[M&M 3e] Defying the Future IC

[Abracadangit]

"Helios!!" Kal cries out, as she watches the fight unfold. Is it her fault, for not being able to cover him? She silently reflects that perhaps her pattern of protection isn't so useful if it leaves a solitary teammate unshielded -- then they become the natural target for any would-be aggressors.

She doesn't know quite what to make of Floral's botanical conjurations, but the nectar certainly feels refreshing. She bows to Floral slightly in gratitude, as her bruised legs feel much more sprightly, all of a sudden -- healing powers, on top of everything else! Kal wishes her abilities were so versatile.

"In time. And look -- the book wizard is fine," Ariadne points out, dryly.

Not bothering to respond, Kal focuses on both the Mover and the Proxysuit at once, and hundreds of red threads begin to form in the air around them, spiraling and spinning together into ropes and cords.

Spoiler: OOC

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Action: AoA +3/-3 Snaring Strands, centered on square AF29, with Cloud Area (15 ft. radius) it should hit both the Proxysuit and the Mover, and with Selective from Dual Needle Weaving, Helios doesn't have to worry.
(1d20+13)[33]

[Dorni]

Surrounded by the Proxybot and its Helper, Helios crossed his arms defensively and his warding runes flared to life. The Proxybot's black bolt hammered those runes and they wavered - for a instant it looked like they might give, but instead it was the black bolt that shattered. But despite the effort the wards couldn't fully contain the energy and black shards leaked through, drawing blood and a pained gasp from Helios.

That was when the Helperbot slammed into the sun god from behind. Already badly tested by the Proxybot, his wards flared wildly under the hammering arms and cables. It seemed like they were about to give again, but Ariadene's threads enveloped the robot and gave Helios the opening he needed to whirl away from the attack. He willed more power into his wards and while they steadied, they shone less brightly. They'd taken a beating, but they'd held, and the nectar Floral offered healed the worst of his wounds.

Helios himself glared at the Proxybot, then snapped his fingers at the ensnared Helperbot - which erupted in golden flames.

Spoiler: OOC

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Move:
Standard: Finishing Attack Mover 2 with PA 5 Combust. (1d20+5)[25]. Crit. Nat 20. On hit, DC 30+Pen/25+Pen vs Damage (Pen) & Weaken [Resistance] (Pen) &
Affliction [Impaired/Disabled] (Cumulative)

[Zelphas]

Nope thinks about making the Proxybots go away--and with a whoosh of displaced air, the last standing Helper and the heavily-damaged Mover do just that; simply vanishing without a trace. The other Mover loses about an eight of an inch of its metal plating, causing some minor damage but otherwise leaving it functional. The Proxysuit tilts its head, rotating so that its faceless front is turned towards Nope. "That is... familiar." Under the flat, unemotional delivery, there is the barest hint of interest.

Floral's berries work wonders for her companions and herself, removing almost all of their bruises and abrasions. Ariadne reaches out with her threads, snaring the other Mover in tightly-wound cords of spectral energy-matter, but the Proxysuit simply slips between the questing red thread with liquid grace, escaping essentially untouched. Helios' golden fire races over the entrapped Mover with an almost musical chorus of rushing fire; the metal contraption comes alight as though it were oil-soaked wood, the Mover simply unable to move before it vanishes in the conflagration entirely.

For a moment, the room settles, and you all can hear approaching police sirens. Hidden until this moment by the sounds of battle, the sirens are now very close.

"There is no further purpose for this altercation," the Proxysuit states, trailing thin red threads that slowly move to attempt binding it once more. "Congratulations are in order, Floral, Helios, Ariadne... Nope. Both of our primary objectives were completed. An equitable trade. We shall meet again." The black, crawling energy flares over Helios once again, a final burst of pain.

With that, the Proxysuit begins to boil, the cape furling upwards to capture the rising black smoke in an orb of crimson with a single, black point in its center. Moments later, the suit has evaporated entirely; a woman in her mid to late fifties with olive skin and curly brown hair, dressed in slightly stained hospital scrubs, hangs in the air for a moment, posed in the same way that the Proxysuit floated just moments before. Her eyes, staring sightlessly before her, roll up into her head, and she crumples, falling the last foot or so into the floor.

The sirens still wail, but underneath them you can hear doors slamming and shouted orders near the front of the museum. Floral recognizes at least one of the female voices.

Spoiler: OOC

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Proxysuit

Full-round action: Self-destruct.

Congratulations; battle is over!

Helios, it probably doesn't effect much unless you want it to, but you do have a DC 31 Resistance check vs. Damage to roll against from the Secondary Effect of the Proxysuit's attack.

Everyone gets 3 Downtime Actions before your next choice to Act or React.

Since you spoke with the Proxysuit directly here, Downtime Actions regarding Doctor Proxy get a +5 bonus for this session of Downtimes.

[Ridai]

Covered in thread and nectar and his own sweat, Nope just stands there for a moment, shaking. It takes some time for him to snap out of whatever state he was in, prompted by things that need to get done, checking on the woman who was in the Proxysuit. Not that he can really tell much other than that she is alive. But he is still shaking.

"A-are you h-hurt? D-do you w-w-want to get out of, out of here?" Nope asks the others.

----------------

Whether or not the others are still there, Nope looks to the lady who was in the proxysuit. He very carefully moves her limbs into a more comfortable (and perhaps dignified) position, so she does not simply lie crumpled on the floor. After, he scoots away two or three meters, sitting on the floor, legs crossed, hunched forward with his elbows on his legs. The tremor in his hands isn't going away. It won't be long before the police will arrive in this room. Nope feels he should probably just leave, that he will probably make things worse for himself, maybe others, if he stays. Nothing is going to happen to that lady in this short moment. She probably won't remember any of the time in the proxysuit. Nothing too bad, in the grand scheme of things, was done during her time in the proxysuit.

But Nope isn't moving, he sits there, waiting for the police. This lady was in a proxysuit. Now she is here, lying on the ground like a discarded puppet. Leaving doesn't feel good. Damn hands won't stop shaking.

Once the police arrives, Nope also feels tension, a lot of it. Knowing something about guns is one thing, he knows a few people who are into that sort of thing. But he just doesn't want to be anywhere near actual ones, especially not pointed remotely at him. Clenching his hands when he will likely get yelled at to put up his hands where they can see them and the like. Anything he will do probably will somehow make things worse. So he tells them: "Th-this lady was in a proxysuit. I think she is unharmed. Physically. P-probably won't remember the time in the suit. She wasn't controlling anything. She was hypnotized in there. Puppeteered by Doctor Proxy. I don't know who she is or where she was kidnapped from. Please take her back, get her medical attention. Sorry for... sorry. I'll try to... clean the damage up now..."

