a bucket, even as that sand threatened to drift away on the wind.

In moments, as he bled out on the ground, holes in his shell, there was nothing left of what was this James. His body died. And maybe, too, would his name. But within Simon’s mind, for as long as they could hold on, there was a survivor.

128 oregon office -> basement -> order kid killed.

Just a kid, but still one of the enemy. He’d done worse, and would again before the day was out. One down. More to go.

128 Lance - Vince? -wasn’t dead (one of them) = went down or died?

A shield flashed on the other side, the camraconda’s gaze broke and the shooting started almost instantly. Someone went down - Lance, was that his name? Momo felt guilty for not knowing - and then the others were on him. The shield couldn’t protect against being grappled, apparently. Momo arrived a second later and stabbed him through the bit where his vest ended. The sternum. She knew that one from both Deb lectures, and one of her totems.

Momo didn’t have a totem for this, but she figured this process would repeat until one side was out of people. But they had more people, and she was pretty sure that Lance - Vince? -wasn’t dead.

128 Alanna -> got nocked out -> then teleported out

Then Alanna’s body took a rifle stock to the forehead in a ferocious strike that rattled her physical brain so hard that her conscious self dropped out of their link.

Last line of defense or not, she wasn’t getting back up. And without her away, piloting her body was a losing fight either way.

Anesh’s mind snuck into her limbs. Grabbed the telepad from a pocket without looking at it; scratched out two words on the thing, and then ripped the page.

128 Anesh -> one of his clones died

“Come on.” Anesh said, stepping back into the hallway. “We’ve got…”

The sniper’s bullet threaded through the high windows around the cafeteria, over the skirmish there that was mostly out of sight to them, and hit Anesh in the upper right arm. The high caliber bullet fragmented as it rent a path through his muscle and bone, into his torso, through his lung and heart, and out through his ribcage, leaving a gaping, ragged wound. The body was dead from shock before it hit the ground.

128 Graham -> died

Maybe. Maybe this was… his chance to help? He had a dungeon skill book, he’d been in a couple fights. He could do this, at least. Be part of the defense. Maybe he… maybe, just maybe, he could find some measure of redemption.

Graham opened his unlocked prison door, one hand on the short staff someone had left leaning against the wall last time anyone was down here. And a woman in a black ski mask, tactical helmet, and night vision goggles fluidly pivoted and shot him three times in the head.

Graham died ready to save everyone, including himself, but too late to do anything but fall to the floor.

128 Frequency-Of-Sunlight = died

“Am sorry.” The digital voice of her partner, her unexpected sparkling joy of a lover, came to Deb’s ears. The hallway was quiet, for now. Until the camracondas got too tired to keep up their stares on multiple targets, and the bullets cut them down at last.

“Why?” Deb asked Frequency-Of-Sunlight.

128 james -> blue orb? or artifact? or what? = teleport pad due not go back in ateration time.

“You have unwound.” Secret hissed at him, still coiled around James’ shoulder. “Your time was eaten, but the world moves on.”

James snarled. “Okay, fine. We’ll try it again.” He checked the shield bracer he was wearing;

[Stockpile “Temporal Displacement” - 19 - 709 / 22,000 - 4:12:59 (41) <A>

Battlefield Alteration - 4 - 199 / 1,000 - 1:01:22 (2) <A>]

Already switched over to what he needed. James killed the automatic on the Alteration; he’d turn it to what he really needed when it mattered. And two charges left to switch to what he needed afterward. Forty shields left, too. He’d need to finish this before any more automatic weapons fire came his way.

James pulled out the telepad, dismayed to see that it only had one page left. Apparently him being rewound hadn’t refunded him any resources used. He pulled out a pen from a coat pocket, and thought for a second, before beginning to write.

“Slightly to the left of the sniper on the roof of the building next to this one.”

Tear.

128 james = deing / died.

Secret, still pinned down by the Authority, dragged his form over to where James lay. “I am here.”

“I… I think I’m out.” James whispered, closing his eyes and trying to hold the cold terror away. “Get going. Go help them. Tell Anesh and Alanna I loved them. And you. Always.” It wasn’t working. He was scared.

“I can not leave.” Secret whispered back. “Not now.”

