Changeling: Session 17

When last we met, our heroes fought their way through the Dreaming, only to emerge out of a dressing closet in a gay club.

“You sure know how to make an entrance,” the dancer in the dressing room says, directly to Gareth.  He clearly knows him, although Gareth has zero recollection, and just stands there, staring, as the rest of the group tumbles out around him.  The dancer puts down his hair brush and pulls a cigar box out of a drawer.  Then the SWAT team arrives, and he shrieks, throwing the box in the air.  When it hits the floor, a lighter, spoon, baggie, and two syringes spill out, one of the syringes full of brown substance cracking and emitting purple smoke when the air hits whatever is inside.

Wally tries to reassure the flustered dancer, and Drake asks where they are.  “The Candy Bowl”, he replies; Gareth, Alia, and Drake (because he remembers everything) know this place to be in Brooklyn. 

The whole motley crew exits the dressing room to the stage beyond, though Gareth stays behind, still trying to figure things out, and Goom sticks with him.  On stage is a man in Barbarella  drag writing atop the face of a shirtless man in low rise jeans.  One of the SWAT guys comments this isn’t the strangest thing he’s seen today, and moves on stage, the rest following suit.  The club patrons, predictably, freak.  Drake puts on an air of authority and shouts that they are the police, but if everyone clears out without issue, no one else will be called.  The club is promptly vacated. 

Back in the dressing room, Gareth starts asking the dancer (his name is Steven) questions, trying to figure shit out.  Steven is still panicked over the appearance of the SWAT, but makes it clear he thinks Gareth is mental, as these are all things Gareth should know.  The junk is Gareth’s, he paid for it, and they were hanging out just recently.  Gareth finally pieces together that Steven must know his double, meaning that his double is still somewhat local.  Steven says that Gareth can keep the drugs but please, can he please just be allowed to leave?  Gareth lets him go as he crouches down to collect the paraphernalia, and Steven passes Wally in the hallway as he exits.  Wally lets Gareth and Goom know that people are getting ready to leave.  Goom suggests that the drugs should come with them, to be analysed, and Wally collects the mess from Gareth, prompting him to grumble that he really can be trusted with the drugs without breaking.

The soldiers, thugs, and others remove their body armour and place it and their weapons into whatever assorted duffel bags, boxes, and other totes can be found around the club.  They depart in staggered groups of five or so, a group of soldiers and thugs escorting one of the rubes, and meet up several blocks away at a warehouse owned by Harajuku Importers.  They know they need to get back to Manhattan, but the evacuation is still in progress (it has only been about 16 hours since they left) which complicates things significantly.  Madame Butterfly’s crew makes contact with her to figure out their next step.

While plans are being made, the group questions Alia about what happened with the root-headed woman.  She explains the offer for information on defeating the Hand Made Man, the supposed bloodline that M. Butterfly is withholding, and the root-woman’s request to be named and freed.  Upon learning that Alia gave the creature a name and touched it, they of course react with the appropriate amount of indignation.

The soldiers come back from their private chat, announcing that the situation changed while they were away – now the FBI, Homeland Security, and EPA are on the scene, in addition to the island being evacuated.  Drake demands to talk to M. Butterfly, and is eventually granted his request.  He confronts her with the information they obtained in the Dreaming, and while she agrees it is all interesting and merits further investigation, she denies hiding any sort of bloodline.  She has news for them:  the feds have converged on a building in which she has financial interests.  It seems one of her companies, dealing in pesticides, has found a loophole in EPA requirements that as long as the building residents agree to their building being sprayed with this untested chemical, the company is free to test the effects on humans.  Apparently the EPA has taken notice.

She provides an address, which Alia recognises as being in her neighbourhood.  M. Butterfly can arrange for a news helicopter (the only way in or out of the island) to pick them up, although the soldiers and thugs cannot go with them as the chopper is only so big.  Drake asks for two hours before the pick up, and M. Butterfly agrees.  He departs, looking for a suit shop.

The rest of the group takes body armour and automatic firearms each, although Drake declines either – it will mess the lines of his suit, and if he’s going to sell whatever deception they’ve got going, he needs to look official.  The helicopter arrives and takes the group plus the tattooed man over the deserted city.  They fly near Alia’s building, and focus on what is surely the object of the feds’ attention – an apartment complex that has been covered in white tarp, with emergency vehicles and figures in yellow HAZMAT suits swarming about orange triage tents.  They discuss acquiring clean suits of their own as the helicopter departs to land on a building near the Chrysler. 

The building is abandoned and the streets are empty as the tattooed man leads them through the Chrysler lobby and to a private elevator that takes them directly up to Yuri-ko’s.  Once in her suite, they can smell spray paint.  On the floor are several clean suits, with FBI stenciled on.  Madame Butterfly appears, explaining that it isn’t the best, but with the time she had it is enough for Drake to bluff them through. 

In her safe office, she explains to them that there will likely be a child in the building, one which may need to be eliminated, and that they’ll need to make sure they are up to that task.  It may also be necessary to confront the Hand Made Man in the child’s dream.  The tattooed man says it is easier to go in and out of an individual’s dream as opposed to the Dreaming where they had been, so this shouldn’t be as daunting a task. 

Drake inquires if Yuri-ko has a way of replenishing his Glamour as he’s spent a lot of it recently.  She says yes she has something he can access, but only as part of an agreement, which he must never divulge, even to his death, and takes him aside.  Once again, the rest of the group feels that tingle in the air as Drake’s pact is made, though this one is far more intense – great power is at work here.  Drake returns looking positively flush with Glamour. 

They get in a van and suit up on their way to the apartments.  The group of them strolls in with purpose, tattoo man included, until Morgan stumbles, drawing attention.  Someone waves at them and runs over, but Drake is on him in an instant, telling the guy to back down, that he never saw them here.  He comes off so convincing that the fellow doesn’t even argue, just lets them pass.  Drake tells him to keep everyone out until the group exits the building.

Inside they find that all power has been cut as they stare down an empty dark hallway.  An old fashioned cage elevator is in the centre, with stairs spiraling around it.  Wally looks for purple haze, weak spots between worlds, but finds that the whole damn building is full of it.  Goom hears a sliiiideTHUMP sliiiiiideTHUMP coming from the floor above, and they ascend the stairs.

At the landing they can all hear it clearly, and Goom removes his helmet to smell the air.  Though he can’t smell anything at first, he eventually smells both stale and fresh sweat, dried urine and faeces, rotting bodies in the apartment with the noise.  There are living people in the other apartments, but they head to the one with the obvious noise.  They arrange themselves around the door, weapons drawn.  Whatever is inside starts rapidly thumping towards the door, and Goom kicks it in.