If, for some reason he highly doubts, the police just lets him, he goes and tries to remove the damage done. He has been here often enough to know what things are supposed to look like, though he probably paid more attention to everything after Nora disappeared. If they try to stop him, through his indistinct features slipping from people's minds, he looks kind of nervous, kind of sad, apologizes once more, and just disappears, removing his presence before going about removing the damage in that state. Taking his time. Wants to do this right.

[Quellian-dyrae]

The Proxysuit vanished, leaving behind nothing but questions.

...Well, questions and a formerly-possessed woman.

...And a bunch of scrapped robots.

Plus a mess. Okay, you know what, fine, the Proxysuit left behind plenty. But primarily, for Lily's purposes anyway, questions. As best she could tell, the Proxysuit hadn't taken anything with it. All the other robots were down. So if Proxy deemed their (her? Lily was certain that the words coming from the Proxysuit had been Proxy's own, but she wasn't sure about the voice. In movies and on TV when someone was possessed their voice sometimes sounded like the possessor's, but Lily had no idea whether that conceit would translate to real life) primary goal completed, it likely didn't involve a physical theft. That might also explain why Proxy deemed their own primary objective completed, if their interference had indeed prevented them from getting whatever they had (secondarily?) come here to steal.

(Strictly speaking, Lily would have considered stopping the theft a secondary objective to making sure nobody was harmed and rescuing the victim who was being forced to pilot the Proxysuit, but given that nobody appeared to be in physical danger and Proxy had released the victim regardless, she supposed in terms of goals that required their intervention to achieve, stopping Proxy from stealing something ended up more-or-less at the top of the list. Assuming her assessment of Proxy's assessment of their goals was accurate.)

They had been talking about anomalies triggering each other. So...it was an experiment of some kind. An anomaly...might have been a change in the timeline, maybe? Or something else? As best Lily could tell, the only real change between their arrival and Proxy declaring victory was their initial attacks against the other robots.

And while Lily was still very, very unclear about how Nope's powers worked, if you said Helios is to spells as Nope is to blank, "anomalies" would have definitely made Lily's short list for filling in the blank.

She turned to him to ask if he might have any thoughts on the matter, and saw him sitting on the ground, hands trembling, looking at the woman who had been possessed.

That could wait.

She walked over and briefly laid a hand on his shoulder, before starting to walk around the room, sniffing about for anything...anomalous. She heard the sirens, and the shouts of the police, including the voice of one person in particular that part of her would just as soon avoid a confrontation (she knew better than to pretend it would merely be an "encounter") with. But the fact was that the police weren't going to be the ones who solved the problem of the League of the Future. Lily wasn't going to just scamper off when there might be something to find.

...Okay, and maybe Proxy saying they had achieved their primary objective, congratulating them on the same, and just up and leaving when they had just wiped out their minions and clearly had them on the ropes had kinda offended her pride and left her in a bit of a confrontational mood. Just a little bit.

Spoiler

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Turning on the full senses suite (for our purposes what probably matters is the Analytical Olfactory Senses and Detect Biological) and sniffing around to see if there's anything interesting. Perception: (1d20+15)[20].

...Although I suppose this does also mean I'm on Detect Emotions when the police arrive. Total coincidence of course. I guess technically I'm Routining Insight for 25. By coincidence.

[Abracadangit]

Kal doesn't like the sound of the Proxysuit -- its "objective had been completed"? She thought the whole idea of them showing up was to foil Doctor Proxy's plan, but then it seemed like they got what they wanted anyway. She begins to get the feeling that there wouldn't be many clean victories, in the battles to come; there were ulterior motives aplenty, and with alternate timelines making everything more complicated, it felt as though any action whatsoever was playing into at least someone's hands.

And to top it all off, she'd been punched across a room by a robot. It bruised her ego more sorely than her frame -- something about the whole "Ariadne" mystique didn't hold up when she was being swatted like a fly. What was the point of the threads protecting her if some supervillain henchman could send her sailing anyway?

"You are thinking about this the wrong way," Ariadne chimes in. "Were it not for the threads you spin, then you may very well have not survived, or kept all your pretty little bones in the right places."

"You're right," Kal thinks back, in rare agreement. "I suppose everyone else makes this look easy, is the thing."

"My favorite book wizard weathered quite the attack," Ariadne counters. "And he survived it, and your friends helped him, and now look at him, back on his book wizard feet. There's one lesson he CAN teach you."

"But no magic lessons?" Kal teases.

"Hmph," Ariadne harrumphs. "Not today."

Suddenly the police are there, asking questions and investigating, as they do. Seeing Nope speak with them, Ariadne decides to answer their questions along with him -- he seems very nervous by himself, and she wants to do anything she can to support her newfound friends.

[Dorni]

Helios frowned at the Proxysuit's final words. It had accomplished its primary objective? What did it mean by that? Had the robots stolen whatever it was they were after before they'd arrived? Or...

Helios shook his head and invoked a healing spell.

"I think not," he answered Nope while the last of his injuries disappeared. "We shouldn't run away just yet. I'd also appreciate if you could hold off on repairing the damage they caused. We still need to find out what it was that Proxy was trying to take, and I suppose now is as good a time as any to make introductions to the police."

He starts approaching the unconscious woman, but seeing both Floral and Nope at her side he held back. Lily's healing nectar was potent; she had the situation in hand. Instead he takes few steps towards the approaching police.

Spoiler: OOC

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Will be using Heal/Lifeshell to heal remaining wounds. Whenever its appropriate I'll be Routining a Persuasion 25 to make initial impressions with the police.

[Zelphas]

Spoiler: Floral

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There is nothing that pings your smell in this area; while the textiles were made from various grasses and there are traces of wood matter from decayed handles to the bronze and iron tools, these don't seem to connect with whatever Doctor Proxy is doing.

As you look around, you do come to where the last Helper was disappeared. It had broken the display glass in front of several shards of pottery; the largest is three-quarters of a vase from the Fertile Crescent region circa 800 BC, while the smallest is an irregular lump of clay theorized to be a crude idol recovered from a dig in Turkmenistan, dated to 1200 BC or earlier.

