Mage the Awakening - The Mysterium.pdf - Mage - The Awakening - RPG

Michael Goodwin, Jess Hartley, Peter Schaefer, Malcolm Sheppard, John Snead

Contents

Censorious

“Have you ever eaten a human heart, Garield?”

“No, Hierarch.” He uses my real name. Where I come from, that’s like mocking a Sicilian’s momma.

“Neither have I, but your incompetence is making me positively famished .” He grins that big, old lion’s grin

of his, the kind where you half-expect a femur to come jutting out of his teeth.

“Yes, Hierarch.”

“Cannibalism is unfortunately topical today, Garield.” He gestures at the thing in the cage. If you inspect the

lines of its body and squint a bit, it almost looks human. “I’m glad this creature’s with us instead of prowling

the docks, but you only caught it because it’s stupid. We wanted its handlers. And they wanted this.” He holds

up the book again: Kendall Hart’s Dark Musings II.

“We tried.” My mouth opens to say more, but I shut it. What am I going to say? This is the Nemean, Hier-

arch of Boston, supreme cat-herder of the joint. I slouch in deference, throw on my coat and think, call me,

Khonsu, you bastard.

• • •

Kendall Hart: A nerd’s nerd with a talent for occult trivia. He’s the most successful author you’ve never

read, unless you know what a d12 is or that the late James “Scotty” Doohan only had nine ingers. In that

case, you might have run across articles in a few, sparsely populated corners of the Net. Trapezoid Online

and Recreational Forteana are good bets. If you belong to that acne-sprinkled demographic, you’ve probably

read things such as “Queen Cthulhu,” or “Da Vinci’s Robots.”

You could call my cabal (Ophidian Logic’s our name) Kendall Hart’s fan club. We buy all of his books.

By “all,” I mean every single copy. Having been in the book trade before my Awakening, it fell on me to

pretend to be various distributors, independent bookstores and giggling fans. We’ve managed to corner the

market on Mr. Hart because he knows too much.

Most of his articles aren’t dangerous. hey mainly explore burning questions about what dinosaurs in

Renaissance Italy would be like or whether L. Ron Hubbard’s aliens could beat up Grays. But when he

compiles a book? hat’s when it gets interesting. He starts out with collected articles, but he likes to pad

them with nifty little extras like bits of coded text and strange allusions. hen he tops it all of with a

couple of new essays and sends the book to his publisher. hose extras are the good stuf — and the danger-

ous stuf.

Crowley’s Bathroom describes the Temple of Chthonic Emanations perfectly, and better than some rather

aged Mysterium records. We only dug up the Room of the White Well after he mentioned it in a sidebar.

Prologue:

Martians Ate My Brain includes about half the instructions you need to activate the Viridian Astra. Five

copies of that got loose once, and that earned us a violent little trip to Mumbai.

He’s a ticking time bomb — and a goose laying golden eggs by the basket load. I couldn’t accept the situ-

ation at irst. I’m a Censor, after all. It’s my job to stare at the rusty spigot of Truth in search of rogue drips.

To s t r e t c h t h e m e t a ph o r, I k e e p t h e l e a k s d i s c r e e t ; I d i v e r t t h e m t o c e r t a i n r e s e r v o i r s w h e r e t h e r i g ht p e o p l e

can drink.

We k now a lot about Hart. He’s a happily married bibliophile and doesn’t use the least spark of sorcer y.

I’ve spied on him a couple of times. As far as we can tell, he likes to pull all-nighters for his books. My

theory is that this sleepless, creative frenzy pushes him into an autonomic state, rendering him a it host for

certain cacodemons. (I explored the technical details in a paper on the subject; give me the right code word,

and I’ll let you read it.) I don’t know for sure, because we’re afraid that if we cast spells to close to him, we’ll

cut him of from the source. Magic often screws up these anomalies, or makes them more dangerous than

they already are. hey don’t even let me scry his all-nighters.

I’d have loved to have been in his head when he wrote Dark Musings. He sandwiched in a description of

an Imperial spell between bits on Islamic superheroes and brains in a vat. hat was a major coup for Ophid-

ian Logic. All we had to do to keep the book safe — and keep Hart alive — was shoot a Guardian of the

Vei l i n t he face a nd g ive a Liber t i ne a sol id beat i ng. My a r m st i l l hu r t s when it ra i ns.

Hart’s done it to me again. My bags are tagged, and I’m on a bus to Chicago, all to save Kendall Hart

from cannibals who want his latest work — and lunch.

• • •

Every mage in Chicago is a crazy bastard. Let me ask you: If you felt your spirit soar to the heavens and

managed to write your name in stars, if you broke the shell of the Lie to grasp the lightning of Creation in

your hand, would you come back and think, hat’s why I should be in a baseball team?

I don’t have time to complain about this to the Awakened Chicagoan at hand. Instead, I manage the fol-

lowing:

“Hey, ugh!”

“Ugh” is the sound I make when an aluminum bat hits me in the gut. Or any other kind of bat, really.

he unknown god that poured this dude into his Cubs shirt had a ine appreciation for the male phy-

sique. I double over to an excellent view of his six-pack, straining against the cotton. A jarring bat-smack

on my back treats me to a close-up of his shoes.