Inside the room is a crib, and a TV with an armchair, with a corpse reclining in it.  The face and most of the chest have been eaten away.  In the crib is the body of a half eaten child.  The thing coming toward them has a frog’s head, a human’s upper body, and a large umbilical cord that is leaking blood and clear fluid.  Wally fires an automatic burst of bullets into it, spraying goo everywhere.  It deflates and contracts, turning into a broken bath toy.  Alia pops her claws through her suit and begins slashing at any other child’s toys in the space, ensuring that nothing else from this room comes after them. 

Alia and Goom, both with open clean suits, both begin feeling sleepy, surely an effect of whatever Dream substance is in this building.  They manage to seal up their suits again, and carry on.  In checking the rooms with the living, they find that everyone is asleep, having nodded off in the midst of their daily activities.  They proceed room to room searching for the child Yuri-ko mentioned. 

That’s when they hear it, out in the hall.  Something is coming down the steps from the floor above.  Something big.  They take cover in a doorway and aim. 

A sick sadistic voice echoes at them, “Have you come to play?”  The cage around the elevator shaft shakes with every step it takes.  One enormous furry leg comes into view, then another.  There is the sound of knives dragging against the wall.  Finally they see it. 

It is another giant teddy bear, easily seven feet tall, though this one with long curved black claws.  When it finally turns to face them, revealing itself to be truly gruesome.

The mouth in the torso shrieks, “IT’S TIME TO PLAAAAAYYYY”

Changeling:Session 16

When last we met, the group pressed farther into the sewer system in search of the Hand Made Man, encountering some bizarre and frightening happenings along the way.

While everyone else investigates the rat-bear, Goom has been keeping watch over the red door.  Ashe hears the muffled echoes of silenced gunfire down the hall, he sees the paint on the door begin to fade and chip again – the Glamour which Alex had given it is wearing off.  Unconcerned, Goom turns his attention to the chains and restraints on the floor, summoning his strength to rend them from the platform.  At the shocked looks from Drake’s thugs, Goom comments, “I don’t like slavery.”  They raise their fists in support.

Down in the tunnel, the bear is in tatters and the rats are all gone.  The decision is made to burn the doll, and the SWAT team begins spraying it with a chemical, as well as setting plastic explosives to bring the tunnel down once the fire is out.  Seeing that they are unneeded here, the rest of the group decides to return to Goom, having just heard the sound of him ripping up the chains.

As they reconvene and start discussing what to do next, Goom’s hackles raise – something is coming.  Realising that they’re standing at the junction of several train tracks, they contemplate scaling the amphitheatre levels, but as the bottom level is 12’ high, it isn’t feasible.  From one tunnel then another, clanging starts, a sound all too familiar to Goom.  The mole people are back.  Weighing their options, they see the red door as the only likely solution – less certain death versus absolutely imminent death.

The whole of their company has returned from burning the rat-bear, and they ask the tattooed leader if everyone (non-dreamers included) can go through the red door.  He tells them that there is no way he is ever going through that again, they don’t know where it goes, and orders his soldiers to start blowing tunnel entrances and get ropes to scale the levels above them.

Alex, standing near the platform but not at the door, again spends a Glamour to activate the door, refreshing it again.  Goom tries to open the door, but cannot – Alex activated it, he must open it.  An argument ensues with the tattooed man, who grows more agitated the closer they all get to the door, insisting they stay to fight whatever comes through those tunnels.  Sneering, the man begins to grow, his muscles swelling, and he leaps forward almost thirty feet toward them, toward Alex.  The rest of the group books it for the door platform.

Realising his pact with the tattooed man, Alex realises that he cannot risk resisting the man’s orders.  However, the rest of the group made a promise that they would not abandon one another.  Weighing the consequences, Alex decides to fuck it, and sprints for the door, turning the handle of the door which opens with a sucking wind.  The tattooed man lets out a bloodcurdling wail, as Alia and Drake rush the platform, grab-tackling Alex through the door.  The soldiers and thugs give chase (The latter being bonded to follow Drake), following Morgan, then Wally, then Gareth through the door. 

Goom waits until the last of them go through, including the tattooed man who wails like a child as he passes into his nightmare.  The final few soldiers back through the door, shooting at the mole people who have started to crash through the tunnels like terrible rapids.  Goom shuts the door as he passes through.

Alia, Drake, and Alex are falling, feeling as though they are going in many different directions.  The space around them is flickering shades of bright whiteness, voices all around them as they cling together.  They see flashes of their own lives, and those of their companions, nothing overtly connected, just memories.  The farther they fall, the more surreal the memories become, twisting and warping as though in… well, a dream. 

It stops as they collapse on the ground in a room.  They are deafened by the silence that surrounds them.  They are in a space so silent they can hear their own blood rushing, hearts pumping.  They are in some sort of medical facility, and Alex feels it is familiar.  Down the hall is a junction where other walkways meet at a nurse station.  None of the typical sounds and smells of a hospital are there, only the visual.

As they get up, they realise they’re lying atop Morgan.  They help her up, and then Wally is beneath her, clutching his pistol.  The tattooed man is next, having returned to his normal non-Hulked-out state and he is freaking out.  As they try to calm him, another person appears on the floor, and they start helping them up, their entire party appearing one by one, like some sort of human PEZ dispenser.

Unsure of how to proceed, they discuss what to do if they encounter, well, anything.  Guns and bullets may be ineffectual here, but what about fire?  Gareth flicks his lighter, the flame leaving a trail through the air that slowly fades.  The tattooed man freaks out at this, saying that it will attract Them, anything they do to change this space will attract Them.  This, he says, is Their realm, the takers.  They are pure malevolence and time has no jurisdiction here, no rules.  If you get trapped here, he tells them, you’d be best off taking your own life, as that is far better than enduring their tortures.  Dream logic prevails, and they are to do nothing to alter the Dream, lest They notice.  When they came here before, he says, they had someone with them who could see the soft spots between this world and the Real.  He says it looked like purple light.

It clicks.  Wally has seen purple glowing spots in various places around Manhattan.  This is an ability he had no awareness of.  When this is brought up, the tattooed man freaks out again.  Wally tries looking, seeing that everyone has a fading purple smoke around them, but nothing more.  They decide to push on, Alex remembering that there is a lift and a stairwell near the nurse station.  As they approach the nurse station, the sound of a baby crying can be heard; they also see a glowing EXIT sign, though in the opposite direction of the crying.  Wally asks Alex if this is where his daughter was born, and the realisation hits him – that’s how he knows this place!  However, given his track record with Them teasing him with false daughters, they decide to ignore the crying and look for a way out.