It takes a short while for the police to reach where you are; from what you can hear, they are sweeping and clearing each room as they pass through, moving with a mixture of haste and care. Eventually, however, they make it to the display room where the four of you remain with the unconscious woman (no visible wounds or distress; she seems to be sleeping at the moment). After a moment of shocked surprise, the four uniformed officers have their weapons ready with shouts to put your hands where you can see them, down on the ground, one calling for backup, the works. "Wait, isn't that... the Flower-Girl?" "The threads--some Bronze Links we picked up in the Main Drag said something-- "That one--he's fought the creepy Apophis guy, the one with the magic--I mean--"

Even with the slow recognition from the officers, it takes a several minutes of explanations and back and forth for the (eventually twelve) officers to realize a few things: you aren't in league with the League, you aren't planning to harm anyone, and you are at most only slightly concerned about the guns that they have trained on you.

The twelfth officer to enter the room is in SWAT gear without the helmet, her gun already holstered when she arrives. Fury clouds her dark green eyes, so intense that you can almost see it running through her cherry-blond hair on end. She instantly breaks the unofficial line between the police and the four of you, marching towards Floral like she's planning to deliver Judgment itself down upon her.

"Everyone settle." The last person to enter (bringing the police involved to thirteen) is a man of short stature and stocky build, with grey close-cropped hair, grey eyes, and even a greyish cast to his skin, seeming to blend into his black uniform. Even with this, his voice cracks across the general confusion, silencing the officers immediately. Even the woman marching towards Floral stops in her tracks. "You," the man points to Nope, the light glinting for a second off of the badge on his chest reading Naples, "Stop tampering with evidence. This city may be in chaos, but this is a crime scene. Woods, Brandis, check on the victim, make sure she's stable."

"Sir--" the woman--Woods--began, her eyes never leaving Floral.

"That isn't a request, Woods." The answer hangs in the air for a moment, before Woods gives Floral a look very nearly promising violence later and turns towards the unconscious former occupant of the Proxysuit. Naples continues giving orders to the other officers, sending some to check artifacts, others to cordon off the pieces of the Proxybots, and other duties, seeming to almost ignore the four of you. Finally, he turns to Helios, who has been handling the negotiation with the police for the most part.

"Sergeant Naples," the man states bluntly, looking at each of you in turn. "Arresting you is pointless, but I'm not handing out commendations either; you're civilians, and vigilantism is still being debated in the SC. You could have left before we got here. The fact you didn't means you want something. Mind getting to that, so I can tell you it's above my paygrade and get back to dealing with the mountain of paperwork this is going to be?" His tone is bluff, almost bored, but his eyes are clear.

Spoiler: Floral (Insight)

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The officers have a decent range of emotions. Fear is right there, as is anger, but mixed in is everything from annoyance at these upstarts to childlike glee at "real superheroes" in front of them, though they keep the glee fairly masked.

Hannah is pure rage, so much that you almost miss the worry and relief that twine behind the rage and give them their force.

Sergeant Naples is a brick wall; you don't read anything from him, which is something to note in and of itself. Perhaps he's been on the job so long he knows how to hide his emotions away from even uncommon detection.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Lily's nose picked up little regarding the scene. The police were a somewhat different matter. She smiled a little at the scent of glee coming from a few of them, though they hid it outwardly.

The smile disappeared when one of them called her Flower Girl.

As Hannah started stalking her way, she turned to face her squarely. If anyone was close enough to Lily that they'd have been able to smell a normal perfume, they'd have caught the sudden scent of freshly baked bread wafting up into the air. Hannah hadn't even said anything, but it didn't matter. Just the scent of her anger immediately put Lily back into the frame of mind of their last shouting match, and her own anger rose up in response, without some much as a word being spoken between them.

Sergeant Naples, fortunately, interceded before the two sisters could do their best impression of throwing water on an oil fire. A petulant part of Lily kinda wanted to give a cheeky smile and wave at her, or something, but she resisted the impulse. She wasn't going to bet on being able to maintain professional decorum under verbal assault from her sister, but she at least wouldn't be the first one to break professionalism.

...Well, hopefully she wouldn't. She wasn't going to right this second, anyway.

Stupid that she's mad at me anyway. What does she think would have happened if her team had been here instead of mine. Thirteen cops against the Proxysuit. I took that laser blast and freaking absorbed most of it. If it had been her, what would she have done. Gotten a hole burned through her chest and died, probably. That's what!

(The freshly baked bread miiiiight have maybe actually smelled more like a freshly baked cinnamon bun.)

With Hannah following orders. Lily turned back to the scene. She didn't touch anything, but she considered the pottery. The Proxysuit had been eyeing this display case in particular when they entered, she recalled.

Pottery. Pre-Bronze-Age pottery. What could that mean. An anomaly...a temporal anomaly, she had hypothesized. A...change to history, of some kind? But on pottery?

Lily considered. She read over whatever plaque or whatever there might have been explaining the provenance of the pieces, going back over what she knew of pre-Bronze Age crafts and tools. Did anything here seem anomalous somehow...?

Spoiler

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Long shot Expertise (History) to try to see if anything seems historically anomalous about these pieces: (1d20+10)[12].

It was a long shot, and Lily knew it was a long shot. But follow the theory. Say the Proxybot is here looking for evidence of alterations to the timeline. There were other broken display cases leading to this room, but nothing taken. Why break the display cases if not to take anything? They were made of glass. Glass didn't block normal visual light, but certain types of glass could block certain wavelengths of energy, like glasses or windows that were shielded against ultraviolet light. Some sort of futuretech scanner relying on energies outside of the visual range would not have given any visual display, and could reasonably be obstructed by a barrier of solid glass. But what would it be scanning for?

The obvious answer would have been some sort of trace biological evidence that might have indicated a person from a modern timeline, but that was implausible. For one, her sense of smell should have detected it too. For another, these artifacts would have been handled by modern humans anyway, in digging them up and preparing them for the exhibit and so on.

What Nope - Remy - had revealed previously came back to her. His sister had worked her, at the Museum of Natural History. She had disappeared here. An anomaly. Alterations to history. A woman disappears...trapped in the past...but a woman who works at a history museum, who might be expected to know something about how things worked in the past...but also have knowledge of modern technology and methods...

Lily suddenly turned to Sergeant Naples. "Proxy was examining the artifacts in that case, but didn't seem interested in taking them. I'm not sure, but it looked like they might have been...scanning them, or something, maybe?" Lily had to resist the urge to grit her teeth. Having to maintain a secret identity was frustrating. She couldn't appear too knowledgeable, least of all to the police, who might know more about her civilian identity due to familiarity with Hannah. Which meant that rather than just telling them the practical course of action, she had to present things so they came to the correct conclusions on their own.

