Wednesday, August 30, 2017

M-Com Mission Report - Operation: Jealous Touchdown



M-Com Campaign


The Mexico City recruitment mission was left primarily to Kasper and Carracci while Katkemat and Thomas handled the situation in Mexico City. Part of Carracci's time was devoted to spending on the research that would come to fruition as mentioned in other operation reports but she was still able to provide substantial aid on this operation. Between Kasper and Carracci's efforts they were given a list of nine locals who likely had the skills that would be necessary to aid in the ritual on Cinco de Mayo.

Amanda Machado was a practitioner of Santeria thirty years old who had a reputation for being involved in vigilante activities. She lived on the outskirts of town and worked manual labor to make ends meet.

Ernesto Mingo was another Santeria practitioner of twenty-nine years of age who was known to use his magic and connection with spirits to cheat at gambling. He lived in the center of town near the parts that were frequented by tourists and thus had the occasional gambling house.

Ale Pena was a Spaniard recently moved to Mexico from Europe. He was a Hermetic magus who had just completed his apprenticeship and was looking to start his own life independent of the masters and societies that dominated Europe. Among other things, he was known to craft love potions.

Ines Vela practiced a blend of several native traditions including Mayan and Aztec rituals. She was sixty-two years old and known to work with a criminal element that engaged in small time smuggling of counterfeit brand items and digital piracy.

David Villanueva was a hot-headed brujeria of nineteen years of age who had been battling rumors that he was a fake. As such he'd recently been flying off the handle and performing grandiose acts in an attempt to prove his magic was real. As a brujeria he is also prone to dealing with spirits that are rather more questionable than usually desired.

Violeta Aguado was a Santeria practitioner of thirty-two years of age and was the recommended name by a lot of individuals who knew about the supernatural but were not themselves that knowledgeable in it. Rumors among the local mystics stated that Violeta's apprentice was the real talent.

Perpetua Ramirez was forty-five years and claimed to be Wiccan but really used that as a front for the fact that she dealt with eldritch entities from beyond the boundaries of space and time. She had worked with many of the local mystics however, and most were not aware that she was not what she said she was.

Varinia Noguerra had only recently taken up the mystic arts having somehow stumbled into a legitimate Wiccan practices. Three months ago she was very publicly involved in a supernatural incident and had thus become something of a super-star in the eyes of locals looking for supernatural advice.

Roque Mendez was a fifty-one year old Voudoun who was known to owe a lot of favors to numerous Loa. He had a reputation for doing his best to be a force of good in the area and had been referred to as a sort of "low level Harry Dresden."

With this list in place, the team identified Perpetua and David as the major red flags. David because they did not like the fact that he was prone to flying off the handle and Perpetua because they were concerned with the sort of eldritch entities she dealt with.

Upon landing, they set their operation headquarters in an Air BnB and Carracci set up several programs and automatic watches to warn them if Suidobashi Heavy Industries made any moves that they needed to be worried about. Due to concerns of staying under the radar, Carracci was forced to create a system that would only give warning with a delay in order to avoid triggering any digital alarms to the watchdog's presence.

They decided to head to Perpetua's house on the outskirts of town first. It proved to be within an unregulated part of a Mexican Government owned wildlife preserve that featured several camping grounds. The magics of the place made it something that was naturally overlooked or avoided unless you were specifically looking for it. As they approached, Kasper sent Valeria and Price to flank around to the other side of the building and they started to become aware that this section of the wilds felt watched and dark.

Once they were at the house, the presence of several Wiccan style talismans were visible, but Carracci was able to identify the fact that the geometry was very deliberately wrong in places. As if designed so that the Wiccan stuff looked real but had no chance to actually activate and interfere with what was really the power in the area. Kasper meanwhile began to recognize the touch of the Deep Ones, eldritch entities that had yet to gain a strong hold on the world and mostly operated through cultists though occasionally one or two had been managed to be birthed into a physical body.

As they came to these conclusions, Perpetua came out to her porch and knowingly sat in her rocking chair, waiting for them to approach with a smile on her face. Kasper spoke and said "I don't have time for this" before turning around and leaving, calling Valeria, Price and Carracci to join him. Perpetua blinked in confusion as she watched him leave.