Drake is the first to approach the stairwell, heading down.  Everything seems normal, until he reaches the next landing, where it opens up below to a hospital room with a bed.  In the farthest corner, it looks as though paint has been blasted over the wall.  There is a female figure asleep on the bed, her face stopping at her nose, and the rest of her head an explosion of vines and twisted hair that bursts back against the wall.  Alia is concerned that if they go down there, that the woman will wake, and so they go back up, past the level with the crying baby, to the floor above.

There is another door, and Goom pokes his head out.  Another hospital hallway.  There is a boy a ways down who turns and locks eyes with Goom, who recognises him as the boy who had knocked on Wally’s door, although his whole left side is horribly burned.  The boy flies back into a room, slamming the door.  All the way down the hall, doors start slamming, cascading toward them.  Goom ducks back into the stairwell just as the door in front of him slams shut.

The tattooed man says that It is becoming aware, and that the group is creating this.  Goom opens the door again, smelling burnt flesh.  A deep baritone voice asks, “What are you looking for, Oath Breaker?”  Alex knows he is the breaker of oaths, having reneged on his pact with the Tatman, and so he answers, “The exit.”  A dialog begins between the two, the Voice trying to make bargains with Alex, though Drake cautions and coaches him so that he does not say anything that will bind them. 

The Voice wants to see Alex, as he is unique.  It promises Alex all the stars, all the laughing stars, the stars that laugh.  Drake recalls those words from long ago, they are from “The Little Prince”, and he gives Alex the proper response from the story.  The Voice is offended by this, telling Alex that he is being fed words by one not worthy.  The wall opens up, melting into organic fibres and a yellow glow.  “Come,” it says, “I would know you”.  Alex refuses, saying he wants guarantees, though the Voice asks him what good promises are with an oath-breaker.  It offers him a friendly face, and one of the soldiers morphs grotesquely into Alex’s daughter.  Another changes to Meagan, another to Alex’s wife.  All of them stare blankly at Alex.  Alex asks for the guarantee that he and the ones he has brought with him will have safe passage out of this place and back to their own.  The Voice replies that it will not grant this, and Alex asks if it would make him twice the oath-breaker, as he has a pact with his friends that none of them will abandon each other. 

It considers this and says that they will talk again.

They head back down the stairs, although the three women will not move, no matter how hard they try to persuade them.  Their fellow soldiers take out guns, capping them each in the head, and one pulls out an incendiary grenade with which to burn the bodies.  The remaining company heads back down the stairs to the room where the woman sleeps.  They are all able to drop safely into the room, although Alia takes a tumble at the end. 

There is a doorway in the room, and as Drake opens it, the woman on the bed gasps.  Looking into the hall beyond, Wally can see a purple glow emanating from a window, and they all file out into the hallway.  The woman on the bed raises her hand, and whispers, “Wait.”  Alia hangs back, though Alex, Morgan, and Gareth all follow Drake and Wally towards the glow.  Alia asks the woman what she needs, to which she replies, “Please.  I can help.  With the Hand Made Man.”  Alia asks what the woman’s name is, and the woman asks Alia to name her.  Alia does not, but continues, asking if the woman is a prisoner.  She sits up, but is held back by the vines in her head.  She wants to help them, but… Down the hall, Drake realises that Alia and Goom have fallen behind and returns to the door, just in time to hear that the woman can help with the Hand Made Man.  The woman’s cost for helping them is her freedom, she wants out of this place.  Drake tells Alia to make the deal, get it done, get out of here.

The woman asks Alia to hold her hand, and then shoot her.  Alia concedes to name the woman, calling her Angel, and taking her hand.  Angel tells her, “The children are his way in, and there’s a bloodline… Your… mentor has kept it locked away.  She’s hiding it from you…”  She falls back into the bed, letting Alia’s hand go.  Goom fires, a double tap to the head, and smashes her with the iron chains he still carries from the train platform.  The book it to where the rest of the group stands around the glowing window.

Looking through, it appears as though they are at least forty stories up in a building.  Wally spends a Glamour, opening the way between worlds.  Where there had been no scent before, something hits their noses now, something Gareth recognises from his debauched clubbing days as scrotal sweat and plastic underwear.  Lovely.

Once again, Alex is bullied through the doorway, this time by a couple of M. Butterfly’s soldiers and everyone else follows.  They burst out of a closet door, glitter, feather boas, g-strings, wigs, and makeup exploding around them as they return to the real world.  They are in a dressing room and the sound of heavy bass music can be heard.

In front of them stands a black man in drag, just finishing his makeup.  “Well,” he says, recognition flashing on his face when he notices Gareth, “You know how to make an entrance!”

Changeling: Session 15

When last we met, our heroes descended to the sewers beneath Manhattan to fight the Hand Made Man. 

The gunfire is deafening, as all of M. Butterfly’s troops and the hired goons let loose on the spider-thing for a few seconds.  As the tattooed man calls for light, the spider can be seen twitching on the ground, slowly dissolving into a colourless liquid.  The soldier she’d been eating before is alive, though he’s wracked with spasms and his hair has turned white.  Two of the soldiers go to him, administering a syringe of tranquilizer which calms him down significantly, before they aid him up to the street level.  The tattooed man says that this reaction is normal for encounters with the Weird.

Goom takes a sniff of the spider liquid, really more of a goo.  It is odourless, not just clean smelling, but utterly devoid of any scent whatsoever.  Between that and the way it looks, they realise that this must be the same substance as the sphere Morgan found in her pocket after The Box.  Goom can also smell the sweet/chemical smell of the Sand, strong in one direction, softer but still noticeable in another.  They decide to follow his nose toward the stronger scent.

A soldier down the tunnel spots something and asks the group to come check it out.  It is the spider-thing’s web, although to Goom and Gareth it bears an unsettling resemblance to the Kevlar hammock Goom had knit some weeks prior.  Smelling it, Goom finds that it is also devoid of scent.  They ponder if this is what Glamour smells like.  They continue on toward the Sand smell.

Ahead is the sound of running water, lots of it, moving quickly.  As they enter another juncture onto a metal catwalk structure, they see a whirlpool and water flowing through gate mechanisms controlling the waterflow.  The water is acrid and smells of human waste.  The room seems to be an older portion of the Manhattan sewer system, likely not updated much from the time it was originally built.  As the water dies down and eventually clears out, they see that there is another tunnel beneath a padlocked grate.  Goom smells the Sand most strongly through that passage, or down another way.  Conversation turns to which way to go, as the best way is probably through the bottom, although they can’t be sure when the deluge will start again, and do they really want to risk drowning in shit?

