Tuesday, November, 1st 2022

• We spend the week going through our normal day to day routines, going work, and spending the evenings nursing our wounds and exploring the house
  • The balefire room (the drawing room) contains:
    • A barometer that doesn't correspond to the air pressure
    • A painting of a dark and sort of of creepy bridge
  • Blaze's room contains:
    • A set of brass binoculars in a leather case
  • Moira's room contains:
    • A collection of vintage postcards rom around the world
  • Declan's room contains
    • Large oil painting of a fancy ballroom full of fantastic creatures
  • Aoife's room contains
    • Chess pieces, but the board is missing
  • Agnes's room contains
    • Brass telescope on a tripod stand
    • Dark moody painting of an underworld full of strange twisted creatures
  • The upstairs central storage room
    • An antique phonograph with a collection of scratched wax cylinders that largely seem to be people trying to record their own voices
      • They're creepy
    • Porcelain dolls with cracked faces
  • The kitchen
    • This is the one room that was modernized back in the 70's
    • The appliances are all functional, if old and dated looking
  • The library
    • The books seem to largely be blank, but when holding one for a while it starts to fill in
  • The downstairs storage room
    • Full of boxes that look like they've been gone through
    • A collection of preserved butterflies whose wing patterns look like various human faces
• We get word that we (as in the local Changelings) are all getting together this Saturday for training down at the SunTrust building
• All over the news is a story about an entire family of four and a neighbor that were murdered by a friend

Friday, November 04, 2022

• Friday afternoon each of us has something that crops up
  • Blaze has a meeting with her agent, Sandra Paris
    • Sandra tells her about a project she's gotten her work on, that's being filmed in town based on a comic called Frostbite, which is a sort of Last of Us meets Snowpiercer
  • Agnes has a parent/teacher conference
    • Her ward was evidently in a fight with another kid in shop class when we were in our fugue state
    • Christopher (her ward) was getting teased by another kid about his dead parents
  • Magpie ends up scheduling a meeting with Aoife that’s related to murder that's been over the news
    • She mentions some no good kids stole a statue of an angel she made and put in her yard
  • Moira is at the studio and some of the kids come in hauling a giant duffle bag that turns out to contain a stone carving of an angel
    • Which is definitely the one stolen from Magpie's yard that she told Aoife about
    • It's not well made
  • While I'm at home sitting with my hoard, Paul drops by
    • He's here to check in on Paddy, and remind me he's got his next payment due next weekend
    • I get him to agree to give Paddy a week's grace in exchange for telling him about the war that's in the offing
    • He asks if it has something to do with the werewolves and the company they hate (he thinks they make cameras)
    • When asked if it'll be as bad as when Stone Mountain blew up, I tell him maybe not like that, but he should expect some folks to end up missing or dead
• Agnes does some digging into the alleged murderer for Aoife
  • Checks his social media presence, looks for anything in the FBI's database
    • Nothing of note; he's a big hunter, and is probably within a few degrees of suspected domestic terrorists
• That night there is a Civil Serpent open house that Agnes will be hosting and Moira will be bringing some of the kids from her studio
  • We all show up and get 4 snakes adopted out
  • After most everyone but us and the kids from the studio have cleared out, Christopher comes over and says that something is happening with the snakes
    • We go to check and all the snakes are hissing and moving in unison
    • "She wakes…the Sleeper wakes," they hiss in unison
• We head back to the freehold after Agnes coordinates to have Christopher taken care of for the weekend
  • We decide to go explore the attic
  • I manage to force the door open, which I thought was stuck, but in fact had a sleeping griffin on it
    • His name is Griff and he may sound a bit like a cross between Opie and Foghorn Leghorn
    • He's from Griffin, and moved up here to be around the trains, since the terminus was moved from Griffin to Atlanta
    • The attic is his nest, and there is a hole out in the roof
    • Griff confirms that during the day it still looks out onto Atlanta, but it's "different"
  • We end up with the boxes from the attic being shifted down to the storage room
    • One is a trunk full of old masks and costumes
      • A horned demon mask, a flowing robe that looks like a night sky full of stars, and a harlequin mask
    • Another is full of old medical instruments including bone saws and forceps
    • The smallest box looks to be puzzle box that we're not sure how to open
• Agnes tries to open the puzzle box
  • After about 30 seconds of working on it, it starts to make a sort of keening sound, which increases in volume as she makes progress towards solving it
  • She divines that the puzzle box nature is woe (versus weal)