"I don't know if there's some way you can do some, like, cop show forensic shenanigans or something and find whatever they might have been looking for?" she said with enough uncertainty to make it sound more like a question than anything, along with a kinda awkward laugh.

Hopefully at the very least it would make them seem more helpful. But that wasn't her objective. She needed to get those shards into a lab, where she could examine them for evidence that one of them might have been produced using some sort of modern methodology (or whatever else Proxy may have been interested in them for; it was a decent hypothesis but she couldn't rule anything out). Lily was sure whoever the FBPD had doing forensic stuff was, you know, fine. Objectively decent. But whoever they were, they weren't her. She knew it...and Hannah knew it. And maybe, just maybe - because she definitely couldn't rely on Hannah here, although she supposed all else being equal Hannah might prefer to have her puttering away in a crime lab examining pottery than out fighting supercriminals - some of Hannah's fellow cops knew it well enough that when their forensic analyst inevitably failed to find anything, they might call in Detective Woods's genius biochemist sister for a consult.

Maybe. Possibly. Couldn't know until you tried.

Spoiler

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As one possible option for mechanically shoring this up...Lily has the Connected advantage. Could I maybe use it kinda in reverse? To prompt the cops to call in a favor from Lily? If that's possible at all, (1d20+10)[13].

Either way let me know if I need or could use any other social checks to sell these shenanigans.

[Ridai]

Oh. Good. No fixing the damage, huh? What this means in practicality is that he will need to check back every now and then to see when this is no longer a crime scene and just fixing it then. Nope really doesn't feel like arguing. He doesn't like arguing very much, especially not with guns having been pointed at him not too long ago.

"Just stuck around to make sure nothing happened to her," Nope tells the Sergeant who is in the process of being an ass. If Nope has not had the chance to tell them she was in a proxysuit, he does so. And then it's just, kinda... waiting for the others to want to get out of here?

[Abracadangit]

"My purpose in staying here was to inform you of what my colleague has spoken. and to introduce myself." With some threads and some quick darts of her needle, she begins the work of picking the rubble off of the floor and softly carrying it off to the side, where threads deposit it against the walls.

"I am Ariadne, and know that I fight for the city of Forester's Bay." She bows slightly, reinforcing the idea that she is here to help, not grandstand for photos.

After assisting with some of the cleanup, Kal takes a look at some of the artifacts that Proxy had been interested in, and then decides to do a quick once-over of the rest of the surrounding area, with her threadwork sense. She imagines a network of phantom threads reaching out of her soul, crisscrossing through everywhere in the museum nearby. Then as she closes her eyes, another eye opens.

Spoiler: OOC

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If any of the artifacts have any mythical motifs, she'll routine General/Egyptian/Greek mythology to learn anything useful. Gonna pop Threadwork Sense and Remote look around, see if there's anything else in the surrounding areas worth noticing or giving off any kind of magical energy.

[Dorni]

Helios held off a moment, not sure why the one policewoman seemed to have it out for Floral. Before he could interject the Sargent stepped in and suddenly it made sense. Woods, the sargent had called her. She was related to Lily. Which meant it was best not to step in just yet.

He resisted the urge to frown when the sargent - Naples - made his demand. It didn't surprise him that the police wouldn't greet their vigilantism with open arms, but it did disappoint him that Naples was starting off with a pre-emptive dismissal. He hoped it was just the Sargent acting gruff rather than the man having his head so far in the sand that he believed the heroes' help wasn't needed. "Then allow me to get right to the point, Officer. What we're asking for isn't anything so onerous. We want to help. We're all trapped under the same dome. Our group here can go up against the League and their minions - but the four of us can't be everywhere."

"Our ask is pretty simple. We want your help to figure out what the league is up to and where they might strike next, so that we can stop them and protect the city."

[Zelphas]

Spoiler: Floral

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With just a simple once-over under slightly-broken museum lighting, you can't note anything anomalous about any of the pieces of pottery.

Naples is still difficult to read, but from the other cops you get a mixed series of reactions. I will need another social skill check to push them in the direction you want them to go. Deception will hide your own explicit interest (and thus the hint at your civilian identity), but will have a higher DC towards actually accomplishing your task. Persuasion will have a lower DC, but runs the risk of making the officers (especially Naples) suspicious of Floral's interest.

Even without turning around, Floral can feel Hannah's glare on the back of her head after she makes her little "comment". She grew up with Lily, so she knows all the tricks the way only a sibling can. Anyone who is in sight of both of them can see the uniformed Woods shoot a long glare at Floral before reluctantly going back to checking over and securing the unconscious woman on the floor. For his part, Sergeant Naples gives Floral a long look before nodding once. "Worth checking. Big part of the chaos is lack of knowledge; any hints on the whats and whys are good, or we're all in the madhouse soon enough."

Nope gets a slightly longer, more piercing look from the Sergeant. "We've dealt with this before," he states simply. "There's a doctor, a psychologist, support group, the works. Nothing to do with me past initial securing and transporting to safety, which is a shame given my charming bedside manner." All of this is stated in the same blunt voice without a hint of irony, somehow.

"So does Watcher, according to him," comes Naples' response to Ariadne, taking out a notepad and sketching a quick comment to himself before storing it again. "Appreciate the statement, and no arguments that you didn't fight the League today, but I'll reserve judgment; keep you in mind if I find a labyrinth."

Spoiler: Ariadne

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Some of the textile fragments depict weaving, with a few adding spiders as motifs, though none directly reference Ariadne. In one, you are able to discern a picture of a woman sitting in front of a loom; on one end she feeds in thread, and on the other she pulls out deserts, rivers, and trees. You're able to identify her as the Egyptian goddess Neith, who was the goddess of creation and weaving (As well as several other domains that escape you at the moment). One of the Helper bots broken here was directly in front of this textile fragment.

Nothing in this room has magical or mystical properties that you can sense.

Finally, Naples turns towards Helios, a slight lift in his eyebrows the only change in expression. "Just to be clear," he begins slowly, "You're asking a uniformed officer to share information on ongoing investigations with four costumed vigilantes, so that the same vigilantes can then interfere directly in these investigations?" His tone, as always so far, has been fairly bland, but his voice is currently pitched not to carry to the other officers around the room. "Are you, in short, asking me to directly flaunt the laws of our state and country in light of this increasingly chaotic, unique situation?"

Spoiler: Insight or Deception DC 20

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Sergeant Naples is difficult to read, but it seems this time his message to Helios is clear; he's messing with him. He seems willign to at least begin helping ,but he wants to hear Helios say it.