As they discuss which way to go, someone comments about how old this area is, and how the metal they’re standing on must be really rickety.  Wally happens to look at the catwalk where he stands.  Before his eyes, the metal starts to corrode away, and he quickly looks anywhere else, stopping it.  Alia does the same, but is not quick enough, and ends up falling through, just catching herself.  Goom and one of the soldiers help her up, unscathed.  The soldier makes some comment about how the “Dreamwalkers” shouldn’t be looking at the floor.  Meanwhile, Wally and Alex take a ladder down to the padlocked grate to investigate it.  There is a way to jam the sluice to hold back the waste water, although it wouldn’t be guaranteed to hold.  The group opts to clear the less precarious passage first, following Goom.

There is a squish sound up ahead, and the group halts.  As the tattooed man scouts ahead, Goom takes a deep whiff.  It smells like… well, it smells like a vagina.  As they follow their mysterious leader into the next room, they are met with a cavern of flesh and muscle.  Goom and Wally try to will the vaginacave back into an actual wall, in the same way the metal had corroded just by thinking about it.  As Wally throws himself into it, mentally, Alia doubles over in pain, and the wall quivers, turning back to stone.  Alia yells that this is obviously her vagina, and could they stop.

The tattooed man comments that when he was down here before, fighting the Hand Made Man (for he was part of Yuri-ko’s original team) they saw some shit, but nothing nearly as weird as this.  Gareth asks for the man’s name, but the guy replies that they’re better off not being on a first name basis.  Weighing their choice of paths, the group opts to continue cuntward.  As they enter into the tunnel proper, they can see blood vessels and hear a heart beat.  Wally steps in something that emits a moan of pain and pleasure.  His foot is in the mouth of a man who is crying as he moans and licks at Wally’s shoe.  Wally steps away, disgusted, and Alia notes that the face is that of a past customer.

About 100 yards in, they start to hear many voices moaning and screaming, Alex noting that Alia’s is among them.  Down the tunnel crawl dozens of figures, pairs, all in mid coitus and fused together where their bodies meet.  Some are crawling across the ceiling and walls, others scamper at them on normal elevations.  In each set, the female figure is always Alia.  All of them, like Alia, have bestial claws.  Drake fires at the foremost set, tearing a hole through one of its shoulders.  The fight begins.

As the fuckbeasts come at them with fangs and claws, the soldiers, thugs, and some of the group fire at them, Alia opting to leap forward and go claw to claw.  One of the soldiers lobs a grenade, although it bounces into a hole before exploding, sending ripples through the flesh cave, knocking everyone off balance.  Although some of the soldiers and thugs suffer wounds, one by one the fuckbeasts are taken down, even Alia’s dog gets a kill in.  The remaining pair of beasts suddenly disappear in a puff of purple smoke, as does the fleshy tunnel, revealing a brick tunnel with a grate and archway.  The tattooed leader remarks that he’s never seen the Dream recede like that, it would seem as though the dreamer woke up, but…

Goom smells the Sand grow strong, then weak, strong, then weak, like breathing.  Proving that it wasn’t just a dream, they find a hole where the grenade went off, and twenty feet below is an old subway track.  They drop a rope and all climb down, Wally again taking an awkward landing.  Down the tunnel they spy a flickering light and hear a pipe banging, reminding Goom of what he’d heard when the Mole People attacked.  Instead of the Sand, Goom smells the strong scent of iguana, specifically iguana.  The lead group of soldiers approach the next tunnel opening and then start shouting, “Put it down!”

The room they all enter into is the same one that had shown up in the dreams of Alex, Alia, and others – a large room, the floor sunken, with arcing rows of seats like an amphitheatre and a convergence of several train tracks at the bottom.  This time, there are no candle-eyed Mole People, nor is Alex’s daughter chained at the bottom, although he clearly sees a set of chains and manacles.  The room is lit with hundreds of candles, lanterns, and so forth.

A wooden palate on train wheels sits in the center, and atop it is a door frame with another red door – this one, however, is not bright and new as other red dream doors they’ve seen, it is faded and peeling.  Sitting near it is a fat man, very fat.  He has a human face, but his body is a lizard’s, purple with green marbling, and he has one stubby wing on his back and one human leg instead of a lizard’s.  Surrounding him are beakers, jars, soda bottles, all full of various substances.  Wally recognises some of it as his product, likely dumped down the drain in a moment of panic.  Lizardman is breathing laboriously, eyeing each of them.  A company of eight soldiers surround him, all guns aimed at his head. 

Goom approaches, and senses that the lizardman fears nothing, as though whatever he feared had been trained away.  Wally also approaches, to inspect the containers.  The lizardman asks, “Do I know you?”  Wally doesn’t think so, but they discourse, and the man declares himself to be a half remembered dream, fading.  He wanted to build something, but something reached inside and built him.  He thinks he will wake up soon, and at that Wally steps away quickly.  Lizardman says he needs to finish his work and gestures to a container of Sand, saying it makes all your dreams come true.  Wally wraps his hand in his handkerchief and picks up the jar.  Lizardman keeps saying to finish it, growing more agitated, and one of the soldiers blows his head away.  Purple smoke emits from his corpse.

Gareth, Alia, and Drake hear the sound of autumn leaves rustling down a side tunnel, and they alert their protectors.  Another group of soldiers advance that way, and soon shout for their tattooed leader.  He rolls his neck, flexes his arms, and swordlike appendages spring from his hands, and he stalks down the tunnel.  Alia and her dog follow.  At the end of the hall is a giant FAO Schwarz teddy bear, a giant iron sewing needle piercing its chest, a golden thread, largely decayed, running through the eye and spooling on the floor.  The bear’s head is worn away but the body, stuffed with cotton and straw, is shaking.  Alia backs away and runs to the others. 

I imagine it like this, but more awful.  So much more awful...

Alex takes a moment to investigate the very real restraints his daughter had been held in during his dream before moving on to the door on the platform.  While everything in the cavernous room is aged, the blood and hair on the manacles seem less than a week old, by Wally’s best guess.  Alex tries opening the door, but nothing notable happens – he still sees the other side of the room through it, and no one else notices a difference.  When he shuts it and reopens it however… he feels something being drained from him, the door is stealing his Glamour.  As it does, the paint starts to refresh, becoming slick and new again.  Through the doorway, he sees a hallway made from haphazardly assembled planks, lines going at all different angles, very disorienting.  Standing on the other side of the door, though, Goom can see Alex. 

Still looking through the door, Alex sees a creature of dark blue and grey.  He feels as though he’s seen it before, but cannot recall.  He’s seen enough, for now, and the door is abandoned for the time being, as Alia runs back in to report about the bear.  Goom stays behind to watch the door while the rest of the group, plus four soldiers guarding Alex, return to the bear tunnel.  From beneath the bear, they hear a faint rhythmic clicking.  Wally and Alex try to walk around to the other side of the bear’s head, but the soldiers stop them and unload their guns into the toy.