“They’re dying, Secret.” James said, shifting his shoulders against the air conditioning unit. Damn whoever built these things for not considering how comfortable they’d be to lean on. “You can’t be waiting for me to die.”

The pale blue serpent tried to shake his head, but couldn’t. “No, this thing, it has me. And even if I could move… I am weak. I’ve done too much, too often. There’s no small secrets left for me. No large ones to break for a moment’s power. I am as helpless as you.”

“They are \*dying\*.” James screamed, rough and wet. “Our friends! Our family! And I’m going out anyway! So… so do what you know you were made to do. Dig in. Take whatever you need to out of my head, and use it to save who you can!” James sobbed suddenly. “I’m dead anyway, and I don’t believe in anything after. My soul is one of two things; gone, or \*ammunition\*.”

The two of them locked eyes. Secret staring into James’ with a dozen of his own, struggling against the clasp that the Authority had on him.

James broke the eye contact first, looking over to where the old woman… it had been Marion, hadn’t it?... twitched slightly. Ah, that was it. He propped his gun up on his knee, and emptied it into her body. The Authority on Secret scattered to the winds with her now-actual death. “No excuses.” James whispered. “Get on with it. I’ll… maybe I’ll see you again some day.”

128 secert -> pulls all his stuff from everyone including james -> becomes whole -> becomes short lived powerful monster = Status Quo, all the way to the top -> all status quo died by secert power.

None of it mattered to James. Secret didn’t need a reason, he just needed to be loved. And in that moment, as James screamed at him from the rooftop before forgetting why he had been so upset in the first place, Secret understood.

He was himself. Finally. Every part of him collected into one physical place.

There was a form of ignition. And then, a new form of matter, the likes of which had never before existed on this world, sparked into being.

Secret was not made of solid, or liquid, or gas. Plasma or gel or Bose-Einstein condensate. He was made, now, of an idea. Literal physically earthed information, given purpose and brought into reality by sheer density of ego. Unstable in the extreme; he knew he had only minutes to live now. Untethered to any one person, answerable to no gods or kings. Secret was here, and everywhere. Something new, and something horribly glorious.

He had left himself note

The new creature wasted no time following the directives it had given itself, the purpose that had been laid down. It identified the intercessors that were attacking the Order of Endless Rooms, and it reached out to them, and it \*bit\*.

Every living thing within fifty miles shivered, twitched, and screamed, as they all felt the presence of fangs in the dark.

Secret’s teeth found purchase in his target, and he paused. The lines and threads reached down to the people, yes, but they also reached upward. And he didn’t wait or think about it; he clawed his way up the ladder, and shredded it as he went. Mauling away at the very concept of the thing that was Status Quo, all the way to the top.

The first thing that happened in the Lair, as far as anyone knew, was that the enemy lost unit cohesion. They stopped flanking, stopped firing in waves. Then they started yelling at each other. One of them panicked, made as if to shoot one of her teammates. But the finger never made it to the trigger.

Because the next thing that happened was that every single one of them dropped like a puppet with their strings cut.

They forgot, for a moment, that they even existed. Their hearts stopped beating, their lungs stopped pumping. Their brains just… shut off.

Six hundred miles away, a Status Quo team on assignment dropped dead in the middle of a Denny’s.

On the other side of the planet, a contractor who still had some loyalty to his cause suddenly collapsed, toppling out of his surveillance perch.

In a warded room in the basement of the pentagon, a man no one knew existed ceased to be midway through signing off on a command.

And then, with a defiant scream that cut through the air like a blade, Secret reached up to the eye overhead, the unblinking red construct staring down at him and his family like a twisted ethereal voyeur. And he ripped it apart.

Everything, suddenly, went quiet.

128 secert -> died

He opened his mouths, and tried to speak. To say anything else to James. To anyone. “Remember me.” He tried to say. “Remember I love you.” Secret screamed inside himself, but nothing came out. “Please... “ The newly remade Life was breaking apart, fast. Pieces of himself were peeling away, flaring into nothingness with touches of orange and red.

Secret couldn’t say anything. He’d cut himself away from them, could barely remember them himself. But it didn’t stop the feelings, his \*own\* feelings, burning hot inside his newfound form. “I… I don’t want to go.” He screamed the words into the void. “I’m scared. And… and there was so much left to do…”

END BOOK 2