[Ridai]

Nope just nods a few times as he turns away when the Sergeant outlines procedures for proxysuit victims. He didn't even imply they don't know what they are doing! Why do people always jump to the worst conclusion?!

On the other hand... support groups. Hm. Going to one doesn't feel right. He got out before anything could really happen. Well. Anything Proxy tried to do. Feels... disrespectful towards the people who basically lost time and were used in crimes. That and saying what did happen to him would be... bad.

So with Nope basically fading into the background, he is aware of what is going on, but his desire to interact just dwindles as fast as his remaining mana for social interactions for the day.

[Abracadangit]

"Hnn, hnn, hnn," Kal and Ariadne snicker, as one. "Very funny, Officer Naples. And we shall keep you in mind if..."

Kal feels Ariadne attempting to pipe in her thoughts. "...we need someone to arrive after the fight is already won."

"...we require external assistance," Kal says, a little strained from having to mentally shush Ariadne.

After answering some more simple questions, Kal takes some time to examine the textile fragments in greater detail.

"She's beautiful," Kal thinks, of the woman at the loom. "Neith, right?"

"Very good," Ariadne thinks back. "An inspiration for myself at the time, one of many. Wherever and whenever you go in the mythologies of the world, there are weavers -- watching, restoring, protecting."

"Always sort of in the background, aren't they."

"They don't have much time for silly adventures or idiotic wars when they're busy mending all the holes that the other gods keep tearing in the world," Ariadne counters, acerbic. "And they have nothing to prove, to the gods or to themselves. Theirs is a quiet strength, born of patience and understanding."

"Hardly sounds like you, though," Kal thinks, with some sass. " 'Patient?' 'Understanding?' I'm surprised you look up to them."

"Hnn, hnn, hnn. Such is the goddess' lot -- I never claimed to be a goddess. But I can appreciate their position, healing a world that is forever coming apart at the seams, with little in the way of gratitude. So I offer them my prayers, when I can. It is the least they deserve."

"I never thought of you as the faithful type," Kal thinks. "I didn't know you paid respect to the gods."

"Not to the gods... only goddesses," Ariadne corrects. "We all inhabit a world that was not made for us. The least we can do is walk through it together. Now go, check on your friends. We can discuss such things later, if you like."

Kal sees Nope looking sort of drained, so she figures maybe now isn't the best time. When Helios has a break in talking to police officers, she gets his attention.

"Helios -- one of the robots was examining a piece of a textile that shows Neith, the goddess of weaving. Doesn't that seem like an odd coincidence?"

[Quellian-dyrae]

Spoiler

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For the additional social check, I'll go ahead and toss more Persuasion. (1d20+10)[12], and since this one is more directly part of a face-to-face interaction, add +5 against anyone who would be subject to Attractive (from the Limited skill bonus; I'm pretty sure the actual bonus from Attractive doesn't apply since this isn't really an attempt to seduce, deceive, or improve reactions).

There wasn't much else Lily could expect to figure out without getting the pottery into a lab and giving them a proper analysis. But it would behoove them to be in good standing with the police, so she nodded in agreement with Naples's assessment of the need for knowledge, and then said, "Is there anything we can do to assist your efforts or investigations? I think the more smoothly we're all able to work together, the better it will be for everybody."

"And myself...I mean, yes, I would absolutely say that this situation is dire enough that if you perceive us as vigilantes, you should one-hundred percent flaunt any laws that would get in the way of us working together to keep this city safe, come down to it. But to be even more precise...I don't think it's correct to call us vigilantes. We aren't here to fight crimes." Okay, to be fair, there was that one thief, but that was kinda a wrong place at the wrong time sort of situation. "We're here because this city is under attack, and we can help protect it."

[Dorni]

Helios resisted the urge to sigh. Well, it might have been too much to hope that the police would welcome them with open arms, but at least they weren't openly hostile. But he didn't think Lily had thought through her appeal either. If they were responding to the city being under attack by a hostile invader, then didn't that make them essentially the city militia? He was an accountant, not an expert on criminal law, but going down that road felt like the wrong one. To the lawyers he'd suffered working with directly flaunting the law was a high crime, but nothing brought them more joy than creative interpretation.

"If it makes you feel any better, we're not vigilantes. Vigilantes attempt to enforce the law without the proper authority. We're not trying to supplant you as local law enforcement. I'm more than happy to leave that part to you. We're just good samaritans who happen to show up and quell a crime in progress. If we happen to hear you or your officers discussing an investigation while we're giving statements at a scene, well, sometimes that just can't be helped can it?" he finished blandly. If the officer was going to be a hardass then so be it, but there was a giant ever-present dome over the town. He could at least pick a legal permission structure that let him do the right thing.

Helios turned to Ariadne when she called for him and frowned in thought at the information. "Doesn't feel like a coincidence to me. He sent a dozen robots and they skipped a bunch of other exhibits. Feels more like they had some idea what they were after. I wonder if Proxy thinks there might be an edge to be gained from mythology." There was no shortage of figures with a connection to old myths in town. Himself included, he supposed.

Spoiler: OOC

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I'll throw in a persuasion check as well (1d20+15)[18]
Also as soon as Helios gets a moment he'll take a look at the exhibit as well and see what clues he can find. Investigation (1d20+10)[17]
Also also, figure the answer is no but might as well check - does Helios sense anything about the exhibit with his mystic sense?

[Zelphas]

At Floral's first question, Naples blinks and squints slightly, giving her a closer look. "Maybe it's the atmosphere making me suspicious, but you seem to be inordinately interested in assisting in the investigation. Beyond protecting from attack or quelling crimes in progress."

"Sergeant Naples, the victim's pulse is stable, but slow," Detective Woods' voice broke in suddenly, her voice laden with professional urgency. "I'd like her to be moved to a doctor's care ASAP." Her eyes flicker back to Floral and then away again, to her patient.

"Then prep her to move; the scene's clear until forensics arrives in any case." Naples responds, sounding vaguely surprised at the interruption. He turns back to the four of you, drawing in a breath.

"...Right." Sergeant Naples looks over each of you in turn, listening patiently to your explanations. "You're not vigilantes, you're freedom fighters. Or Good Samaritans. In either case, perfectly legal, and here to help." He rubs the bridge of his nose in an almost reflexive action, sighing. "Like I said, above my paygrade. Maybe something will get hashed out by the brass in a few weeks; until then, if you happen to hear about some problems, or drop by a few more crimes in progress and 'quell' the criminals, it's no skin off my nose." The last statement might have been spoken just loudly enough to be heard by all of the uniformed officers in the room.