Hundreds of rats pour out, screeching and running everywhere.  The bear deflates, the rustling and much of its bulk having come from the rat colony.  The clicking continues.  Wally finally approaches to investigate, looking under the bear’s head.  He finds a 10” plastic action figure, his arms and legs kicking at the ground.  As one of the soldiers takes an easy shot at the doll, Alia has a sudden jolt of realization.  This is the same doll that belonged to the little boy she encountered after killing the pizza man.

Changeling: Session 14

When last we met, the Hand Made Man makes his presence ever more known, and the gang starts to prepare for their inevitable showdown.  Also, Gareth is a horse.

Wally, Alia, and Gareth are still in their shared dream, with Wally and Alia sitting astride horse-Gareth, making fun of his giant phallus and Alia wishing he was a unicorn instead.  While they chat, gravity starts to change, with the building orienting itself “normally”.  Gareth starts galloping down the side of the building, fighting against the severe slope.  As the building finally goes vertical, still at least ten stories above the ground, Gareth leaps, willing himself to fly, as he sprouts wings in a burst of rainbows and light.

#sorrynotsorry

As they soar above the ground, an insistent knocking sound is heard, and they wonder if that is something from the real world invading the dream, and if they will (or should) wake up.  As they all try to force themselves awake, Wally begins vibrating and poofs away.  Alia and Gareth take it in stride, and start discussing where they should fly, given that this is a dream and anything is possible.

Then they’re not flying, but standing in a dark stairwell just off the street, facing an imposing black door with an iron screen.  Gareth recognises it as the entrance  to an opium den he used to frequent in the 80s.  The door suddenly falls inward, the inky blank space beyond emitting a fetid smell that Alia associates with bad memories of a sadistic client.  Wanting nothing to do with it, she tries to leave, although the staircase keeps stretching away from her.  She cautions Gareth not to go in, whatever he does.  She tries to leave again, as Gareth turns to peer inward, seeing nothing.  Alia is gone.  Gareth calls into the blackness a couple of times, receiving no answer, and finally decides to go in anyway.  Suddenly he is in the hallway of the den, and he starts tracing back to where he recalls having gone before, ending up in the common area.  Where it used to look like a flop house, it now looks significantly classed up, albeit decaying.

In the centre of the room is a scene from a BDSM club.  Suspended from the ceiling by chains and hooks is a bald man, covered in tattoos and piercings.  Beneath him is a chess board, set up to play, though no one has moved.  Surrounding him is a group of men and women in fetish clothing , staring at him, with their eyes rolled back in their heads.  Meagan is among them.  Sitting in a chair in the corner, knitting, is Goom.  His yarn project is massive, and takes up much of his corner.  Gareth walks around the freakshow nightmare to talk to Goom.  They end up having a rather banal conversation about shared dreams, noting that Wally and Alia were present earlier, and how whenever Goom has lucid dreams, he tends to just let them go by until he awakens.  Gareth thinks this is a fine idea, don’t play into their games, and they allow dreamtime to pass until, inevitably, they both awaken.

Goom is still in Wally’s apartment.  He creeps over to Wally’s room, where he and Alexis are asleep, and listens, sniffing to make sure that they’re in there and alive.  He is satisfied with what he senses.  He grabs a snack and turns on the television when the knocking starts.  He checks out the peep hole, sees nothing, though notes that the hallway looks normal. 

Wally shoots bolt upright in bed, the knocking from the shared dream continuing in wakefulness, and grabs for a table lamp.  Alexis similarly sits up, alarmed.  Wally places the lamp back down, and motions to her that he’s going to go out to check.  He and Goom talk briefly, and the knocking stops, followed by the patter of feet outside.  Goom cracks the door open and sees a little black boy in pajamas disappear into another apartment.  Wally is familiar with the boy, having seen him before.  Realising that it is 4:30 in the morning, he decides against knocking at the boy’s door.  Returning to his room, Alexis has put on some pants and is brandishing the lamp, silently motioning Wally over and showing him the base of the lamp.  It is bugged, not dissimilar from what he had once seen on the pharmacy phone in CVS.  Wally doesn’t say anything, and they go out to the kitchen to start breakfast.

Alex is getting dressed that morning when he hears his closet door start rattling.  Swinging it open and standing back, he sees an orb of distortion, pulsing outward, and on every few pulses it emits a sound like a car in a tunnel, accompanied by violet light.  Alex takes a picture of it with his phone and mass texts it to the group.  The noise gets louder and a green hand bursts forth, grasps at him, shudders, and then the whole mass dissipates.  Alex feels where it was, and that spot of air feels hot and humid, though it normalises.

After receiving the image, the group messages back and forth, finally deciding to meet at a Chinese restaurant to chat.  Alex contacts his daughter to let him know that they’ll have to reschedule because of the paparazzi.  After they’ve all arrived, they discuss myriad things:  Wally’s bugged apartment, the shared dream from the night before, Alex’s freaky closet.  They are interrupted by the familiar whine of the emergency broadcast system.  Due to a major gas leak, the mayor is ordering the evacuation of the entire island of Manhattan.  It will be done in sections, to be as orderly as possible.

This is their moment, they know.  They have to take care of the Hand Made Man beneath the city now.  They contact Yuri-ko, Madame Butterfly; while Wally speaks with her it becomes grossly apparent that she is somehow extracting the memories from a user of one of his “Sand” users.  She informs them that they are having a much more profound effect on the Hand Made Man than her previous group some decades before.  When she hears of Alex’s encounter, she goes odd (or moreso than usual) and says that she is sending assistance.  They will need to attack on two fronts – the physical and in dreams.

Drake, meanwhile, is placing calls to Luthor and other connections.  He ends up making a contract with a group of mercs on the condition that if they show up armed to the teeth and work to take out whatever target Drake indicates, no questions asked and they never speak of it to anyone, that they will be rewarded most highly, financially, including $1000 a head up front.

Before long, a black box truck pulls up.  Wally recognises its driver as the heavily tattooed man who drove Yuri-ko’s limousine some weeks back.  The passenger in the cab of the truck hops out and opens the back, revealing 16 men in SWAT gear.  They have room for four more, and Alex, Alia, Morgan, and Gareth step in.  Within a few minutes, two late model Impalas roll up – these are the thugs that Drake has hired.  Introductions are made, and Drake, Wally, and Goom get in with them.  The motorcade drives away, all three vehicles driving to Wally’s old building, parking around back by the loading bay.