“Didn’t you see our tags, Mysteryman?” His voice is an octave too high for his body.

“Ugh.” I go fetal. It hides my hands.

“You’re supposed to ask permission before you enter our territory.”

I mumble; the mudra’s almost done. I smell ozone; I always do. My eyes roll back, and I remember the

hrone of the Presence. I never believed until Dad died. We scattered the ashes, but it was windy. hey blew back

and stuck to my hand. And then the ashes were gray clouds and the clouds held the hrone and there were a thousand

wings, and God’s face — and it was mine, my face, burning my eyes, leaving the afterimage of the Shape. It falls to

earth like an angry star and lights up my ashen hands.

So when the bat comes down again, I catch it in both palms. he lightning in my ingers arcs through the

metal nicely.

I swallow back a bit of puke and dust myself of. Mister MVP is lying on the pavement, twitching ad-

equately.

“Let’s start this conversation again. My name’s Khonsu. I am indeed a ‘Mysteryman.’ You’re a member of

the Game of Geometric Perfection. Your name is Grand Slam. Your name , on the other hand is…”

“Okay man, I’m listening!” Bo ‘Grand Slam’ Dodson grips the edge of the curb and looks up.

“I represent members of Ophidian Logic. Your partner, Lefty…”

“Southpaw.”

Contents

“Whatever. We’ve dealt with her before. We’re not interested in the South Side except for access to one

particular city block. hrough her, we paid you people a lot of money for the privilege of visiting from time

to time. his leads me to wonder why the fuck this courtesy just manifested as a base hit to the ribs.”

“Two murders in the ’hood, man. We usually tip of the cops, but these ones don’t leave any psychic resi-

due. hat means one of us is responsible. You come in all lit up, and I don’t know your face, man.”

“Right, right. Okay, Slam, you need to know three things. First of all, the killers probably aren’t Awak-

ened, but they are some pretty dangerous guys. Second, I can’t ind my cabal. hird, we’ve now established

that I can kick your ass, so don’t get any ideas re: Point the Second. But as you did violate a sworn agree-

ment between our cabals, I thank you.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re going to work of your debt by helping me. By the way, how’d you know my order?”

“I had a kickass prophetic dream last night, where I met a man carrying a black book. He turned my

sword east, and we journeyed to a tower there to rescue a blind man — kind of like Homer.” Grand Slam

shakes his head like one of those shaggy dogs fresh from a swim and rises to a crouch.

“he poet? hat is indeed, uh, kickass. he place we’re going is actually east of here. If you igured me

out, why’d you hit me with the bat?”

“Nature of prophecy, man.” He grabs the bat a bit warily. “hings might have unfolded badly if I second-

guessed proximate causes. Anyway, what’s the plan?”

“We’re going to kidnap an obscure speculative iction writer to save him from a cannibal cult bent on

destroying the world.”

• • •

In the elevator to Hart’s apartment, it occurs to me that my old plan revolved around Smooth Rex, who

uses beguiling spells about as liberally as his cheap cologne. Without his winning charisma (since he’s miss-

ing along with the rest of my cabal), I have to think of another way to get Hart out of there. Kendall Hart?

his large man with a bat and I want to take you out on the town! Mr. Hart, as your biggest fan I’d like to treat

you to your irst stalking. I know you’re nervous, but I’ ll try and make sure the experience helps us both grow. My

mind soars through dump mode and entertains various facetious and dumb ideas until Slam and I turn the

corner to his door. It’s decorated with a Popsicle stick sculpture of Cthulhu. It rattles when I knock.

“Who is it?” echoes through the door.

“Uh, Kendall Hart? I’m Rory, uh, Ganzfeld. I’ve got a check for you from your agent.”

Click. he door opens. Kendall Hart’s eyes are framed by big, practical glasses. He’s wearing a Hawaiian

shirt and khakis. “Ganzfeld? Like the psychic experiment? hat’s unlikely. Did Steve put you up to this?

He —”

Slam’s supposed to grab Hart at this point, but he doesn’t. He points down the hall instead. I follow his

lead and see a stringy-haired woman. She’s leveling a shotgun. Right before my eyes roll up behind my

head and the angels come to serve me again, I notice that she salivates like a hungry junkyard dog.

• • •

Ms. Hart is a formidable woman, or maybe she just wears shock well. She deftly chain smokes my

cigarettes as she thrusts a rolled-up towel under Slam’s head. Slam’s lying on her dining room table, uncon-

scious but breathing. he cultist’s corpse is lying in her tub. She says the fresh burns on my arm look like

alchemical symbols. hat’s a hell of an observation from a Sleeper.

In a traumatized monotone, Hart says, “Well, honey, I think they also bear some resemblance to Eno-

chian characters, huh?”

Melanie Hart glares at her husband. He gets up and starts a pot of tea.

“So what you’re saying then, Rory, is that Ken’s books are all true?”

“Not every word. Just some of his late-night output. he main thing is that you should visit family

somewhere out of town for a while. hree weeks sounds good. Dark Musings II has a section that this cult

wants.”

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