"It takes about fifteen minutes for cleanup to arrive once they're called in," Naples continues, checking his watch. "It would be convenient for all of us if you were not around when they arrive, at least this time around. Good day to you, concerned citizens." With that, Naples begins directing his team once again out the door, with the unconscious woman and a few of the scattered artifacts in tow.

Spoiler: Helios

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This room does not have the oldest artifacts by any stretch; there are plenty of fossils that are orders of magnitude more ancient. It does, however, have some of the oldest man-made artifacts in the museum. A quick check of the spots where the Helpers were (made a bit more difficult since a few simply disappeared from Nope's influence) tells you that they weren't always in front of the oldest artifacts among this collection, but all of them were man-made and old. Perhaps there's something there.

Detective Woods and two of the other officers have latent magical potential, though it's weak and too unformed for you (at this point) to pinpoint what their specialty might be if they honed it. OTher than that, nothing comes across your mystical senses.

A Loud Silence

August 15, 2018.

Watcher is confused about the most recent avenue you've chosen to pursue. "There's nothing there; just an abandoned summer camp," his pigeon explains to you as you all plan to go to Camp Bubble Brook. He even brings you a few printed-out photos on your way, showing you a collection of log cabins, a fire pit, an overgrown dock with some half-submerged canoes. In the photos, it certainly looks eerie, but completely empty.

Which is why the sound of a guitar playing campfire songs gives you pause as you approach the hill overlooking the camp.

The forest cuts off abruptly at the top of the hill, forming an unnaturally perfect half-circle around Camp Bubble Brook. The little, rolling streamlet that gives the camp its name bursts out of the forest to your left, winding in a lazy s-shape from the western edge of the campsite until it empties into the sweeping expanse of Lake Michigan to the east. Directly in front of you are three rows of three log cabins each, sandwiched on either end with a larger cabin. The cabin to the west has a white rectangle with a red cross painted above its entrance, while the large structure closer to Lake Michigan has large letters reading "ADMINISTRATION" painted on the side. Farther in is another large log structure marked as the "CAFETERIA", directly to the west of a large circle of packed earth with a sunken firepit in the middle, a totem pole standing next to the pit. Three thin docks stretch into Lake Michigan on the eastern edge of the camp, with neat rows of canoes or kayaks tied to each mooring. The northern edge of the camp is split into two sections, with the western side laid out like a traditional school running track with various track-and-field supplies while the eastern side is a stretch of grassy field, with bows and arrows on one end and a series of large wooden targets on the other.

A large fire crackles in the firepit, with a few people throwing logs into the blaze from a convenient pile of them placed nearby. The source of the guitar music is revealed to be a... guitar, seemingly floating and strumming by itself next to the fire as scattered children sing campfire songs facing it. As you watch, the cafeteria door opens and a boy walks out, laughing and chatting with thin air. Groups of people or individuals wander the camp, leaving or entering cabins, running on the track, or practicing their archery; occasionally (though it's hard to see from this distance) it looks like a bow fires an arrow on its own, or a puff of dust flies up from an unseen foot. Out on Lake Michigan, a girl pulls determinedly on one set of oars on her canoe; the other set of oars paddle in time with her, no one visibly moving them.

Welcome to Camp Bubble Brook.

Spoiler: Floral (Scent Suite)

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It might be easier to tell once you get closer, but right now your sense of smell is giving you a very confusing set of signals. You can smell living people in the camp, but the smell is... old. It's like the way a room would smell if someone peeled an orange there three hours ago. There are doubtless several theories you can come up with regarding this smell, but none of them are pleasant.

Spoiler: Helios

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If you're sensing mystic power from this far away, it's from something big. But if you're sensing it from this far away, you should also be able to pinpoint what type it is, and you can't... yet. It's like the mystic energy has been diffused into the air somehow. You can't even tell if its coming from an entity or from the land itself. Not at this distance, anyway.

Spoiler: Ariadne (Threadwork Sense)

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There are threads running through the air of Camp Bubble Brook. If Ariadne had to make a bet, she'd say that these threads are all coming from one spool. However, you are too distant and the threads are either too fine or too large for you to trace them... yet.

[Ridai]

At the museum

Naples, at least partially thanks to... basically everyone else, seems to arrive at tolerating the group. When he turns to leave, Nope says "Thank you, sir". Maybe it will, for some reason, draw some ire again, but, well... can't do anything about that. This is basically a great outcome, as far as Nope is concerned.


At Camp Bubble Brook

Okay. O-kay. Souls of children going about camp activities, either unknowingly stuck in a loop or something endless ongoing, if pop culture has even remotely any relevance here as a provider of possible explanations, and those possible explanations should be considered with a truckload of salt. Invisible counselors. And Watcher isn't aware of this. And Manchineel avoids this place. Basically this place triggers similar reactions as Doctor Proxy does for Nope. He has no idea what is going on, and what this place is capable of. And what it can do to them.

And unless Apophis or his cult are having a field day here, they are also now dealing with a sixth superthing they know nothing about in this town.

"What do you think are the chances I can make a counselor visible and that it is my namesake? And that some of them are just wandering around," Nope urgent-whispers. He... okay look, this is kind of a productive question, but mainly something he needed to get out of his head. "I can try looking around with removed presence. Can also try to do that for you, but, um, real talk, I don't know how reliable that'll be or how long and over what distances I can maintain that. Is not easy." Maybe the "cool guy Batman" thing would have been to say something like "I'll look around" and then just disappear to do a cool guy Batman investigation with cool guy Batman results, but Nope prefers trying to hash out with the others how they want to handle this. As, you know, a team.

[Quellian-dyrae]

At The Museum

Lily had been about to reply with some screed about how given the circumstances that it wasn't possible for her to be "inordinately" interested in assisting the investigation, but Hannah's interruption delayed her for long enough to think it through. Sergeant Naples was clearly a competent cop, and was operating off of dangerously good instincts. The legible concerns he translated those instincts into were irrelevant; that response might have served well in a formal debate, but here the words would matter less than the intent behind the words. Whatever she said, what she would actually be communicating was a sense of "this one doth protest too much".

Part of Lily was grateful that Hannah had stepped in to divert his attention elsewhere.

A much bigger part of her was annoyed that her big sister felt like she needed to swoop in to protect her, whether or not she had been right.

At Camp Bubble Brook

Well. This was...let's...let's be generous and say "interesting". Yes. Interesting. Definitely much better than any alternate possibilities.