As everyone starts to get ready – the thugs pulling out an impressive collection of illegal firearms, the SWAT guys putting on their gear, weapons being offered to the group for self protection.  The tatted up driver, clearly the leader of M. Butterfly’s gang, pulls Alex aside.  He informs Alex that the six of them are to follow their directions.  Mission one is to get him, Alex, out alive.  Second is to take care of the Thing beneath the city, third is to get the rest of Alex’s friends out alive.  Alex takes this all in and, once the guy has stepped away to make his own preparations, calls the other five around him to let them know.  Drake asks them all to make a pact with him that if anyone abandons their group, bad things will befall them, but if they all stay and protect one another, they will do better in the fight.  Everyone agrees and the pact is sealed.  They know that, though they are each armed with a pistol, that their job in this will be to somehow enter the dream world and tackle the Hand Made Man on that front while the rest attack him with physical weapons.

Goom has an uneasy feeling about the tattooed man leading M. Butterfly’s group, and from afar gives him a good sniff.  It clicks – the tattoos, the sweat, everything – this is the guy who broke into Gareth’s apartment several weeks before, leaving the note for Wally and the suspicious footprint on the window sill.  Goom confronts the man about this, and the guy tells him that they were meant to find the footprint.  Goom then tells Gareth, who is watching the guy strip down to nothing but a fundoshi.  Obviously distracted, Gareth says he doesn’t mind and the guy can come back any time.  Drake tells him he really needs to get laid.

Alia calls upon her connection to the animal kingdom, trying to summon dogs to protect them.  While she only gets one to answer her call, it is a fearsome looking pitbull who readily joins the already massive group.  The group files into the building – eight of M. Butterfly’s group, followed by the misfits, the remaining eight SWAT guys, and the thugs.  The SWAT team opens a grate in the basement, dropping a rope down into the sewers.  Everyone manages to get down, even the dog, although Wally lands a bit hard.

The air is thick, although there is a mercurial scent playing in with the typical rancid sewer smell.  They keep catching whiffs of cotton candy, sweets, ash, and a distinctly chemical smell.  Goom, taking it all in, realises that he has smelled this chemical before at Wally’s.  There is also a purple haze permeating the area.  Goom indicates the direction in which the odor is strongest, and they head that way.  Though the SWAT team has flashlights mounted on their guns, providing enough light for the small army to see ahead of them.  About 50 feet into the sewer, it opens up into a four-way junction.  When they get within 30 feet of the junction, Alia’s dog starts growling.  They stop, the tattooed man nods, and all lights are extinguished, plunging them into darkness.  They sense an ambush. 

There are noises up ahead, it sounds like a group of people using pickaxes or chisels.  Goom smells rotted meat and acid, something like a wet dog, but it is not the pitt with Alia.  He tries to alert the rest of the group, turning to Gareth, who is immediately behind him, and pinching at his nose to silently indicate that he smells something, when one of the SWAT team calls “ABOVE!” and the area is lit up with gunfire.

At the ceiling of the junction is a giant spider.  Her abdomen is spit open, revealing dozens of wet human children’s faces.  She has ensnared of Yuri-ko’s men and is consuming him.

Changeling: Session 13

When we last met, the Goom-lair came under attack, everyone started hallucinating, and Morgan started dreaming…

Morgan is on the ferry, and the Hand Made Man, possessing the Statue of Liberty, has waded into the Hudson River with its mouth agape, water rushing in, pulling the boat swiftly inward.  As it collides, Morgan awakens with a start, tangled in her blanket on the floor of her apartment.  She texts the group, “Statue of Liberty.  Hand Made Man.”  Looking out her window, she sees two figures in a car parked outside of her apartment.  One figure is taking pictures of her flat.  Morgan opts to carry on normally and not give them anything to use… against her?

Back at the Waldorf, Alia has been raking in the cash, having scored some work off of stranded businessmen at the hotel.  She visits Drake briefly and talks to him about laundering  some of the extra cash she’s been squirreling away, out of sight and mind of her pimp.  She gives him $3000 to start with, not much by Drake’s standards, but definitely something she’d rather keep away from Smoky’s notice.

Wally has gone back to his old apartment complex, where he finds a group of professional movers boxing up his belongings and loading them into a moving van.  When one of them pauses to speak with him, he is promised that they’ll have everything to the new apartment by the end of the day.  Considering he doesn’t have very much to begin with, they’re out in about half an hour.  At a loss, he starts back to his new place, alerting Alex and Goom that there will be movers coming.

Back at Wally’s, Alex and Goom are watching TV and knitting (Goom), when Alex’s burner phone rings.  It is Debbie, his daughter.

“OK, I’m curious.  Who are you?”

“Alex Constant”

“That’s…”

“Messed up, I know.”  As he says this, Alex’s main phone starts ringing, but he lets it go to voice mail.

“Listen, can we meet?”

“Yeah, we can do that.”  His other phone starts ringing again, and again he ignores it.  He and his daughter decide to meet the next day at a Starbucks off of Times Square, around 11:00 in the morning.  As they hang up, his phone rings a third time, and Alex answers it.  It is Debbie again.  She sounds distressed, in tears, says it is dark and cold where she is, and she can hear trains.  She screams, the sound fading as though being pulled away from the phone, to be replaced by heavy breathing.

“Who is this?”  Alex asks.

“You have… our attention,” comes the reply, and the line goes dead.

Alex turns to Goom, who acknowledges that he could hear it on the phone as well, so Alex knows that he isn’t hallucinating things.  He messages the group to let them know, and Morgan chimes in that she has suspicious visitors at her apartment as well.

Gareth has been running around the city, pilfering iron scraps from construction sites and the like.  He’s towing it all home with him in a wagon.  When he gets the messages from Alex and Morgan, he scans the area carefully, but does not notice anyone – or anything – untoward.  When he gets off the freight elevator across from his flat, he notices that his door is ajar.  Carefully stepping into the room, he confronts a youngish guy who is wearing a blue polo bearing an embroidered “Acer Acquisitions” logo.  When questioned, the guy informs Gareth that Acer just bought his building, and as the new owners they are conducting surveys of the residences, and does Gareth have anything to report – leaky pipes, bad heater, loose flooring?  Gareth, highly suspicious and well put off, tells him everything is fine and watches him until he leaves.  Wanting to make sure Kali’s place is not molested, he bounds up the two flights of stairs that separate them.  Not wanting to worry her while she’s still in hospital, he opts to lockpick his way into her flat.

The Acer guy isn’t there, and so Gareth takes the opportunity to clean up the vomit still lingering from Kali’s suicide attempt some days prior.  Without heat, the sick has frozen solid to the floor and toilet, although with plenty of cleaning products and some chiseling, Gareth has it spotless by the time Mr. Acer enters the apartment.  The guy is, unsurprisingly, confused to see Gareth in there, but Gareth just claims he is house sitting, and the guy proceeds with his inspection.  At this point, Gareth does text Kali, although doesn’t let on that he broke in.  Once the guy is gone, Gareth, against what he is sure is his better judgment, messages Drake to ask him to look into Acer Acquisitions.

