All healed up and now able to open portals in a matter of seconds we decide to investigate this St Patrick's Orphanage Samiel said something about. Looking it up we find an old newspaper article from 1881 about it burning down. Apparently the place started on fire up in the children's dormitories. The sister on duty managed to get the girls out and went back in to get the boys. She saw a man in the hallway who said that all the children have been rescued and she should leave, so she did. Nobody knows who the man was. After the fire was put out they found that the boys were still locked in their rooms. 17 had died. We headed to over to Scranton, Pa to get a look at this place ourselves.
The orphanage was still there but in ruins. Records show that they tried to build over it on a few occasions over the years but people get mysteriously dying and the whole area had an ominous feeling. It didn't take any supernatural powers for us to sense the overwhelming stench of rot around this place. We have come up against some nasty things and some places where bad things of happened but never had we felt this. This feeling could only be described as pure evil. This evil was so powerful that not even spirits would feed off of it. Red had determined we were sitting in an actual verge and there was this thing called a shoal on the other side. Apparently a shoal only forms in areas where the land is so scarred it scars the shadow with it. Starting to get the feeling that this has to have something to do with Donovan. We have a strange feeling that he was somehow the man that let the children die so I calculated about what time the man must have been there and I looked back into the past. I don't know if it was the evil or what but everything ha a strange shadowy look to it. Things were distorted and a little nauseating, I never felt like this the last few times I've used this spell. I managed to get there in time to see the sister return from putting the children to bed and she began writing in her journal. I was able to see she was writing about a 10 year old boy who had shown up recently and just freaked her out. She says he had the look of the devil in his eyes. I can feel the fire now and the sister can hear the children screaming and she runs out to save them. I follow her and then I'm stopped in the hallway. Standing in front of me is a young boy with eyes black as coal. Those eyes aren't just staring at me but through me. This boy knows I'm here which should not be possible. He continues to stare and I feel that I need to leave this place. I hesitate for a moment. I think this is just my mind playing tricks. This boy can't see me, I'm not even here. I take a step forward and he just continues to stare and I get caught in those black eyes. I can hear, taste, smell the evil emanating from them. The lizard brain finally kicks in and tells me to get the hell out of there and I obey returning to my body. I tell the others what I saw and I'm pretty damn sure that I just had a meeting with the very young Donovan. We figure this can't be the only reason we came here, there has to be something more. So we start checking our the ruins looking for any kind of clue. Danno finally picks up a trace of something and he hones in on it. Eventually h says the presence he feels is below us. Moving around some rubble we discover a wooden floor and what appears to be a basement. We punch through the floor and jump down. Red catches a glimpse of something in the corner. Moving off the dirt it reveals some kind of elaborate rune. It sorta resembles the kinda of runes we saw when investigation the architectural attunement texts. I manage t o decipher it and realize it is a map of the flow of power within the orphanage. Ohm is then able to pick up the flow of ley lines and finds two kinda going straight down below us. The ley lines are emanating evil themselves. I project my mind into the twilight and head straight down for 350 ft or so. After traveling through lots of solid rock it opens out into a man made cave. The cave is quite sparse. There is an altar at one end with an open book flanked by two burning candles. The pages of the book appear to be blank. Off to the side is a small room with a bed that appears to have been unoccupied for only a short period of time. I'm about ready to leave not seeing anything else when I catch a glimpse of some shadowy thing in the background. It heads straight toward me and shows itself. It looks a lot like the big nasty cat thing we saw on the roof of the village of damned standing with Donovan. It seems to know that I'm here but it can't see me. It takes a bit for memory to jog and I remember that this thing is the Beast of Bethlehem. I return to my body and inform the others and we plan for an assault. That book has to contain something and if it belongs to Donovan it could be useful. This must be the reason we are here.