So, ghosts? She wasn't sure. In fiction, it wasn't impossible for ghosts to move objects, but it tended to be...effortful. Not automatic. The people in the camp seemed to be acting as if nothing weird were going on, just going about their activities normally. Then again, Watcher's observations had indicated the camp was abandoned, so the objects themselves might not be quite material.

All reports indicated the camp was abandoned, including Watcher's. No reports of objects moving on their own. So what they were encountering was different than others. Had they simply come closer than others? Was something about their personal power giving them a clearer view?

Too many unknowns to say.

"Scouting could be useful, but if we're trying to identify what we're actually seeing here, I think we need more than just observation." Lily replied to Nope's idea. "Can the campers perceive us? Can we make physical contact with them? There are questions we need to answer that require interaction. That said, we should also figure out why others didn't perceive what we are perceiving. Is it a factor of distance, of power, or of something else? It's possible that our own perceptions are being manipulated here."

"For purposes of gathering data, my thought is something like, you scout, one of us tries to move as far away as possible while keeping the camp in view to see if perception changes with distance, one of us tries to interact with the campers to see what happens, and one of us hangs back and keeps tabs on the other three so they can step in if anything dangerous seems to be happening."

"For purposes of 'you are obviously in a horror movie right now, act accordingly,' my thought is that superpowers or not splitting up is probably a terrible idea."

[Abracadangit]

"There are threads here," Kal says as she scans the area quickly with her network of invisible threads, arcing and spinning from her location like a vast spiderweb. "Hard to tell precisely where they're coming from, but they seem to have a singular point of origin."

She regards the odd spectacle of the self-animated objects with a mix of suspicion and confusion. Kal wonders the same thing as Floral -- why do the campers seem to not notice or mind the strange goings-on? Are they somehow part of it, or merely ignorant of what's actually happening.

"Your plan sounds effective," Kal says, in response to Floral's strategy. "I should not be the one to address the campers; my patience will wear quickly if they do not understand my questions."

[Dorni]

Camp Bubble Brook

"I think it would be unwise to split up," Helios chimes in at last. He'd been enthralled by the campsite, squinting at something just out of sight. "There's magic in the air here. Strong magic. But its... diffuse. Spread out. I can't make out if its natural or if its an enchantment that someone laid down. Or something. I'd need to get closer."

"If we split up and something happens I'll be too far away to protect you. If we stick together I should be able to give warning if the aether changes and protect us."

[Zelphas]

As you converse with one another at the top of the hill, a young camper exiting one of the closer cabins glances your way. The small pigtailed girl does a double take, then moves quickly towards the lake, her steps taking her towards a young woman with a small group of campers at the lake's edge--probably one of the counselors. The blonde-haired woman looks up at the girl's approach, then stands, hands out to calm down the others around her as she begins walking towards the new arrival and, with her, towards the hill where you are standing. She shades her eyes with one hand to look up at you, pausing at the front edge of the closest cabin to you with her other hand on her hip to look you over. After a moment, the hand on her hip lifts up in a beckoning motion towards you.

Spoiler: OOC

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If you wish to stay hidden from the counselor, I will need a Stealth Check of DC 20. Some of you can hide while others remain seen with no issues; the girl only caught a glimpse of someone on the hill. If all of you beat a Stealth Check of DC 20, the counselor doesn't beckon; instead, she looks at the hill for several long moments before gently guiding the pigtailed girl back to the group she had been working with before.

[Ridai]

There is a moment where Nope considers to hide his presence immediately. But as has been rightfully pointed out, if the others can't perceive you (whether by being elsewhere or, well, hidden from all senses), they don't know if anything bad has happened to you. And they are basically in a horror movie setup. At least Nope is very safe in terms of immediate death flags. Sooo... meeting the SCP people it is?

Unless the others want to avoid the campers and counselors, he heads over to the young woman. Not sure how to handle the situation, but chances are she will let them know what's on her mind.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Well that was one piece of information acquired; the campers were able to perceive them. That ruled out things like this being something like spectral images playing out past events or such.

If she were honest, Helios saying they should stick together so he could protect them kinda nettled her pride, sensitive as it was to suggestions of needing protection. She didn't mention it though; logically she figured he meant it in a "this is a magical situation, magic's my thing" sort of way, it was just her own biases that insisted on hearing it differently. Lily wasn't immune to bias influencing her feelings, but she was at least sufficiently self-aware to recognize and compensate for it. Usually. Mostly. ...As long as Hannah wasn't the one saying it, anyway.

Regardless, all fictional evidence aside, sticking together in a strange and potentially dangerous situation was simply tactically sound. Safety in numbers and/or concentration of power. So when Nope headed for the counselor, she followed along.

"Any preferences on how we play this?" she asked quietly as they approached.

When they reached the counselor she gave a friendly smile and said, "Hey there."

Spoiler

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Perception to see if there's anything more worth smelling now that I'm closer: (1d20+15)[18]. Reduce by 5 for non-olfactory senses.

Insight to Evaluate the counselor (substituting olfactory Perception with Scent Processing): (1d20+15)[30].

[Dorni]

Helios was at least a little surprised at the counselor noticing them. That... didn't entirely rule out that the camp was an illusion or something spiritual, but it did drop those possibilities far down in his expectations. He fell in alongside Nope and Floral; if the inhabitants were real, maybe they could tell their group what was going on. They could at least try the peaceful approach.

"_{Openly, I think. We stand out and they don't seem hostile. I'm not sure we have anything to hide,}" he answered Floral just as quietly.

"Hello there!" he greeted the counselor.

Spoiler: OOC

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Perception (1d20+15)[33] to try and make out more of whatever mystic is happening as we get closer.

[Abracadangit]

Kal raises an eyebrow, behind her mask; she's not sure if the counselor's nonchalance at all of this should make her more comfortable or more suspicious. She follows behind the rest of the group, letting them take point socially.

"Good evening," she says to the counselor, making sure to keep her voice suitably distorted. The last thing she needs is for someone here to recognize her from her art classes.

[Zelphas]

The tall young woman seems to relax slightly as you all move down the hill towards her, though her welcoming smile does grow a little bit puzzled as she takes in the four of you and your... unique appearance. "I know that superpowers seem to be showing up against all odds, but isn't it a bit early to be dressing up like them for Halloween?" she begins in a musical voice, then shakes her head at herself, embarrassed. "I'm sorry, what a horrible way to introduce myself. You get used to saying whatever comes to mind working with kids. Hello there! Welcome to Camp Bubble Brook? I'm Sandy. Are you here to pick up a kid, or for something else? We'll get everything settled over at registration, but I figured I could help smooth things along. Go ahead and follow me; walking, hovering, or flying, it's your choice!" With a laugh, she turns back towards the camp itself. Curious small faces are poking out to look at you from around the cabins, but no one except for Sandy approaches you as of yet.