After they were well clear of Perpetua's domain, Kasper made clear his reasoning. Perpetua's masters were dangerous, of a scale significantly less than what they were currently dealing with but still of a scale that made that difference unimportant to humans, but they did not have a legitimate foothold in their reality. He thus settled with reporting her position and focusing on dealing with the ritual to hold off the multiverse-devourer first.

From there they moved on to speak to Amanda Machado who looked significantly different than someone would expect from a mystic. In fact she was well-muscled and showed a lot of the wear and tear working skilled and manual labor leaves on a person. They learned from her that they had recently had a stirge infestation which she handled with help from Varinia Noguerra and a friend of hers from the local factory who was an ex-soldier by the name of Cristo Espiridion.

Despite Kasper helping himself to the contents of Amanda's fridge without bothering to ask, they were able to impress her with the seriousness of the matter and get her support in the upcoming ritual. She confirmed that Violeta Aguado was indeed a much less talented mystic than she pretended to be, though she did know what she was about still, and that the strength of her achievements came from her apprentice, a girl by the name of Soraya Orellana.

After trading contact information with Amanda, they moved on to speak to Violeta who proved to have an expensive home with gaudy, extravagant taste. Using Katkemat's reputation and the potential for getting a lot of glory and attention out of this, Kasper and Carracci managed to work themselves into her good graces. Violeta made a claim about proving she wasn't just a small fish to which Kasper noted that he was a "small fish" while Carracci was a "tadpole" and that Katkemat was something beyond just "big fish."

ascertain based on what they remembered from M-Com's archives that Soraya was not human and was instead one of the so-called "Mothpeople" though she held a glamour that made her seem human and herself seemed unaware of what she was.

Kasper and Carracci shared a stream of texts relating to a situation analysis where the M-Com analysis team had come to the conclusion that the famous Mothman Prophecies and sightings in the United States had been one of several glimmers spread across the timeline of when the multiverse-devourer had consumed the mothpeople of this timeline and reality. They had existed outside the timeline and thus did not have the full protection of a reality to protect them. In essence they were the canaries in the mine. Somehow, Soraya had managed to escape that by manifesting within normal time somehow.

Deciding they would continue pretending to be only interested in Violeta as a way of not alienating her, they proceeded with the conversation. Their plan was to focus more on Soraya once they had both mystics on hand to speak to, or, better yet, just let Katkemat be her normal abrasive self and identify which one was worth her time. Fortunately for them, when Soraya glimpsed into the future, she came to the conclusion that this would help both her and Violeta, whom she felt a immense sort of gratitude for taking her in even if she was mostly treated like a servant.

With these two recruited, and word of Perpetua's dangerous proclivities delivered to both of them, they returned to the Air BnB and received word from Carracci's watch programs that Suidobashi had been seeking out information on the address of that BnB. Luckily the delay had only be three hours and they had already had most of a plan in place due to Kasper having taken some precautions with this in mind.

Carracci was able to delay the approaching teams of Suidobashi soldiers by hacking traffic signals and other such obstacles while Kasper arranged a dimensional link between the Tokyo base in the mirror sanctum and their BnB. They managed to set up a fake emergency call to evacuate the area of civilians well before the enemy appeared, further causing traffic delays, and used the mirrors to pass between facilities and remove the sniper support teams.

They were then able to lure away the main part of the assault team to a local park where neither homes nor people would be at risk and set up their own ambush. The Suidobashi team was obliterated though it seemed as if they might be able to turn things around when one of the Adessi-Golems made its appearance and start to try organize a defense. Unfortunately for it, Carracci and Kasper had been aware of its appearance and the presence of Valeria gave them analogue with which to attack her connection to the golem even without Thomas's presence. Valeria and Carracci were able to work up a sort of psychic feedback heading back through the remainder of Adessi's shards throughout the world before crushing the shard in their hand.

With the Suidobashi team cleared, they were able to question and recruit the remaining mystics with no trouble. Some of the mystics were being recruited less to be part of the ritual and more to just handle other matters such as the formation of the circles and ritual spaces in the case of Ale, whose Hermetic magic was not a good fit for Katkemat's. Or, in David's case, simply to involve them in something real and get him to get some control over himself rather than always screwing things up by trying to prove his powers were real.

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