Drake does some digging and finds that Acer is a brand new company recently formed by one Luthor Grant, and they have recently acquired many buildings in lower-income areas of New York City.  From the looks of it, Luthor is not grouping these buildings together, which would suggest tearing down to gentrify, but rather is seeding the area.  He replies back to Gareth some time later that it, “Looks legit.  Not owned by anyone we hate.  Yet.”  “Yet?” comes the reply.  “Day is young.”

Alex decides that he is going to scope out the Starbucks ahead of time.  Knowing that he (or, Konstantyne) is currently one of the most wanted men in the city, he disguises himself, using a combination of mundane effects as well as his new abilities to alter his appearance.  He leaves, warning Goom of the impending movers and saying he’ll be back.  He finds that the café is not ideal – it only has entrances off the street and no way out the back.  While wandering about the store, he becomes aware that he is being watched by a black van, which is idling with its side door open.  He walks purposefully down the street, and the van creeps along behind him.  Finally, Alex dips into a subway station and loses his pursuers.

A little later that evening, Goom and Morgan are each watching television and catch a TMZ report sensationalizing that Konstantyne has been spotted in Times Square sporting a really terrible disguise.  The NYPD are nowstaking out the Starbucks.  Morgan alerts Alex.

That night, Alia leaves the Waldorf and returns to her regular apartment.  Goom stays at Wally’s, watching the door and cleaning his M16.  Alexis calls Wally and asks if she could come over to his new place because, among other things, he actually has heat.  She’s obviously been informed of some of his new situation (Wally recalls Hank saying that Alexis would be taken care of).  Wally concedes and calls a cab to pick her up.  Shortly after she arrives, meeting Goom, they retire.

Wally dreams.  He is sitting on the couch in his new living room.  There is a knock at the door, quick and reverberating, although a look out of the peep hole does not reveal the visitor.  He does note, however, that the hall is not his apartment hall, but an unknown place with bright red walls, green doors, and dark maple floors.  The knocking comes again, and Wally opens the door to see a kid who he has seen on his floor, although the child is dressed in knickerbockers and other early-century garb.  He is freaking out, babbling about the Hand Made Man, and Wally allows him in.  Just as the kid enters, everything slows to a crawl.  Wally, somewhat lucid in his dreaming, has willed a gun into his hand as he forces the door closed.  Something is pushing back and a figure storms in.

The thing is made of Erector Sets, with a face of bolts and gears.  The kid runs, the erectorman giving chase, paying no mind to Wally, who fires at the Hand Made Man.  One hits, and the thing yells.  Another shot shatters the window, and it bursts into a vacuum, sucking out all three figures.  Wally hangs onto the window ledge as he watches the kid and the Hand Made Man running down the face of the building.  Wally tries to pull himself back into the apartment, but he is fighting gravity, and finally plants his feet on the side of the building, standing upright, and his gun is floating beside him.  He grabs it and shoots again.  Suddenly, Alia is beside him, sitting astride an enormous black horse.  She wears a long feather boa that pools on the building at her steed’s feet.  “Why are you, like, the coolest person I know?”  Wally asks her as he fires another shot, squarely hitting the Hand Made Man, sending it tumbling down the building. 

Admiring his marksmanship, Alia declares, "Giddyup," and gestures with her head for Wally to climb aboard, which he does, coolly leaping onto the horse, sitting behind Alia, as she spurs the beast to gallop after the Hand Made Man.  As they ride, they hear the horse’s hooves breaking windows as it speeds down the building, but there is another noise scraping along with them.  It is the stallion’s enormous phallus, dragging on the ground.

Wally fires again at the monster, sending it flying off the building to crash upward through another structure across the street.  The boy stops running and turns to Wally and Alia.

“You all right, kid?”  Wally asks.

“Why am I here?”

“Are you dreaming?”

“I think so.  Why are you in my dream?  This can’t be all of our dreams.”

Wally and Alia aren’t sure how to answer him.  The kid seems weirded out by the giant horse dick anyway, and says he has to go as he fades out and disappears. 

What I get for searching "comically large horse cock"...

Wally and Alia take a moment to discuss the concept of shared dreams.  Alia decides, what with this being a dream and all, that she will ask the horse his name.  Gareth suddenly realises that someone is talking to him, and replies with the only thing that seems immediately relevant. 

“Oh dear god, I’m a horse.”

Changeling: Session 12

When last we met, our heroes dealt with the aftermath of a brutal winter storm, and had their lives invaded by a frightful figure known as the Handmade Man.

In his lair beneath the city, Goom takes a defensive position after taking something from his knitting bag, as large bandaged hands begin bending his door back.  More and more hands appear, forcing the heavy door, as the beam across it cracks and the door bursts open.  The tunnel beyond is filled with thousands of the city’s homeless, shoulder to shoulder, as far back as Goom can see, some sitting atop the shoulders of others, all holding improvised weapons – pieces of rebar, broken 2x4s, rusty pipes.  Every eye is black, a gleaming star sparkling within.  Goom grabs his gun and the communication radio and bolts out the back way. 

The man at the front of the group, speaking with the voice of Goom’s old drill sergeant, shouts, “STITCH HIM UP!”  The horde roars and charges, the intensity of their footfalls shaking things off shelves.  They chase him through the winding tunnels, the din of screaming all around.  Turning a corner, they crash over each other like rushing water, not one stopping, as bodies are blindly crushed under the flow.  Taking advantage of the few extra moments this buys him, Goom scurries into a small service tunnel, which leads him to a sewer causeway.  The mad horde obliterates all light behind him as they crush into the small tunnel, a wet crunching noise following him as he exits to the street.

Goom finds himself about two blocks from his usual exit.  With the city still at the mercy of the snow and ice, there are not many people on the street.  He heads towards the group’s original church meeting place and radios to Morgan that he is fine and indicates his destination.  She informs the others and Morgan, Gareth, Alex, and Drake convene upon the church with him.  Alia joins them as well, her face wrapped in a scarf to hide the gashes (now stitched up at an emergency clinic) she received from the man at the pizza parlour.  There are many homeless at the church, though none of them bear any resemblance to the attackers beneath the city.  They are taking advantage of the food and space heaters that have been provided, again, by Luthor Grant.  Feeling relatively safe here, Goom launches into the tale of his morning, and at the mention of the Handmade Man, Alia and Gareth relate their alarming tales of him as well.