Spoiler: Expertise (Local) DC 20

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As you prepared to go to Camp Bubble Brook, you looked over the list of those gone missing in the Camp Bubble Brook Disaster. You found a list of names and pictures, both of campers and counselors who vanished that day. Sandra "Sandy" Stier, age 20, was one such name. The person greeting you here looks exactly like the picture next to her name, down to the hair length and style.

Spoiler: Nope

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Perhaps it's due to your profound (and unwanted) connection to the concept of negation, but a realization creeps over you as you approach the camp:

It's empty.

Your eyes tell you that campers are running around, interacting with the air and with other campers as they go. It's a lie: there is emptiness there. Your ears bring to you the sound of children at play, of oars hitting water, of balls being thrown back and forth. It's a lie; all is silence. Your nose catches the scent of wood smoke, of roasted marshmallows and hot dogs. It's a lie: the fire is cold and gone, and no food is found here. The camp is empty.

And yet that is not true either. Something--or some things--hide in the empty beyond the false facsimile of life before you. Your senses cannot penetrate their disguise, not yet, but you know that they are there. And since their disguise is active, they are almost certainly watching you.

Spoiler: Floral

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Besides a slight feeling as though you have to sneeze, there isn't anything that pops up out of the ordinary. The smell of individual humans, petty rivalries, fragile new friendships, exertion, enjoyment, and both over- and under-cooked food wafts out from the place before you; it's a summer camp, all right. Your other senses agree with this assesment.

Sandy doesn't seem to be lying to you. She's confused by your outfits and slightly amused by them, and she's torn between interest in people from outside of camp and worry that you're bringing bad news for one of her campers. Then she mentions registration, and even though all of your senses tell you that this is just a camp, even though she's telling you the truth and standing right in front of you, some unexplained quirk in Sandy's expression, or her tone, or something else, sends the dominoes dropping down.

It's all a sham. All of it. The "campers" are not human. The cabins are not whole. The campfire is not lit. There is no food, no laughter, nothing here that is alive. But that doesn't mean that there isn't something here.

You can't see or hear or even smell past the fake to see the reality, but you know it now for a fact. This entire charade before you is a play put on for your benefit. To borrow a turn of phrase from Ariadne, something--or some things--are pulling the strings, hidden within the image of a happy summer camp.

Spoiler: Helios

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This might be the most frustrating interaction you've had with your mystic sense since it awakened. It's like looking at one of those old magic eye pictures; when you focus directly on something, it slips away from you, but when you focus elsewhere, you can sense it on the edge of your perception. It might begin to give you a headache if it goes on too long.

Coming this close tells you two things for sure, however. In the first place, the very fact that you can't bring it into focus suggests a will or a consciousness of some kind. This isn't a natural effect, but a magical energy that is being imposed by something--or some things. That in and of itself is significant.

The second thing is that even if you can't focus on it directly, the constant maddening snatches of the sense give you information. Eventually, the fragmented bits of sensation shape themselves into a stench that you've 'smelled' before. Death magic is here; how much and for what purpose you cannot yet say, but it is present throughout this camp.

Spoiler: Ariadne

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With your Threadwork Sense active as you approach, you begin to pick out threads. Thousands of them. All gossamer-thin, connected to just about everything you see--the campers, the counselors, the cabins, the ground, with some even vanishing in mid-air. There are too many to count and parse, looming like a thick cloud of thin hair-like strands. You almost get the feeling like you're looking at a carpet under a microscope; all the tiny filaments exposed, revealing nothing to you of their true purpose or intent. Whatever this something--or some things--are that are holding the strings, they are doing a lot... or perhaps very little, all over the camp, all at once.

[Ridai]

Nope is having a moment.

While he has had cases where he felt strange, especially when he got like he is right now, but this sort of... liminal feeling (?) is new. Seeing the campers and counselors, but also seeing they are not there, but not actually seeing that, but it does not feel like simply "sensing" either. Same with his other senses. Sadly, his abilities did not come with some sort of ability to deal with such phenomena. It's like watching a movie scene, only to suddenly switch to an identical shot, but without the music, the saturation and lighting, the characters, just a low drone in the background, before suddenly jumping back as if nothing happened. And you remember this sudden switch, but when you go back, it is not there anymore, but you could swear you saw it. That is what Nope feels like right now, but the movie is his senses.

Hand to his head, trying to shake his head to get his perceptions kind of in order, feeling like he missed part of what has been said and done. Everything's weird right now. "Uh, sure. Sandy. Say, since, uhm, when has this camp... season? been going?" He is really not sure what to call it. For how long at a time do these camps operate? These "people" are aware of current events?

Spoiler: OOC

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Routining the Expertise Local check for 20.

[Quellian-dyrae]

Lily was still kinda inexperienced with her augmented sense of smell. As important as it was to the use of her powers, in some ways it was still a bit of a black box to her. She could smell a person's biology, and their emotions - which at the end of the day was just smelling the subtle biological changes that they perceived as their feelings - but the truth was that as skilled a biologist as Lily was, she didn't actually have a clear mental map of specific scents to particular biological markers. She knew what biochemical markers would come up to, say, test a person's blood type. And she could smell those biochemical markers. And so she could smell a person's blood type.

But she herself had never actually, personally learned what say Type O blood smelled like, at least not before she had first smelled it with her powers, at which point she had known it was Type O. She hadn't recognized it as a matter of prior familiarity, her brain simply categorized that particular smell as Type O blood, instinctively and automatically.

Right now her sense of smell wasn't giving her much to work with at a conscious level. She wasn't consciously noticing anything of particular value, that they weren't already aware of.

But the senses did a lot of their work unconsciously. Took in a lot of information that was never actually promoted to conscious awareness. And Lily's sense of smell did even more of that. Somewhere in her head, her brain was taking the scents she picked up and matching them to concepts she understood, even if she didn't know what the concept itself should smell like.

So here, now, even though Lily wasn't consciously aware of any specific scents, even if she couldn't have consciously mapped them onto a known concept if she had been, her brain processed the scents that came in through her nose and told her exactly what this camp smelled like.

It. Smelled. Fake.

Lily fixed Sandy with an unimpressed stare and crossed her arms before her. "Or you can stop wasting our time with illusory tricks and reveal yourself," she said simply. There wasn't a hint of doubt in her tone, not even allowing for the possibility that the woman before them might have been real.