We buff up preparing to fight a shadow creature. I open a portal to the cave and Danno and Red move through. Ohm and I follow next and get hit with a nasty fear aura. Danno and I resist it while the other two cower in fear. They manage to get a grip and join the fight. Danno keeps trying to convince the thing it should die while keeping it's attention. Red and Ohm keeps taking swipes at it but it seems to be dodging most of them by moving in and out of shadow constantly. I fire a shot from the Walter hitting it quite soundly. The bullet erupts in white light and it screams in pain. It wasn't very happy with that and pounces on me, which I wasn't very happy with. As I fell into darkness all I could think was that those claws probably ruined my suit. When I finally woke up the beast was dead. Shortly after I fell Danno finally convinced it to just die and it did. As the beast began to dissolve hundreds of small whitish lights traveled up and into the ceiling, they looked like they were the souls of those this thing had eaten. Ohm tends to my wounds and we go check out the book. We try several things to get it to show any words on it's pages. Eventually I try the death sight and the words appear for me. Just glancing through without touching anything it does appear to be the journal of Donovan. The book doesn't seem trapped but I'm still concerned. I hand the Walter back to Danno and tell him to watch me as I pick up the book. Nothing bad happened. We look around the rest of the cave and find nothing of note. With that we take the journal back to the warehouse for what I anticipate will be some disturbing reading.
Donovan's journal is a very strange journey. He awakened at the age of ten to what he now believes was the sixth watchtower. Most mages look at the sixth tower as pure speculation. Some say it hold the seat of power of the Oracles and others say it resides within the Abyss itself. If Donovan really did awake to the sixth than my vote is the Abyss. He says he always felt different, always felt he had a purpose. The last page of the book contains a passage from the Book of Nod that he hints took him a lot of work to translate. We take the book to the Palace to ask Lady Abigail if she knows what the passage is about. She explains that the Book of Nod was authored by many unknown individuals. The book seems to move to a new owner every fifteen years all on it's own. Lady Abigail thinks the passage does indeed mean that the blood of a decedent of Christ needs to be spilled once again. Well that explains who he is looking for. We ask the Lady Abigail if she has any idea of where the bloodline has gone. She says that she is forbidden from speaking of it but she does have a personal library upstairs that may have some clues that we can use. Us bookworms are quite excited that we get access to these ancient tomes and the fact that Dante doesn't.
Donovan's journal also mentioned the Atlantean Nexus a few times. We decide that 'll research it while Ohm and Red will research the bloodline of Christ. Several hours later we have some things to go on. The Atlantean Nexus is quite a strange artifact. Every time after it is used in a ritual casting the pieces scatter back across the earth. The pieces tend to move to the general same location in the pattern of the pentacle. Five pieces, five points. Each piece requires the solving of a puzzle and has a clue as to the whereabouts of the next. The puzzles change every time. Donovan makes reference to one piece always ending up in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It is always located on a small mist covered island that is extremely difficult to find. He does mention that once you find this piece the others become easier to find.
Ohm and Red found some good information on the bloodlines. Nothing definite but applying some algorithms to remove the dead ends and holes in the data should get us something to work with.
All this reading has made my eyes tired.
Cygin
<-----AEMP----->
Good thing I can control my dreams because I have a feeling that my encounter with the child Donovan is going to mess with me. We have seen a lot of crazy shit since this adventure started. Bad things galore but none of them could be classified as actual evil and even those things that were close still pale in comparison to what I felt in that orphanage and saw in those eyes. Everything up to this moment was speculation that Donovan was bad guy and going to do really bad things on a global level. Now I know it is true, I know he is pure evil and he will attempt to unmake everything that is good. Now the true gravity of the situation is weighing on me. We really do have to stop this guy at all costs or everything we know and love will simply no longer be. This is one hell of burden for anyone or any four to bear. The fate of the world rests on our shoulders and I'm not entirely sure my shoulders can bear it. With all this politicking and betrayals it is becoming increasingly difficult to know who to trust. All of this combined just leaves a sinking feeling in my soul. I've been trusted with great power and great responsibility but I now begin to wonder if I'm truly prepared for it. How much simpler it would be to join the rest of the masses and go with my day to day living oblivious to the pending doom. But I can't. I have been chosen. I must see this through to the end because if I don't stop this Kat is gonna be pissed. And that old adage of "hell hath no fury like a women scorned" is a whole lot worse when you change it to "hell hath no fury like a women who also happens to be a werewolf and has huge claws and pointy teeth and anger issues".
At least there are lights on the horizon. When things get bad I just need to think about what life will be like when this is finally over. Think about that house on the beach in Tahiti where Kat and I will spend our winters. Think about how she will walk around that house in a constant state of nakedness. Maybe Lylith and Abigail can come and stay for a while. ....
Maybe I should stop thinking about that right now. Rewind. Erase.
Think about how Kat and only Kat will walk around that house in a constant state of nakedness.
Stop. End transmission.
</----AEMP----->