As they discuss, their attention is drawn outside by the ringing of a bicycle bell.  Looking out the door, they see a tandem bike going by on the sidewalk, ridden by two enormous goldfish with human limbs.  The piscine cyclists make a hard left, riding right into – and through – the brick wall of the church, disappearing from view.  They all stare dumbly, trying to ascertain if the others saw what just happened.  All of them agree, though it seems that no one else in the church noticed.  Curious, Gareth dashes down and presses his hand against the wall where the fish disappeared.  It feels solid, though it resonates, brick but not brick.  He knocks on it three times.  On the first two strikes, his fist leaves indentations as though the wall were putty.  By the third it is solid brick again, though it bears the impression of his knuckles, as though the brick had been melted.

Unnerved, Alia wonders if the Handmade Man can take over anything in the form of a human, printed images, television, sculptures, and realising that they’re standing in a church with several statues of Mary, Jesus, and other biblical figures, panics.  They decide to leave and head to a coffee shop, Goom being careful to conceal his large firearm under his coat.

Wally is in the lab of his new apartment, scared and weeping, when the hair stands up on the back of his neck – there is someone else in the apartment, walking around his living room.  Arming himself with a substantial piece of glassware, he steps out.  There is a woman, her back to him, wearing a red dress, black pumps, her dirty-blonde hair in a short coiffure.  Wally asks if he can help her, and she turns, revealing her… face?

Le Viol (The Rape) by René Magritte, 1935

Where her face should be is a woman’s naked torso.  She casually sits on his couch and starts smoking.  Out of her vagina mouth.  She reaches toward the coffee table and a crude ashtray appears, looking like a child’s art project.  When she doesn’t do anything beyond that, Wally returns to the lab to make sure he hasn’t accidentally ingested some awful substance.  When he returns to the living room, her head is lolled back and she is twitching.  Again, Wally tries to address her, and again she does not reply.  Giving up and figuring he’s hallucinating, Wally goes to take a shower. 

A couple of minutes later, the door opens.  He’d locked it.  The woman walks in and begins to undress.  Wally steps out of the shower (which isn’t difficult, as the bathroom has one of those walk in deals with no doors) grabs the lid off the toilet tank, and swings.  His arms reverberating with the impact, she falls forward, and Wally is treated to the sight of a woman’s face on her lower back.  She starts yelling at him, from her back face, berating him, and calling him Kenny.  Wally, wanting nothing further to do with any of this, grabs his clothes and exits the bathroom, using a chair to jam the door shut from outside.  The door rattles and the woman’s voice keeps going, soon joined by a man’s voice, and they have a heated discussion that leads Wally to believe that Kenny is this woman’s son and that he’d hurt or killed her.  Wally dresses, and catches sight of the ash tray which bears the crude inscription “To Mom ❤ Kenny”.  Wally calls Gareth.

While the group is walking to the coffee shop, Gareth and Wally discuss what is going on in the new apartment.  Realising that they are not far away, the church and Wally’s new building are both on 21^st street, the group decides to visit Wally instead of Starbucks.  Drake gets a cab for himself, Alex, Alia, and Morgan.  Gareth, still fuming from their argument, opts to walk the ten blocks, and Goom joins him.

When they arrive, first the cab group, followed a few minutes later by Gareth and Goom, they are greeted by the building’s doorman and shown up to the 23^rd floor.  While they wait for the walkers, Alia turns on the news.  The leading stories are:

- Konstantyne has disappeared and the police are looking for him.  EMTs on the stage saw a corpse, assumed to be a stunt man, and that body is also missing.  Police are questioning Konstantyne’s manager, Lanny Dorkin.  There are rumors that the illusionist fled the scene in a limo, but later ditched the ride and has been MIA ever since.  There are pending civil and criminal charges, involuntary manslaughter, for the audience deaths, the death of the assumed stuntman, and the ensuing cover up.

- Luthor Grant continues to hand out emergency supplies to the city’s poor.  He is joined for a photo op by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, with their arms around each other’s shoulders, shaking hands.  The mayor-elect has joined Grant in his humanitarian efforts and has nothing but praise for the man.

- Local gas companies are looking for the source of an assumed leak as people in a significant portion of the city are reporting hallucinations. 

At this last story, when an outline of the effected area is shown, Wally goes pale.  The area is centered on his old building, which until now was Hank’s centre of operations, and pretty much aligns with Hank’s area of distribution.  Wally’s new building and the church are within the effected radius.

Once everyone has arrived, they bring each other up to speed, discussing their hallucinations (which Gareth and Drake both recognise as being tied to surrealist artworks) and the threat of the Handmade Man.  Gareth suggests that the Man might be one of the Vanishers, and they all agree that Madame Butterfly might know something about it.  Drake gives her a call.

It turns out she is very familiar with the Handmade Man, although she’s horrified at the mention, as in the 1970s she had assembled another group similar to theirs, and they brought him out of his realm and killed him down in the subway beneath the city.  As she’d mentioned before, these creatures are sensitive to iron, and the group in the 70s had pinned the Man to the train tracks using a giant iron lance.  What was left of his body would have been in the area of the gas leak, and though it has been quiet for the last 30 years or so, Yuri-ko suggests that they check down there.  She also offers that if any of the group wish it, they can shelter in her “cage”, designed to keep out the Vanishers.

Armed with this bit of knowledge, the group tries to figure out what to do next.  Wally is convinced that the remains of the Handmade Man lie beneath his old building, and that the drug “Sand” which had excited Hank so much is connected to the influence of this powerful entity.  Goom sticks around Wally’s new place, as Goom has nowhere safe to stay at the moment, and Alex decides to pause there as well for a time.  When the others leave, Wally goes out to buy food for the new apartment and to check out his old apartment, to see what can be salvaged.

Drake invites Alia back to the Waldorf, giving her the opportunity to pick up a higher set of clientele, businessmen stranded in Manhattan by the storm.  Drake returns to his room and begins making calls.

Gareth returns to his apartment and removes any artworks that could be conduits for the Handmade Man, stashing them in a closet.  He then goes out around the city to dumpster dive, hoping to find scraps of iron that can be used to arm the group against their new foe.

Morgan similarly goes home, removing knick-knacks and art that seem risky.  She lies down and naps.  While she sleeps, Morgan dreams that she is riding the Ellis Island ferry.  She is doing a Tarot spread for another passenger, a man, who looks as though he is out of time, his attire suggesting someone living during the turn of the 20^th century.  She flips over a card, the Inverted Handmade Man.  This is not a good sign, she tells her customer.  Suddenly there is screaming at the bow of the boat.  The cause is not hard to miss.  Standing in the river, water rushing into its gaping mouth, is the Statue of Liberty.  A voice bellows from her, “I AM A HANDMADE MAN”

You know, close enough and just as horrifying.