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--- game_systems:world_of_darkness:mage:jacksonville:jacksonville_journal [2025/12/21 11:47] – [adklfjd] Bryan Stephens
+++ game_systems:world_of_darkness:mage:jacksonville:jacksonville_journal [2025/12/27 12:28] (current) – [The Party] Bryan Stephens
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+===This Journal has some adult themes within in, but nothing explicit. Just a word of Warning===
 |Game Date|06/08/25|
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 An image. A name: Taylor Price. Local dealer.
+He has a party.
+Tonight.
+In the woods. Jessie can see the spot.
+==== They River to the Abandoned Home ====
+|Game Date|12/14/25|
+|Campaign Dates|June 21, 2025|
+Josh and Bell head toward the river, following the thread of the morning’s intel until it thins out into rural roads and scrubby tree lines. It’s nearly an hour from Jacksonville, far enough that the city feels like a story you told yourself.
+The afternoon sun is still high in the summer sky when they arrive — bright, relentless, turning the river’s surface into broken glass. Heat hangs over the water and the banks like a second atmosphere. Everything smells green and wet and alive.
+Josh keeps the Civic moving even as the landscape shifts. He doesn’t need to pull over. Not for this.
+His right hand stays on the wheel. His left hand moves with quiet, practiced certainty — a little talisman from his console, a wayfinder token worn smooth by touch. He doesn’t chant. Not out loud. He doesn’t have to. The ritual lives in his body now: the rhythm of breath, the timing of turns, the subtle corrections that look like ordinary driving and feel like something else entirely.
+Bell watches him from the passenger seat the way you watch someone do something you can’t yet do yourself — half admiration, half hunger to learn it.
+Josh’s eyes never leave the road.
+He does what he does best: he listens for the seam in probability. He tastes the drift of “wrong” and follows it back toward “inevitable.” The token warms faintly in his palm, and then the world seems to tilt, just slightly, toward a specific stretch of riverbank.
+//“Close,”// he says, almost to himself. //“We’re close.”//
+Bell nods and shifts her focus inward. Her spinner ring sits on her finger like a promise — small, simple, potent. She pulls a crystal from her pocket, then another, and arranges them in the shallow cup of her hand as if she’s setting a tiny stage.
+The car continues forward, tires whispering over sun-baked pavement, while Bell quietly does something that has nothing to do with pavement.
+She spins the ring. Once. Twice. A third time, slower.
+Her eyes go unfocused, not dazed — tuned. The air in the car feels subtly different, like the cabin has become a lens. Bell’s breath evens out, and then her awareness slips sideways, back along the thread of the day.
+The river outside is still bright and present… and also not.
+She is looking at the same bank, but it’s the bank it was. Minutes ago. An hour ago. A moment when the world made a different choice.
+Bell inhales, and the past inhales with her.
+//“There,”// she says, soft. //“I’ve got him.”//
+Josh keeps the car in motion, glancing at her just once — not to interrupt, only to confirm that she’s there and anchored. He trusts her. He doesn’t understand her Practice the way he understands his own, but he understands discipline. He understands the look on her face.
+Bell’s voice comes slowly at first, as though she’s reading words off a page no one else can see.
+//“He comes out of the river. Not crawling. Not stumbling.”// Her eyes track something outside the windshield that isn’t happening anymore. //“He’s… drenched. He pauses. Looks around like he’s listening. Then he walks up the bank.”//
+Josh makes a careful turn, following her line of sight. The wayfinder token in his hand steadies, as if approving.
+Bell keeps the ring spinning in tiny increments, rewinding her attention frame by frame. Her crystals catch the light — not glowing, not dramatic — just existing as anchors, small and real in her palm while she watches the unreal.
+//“He’s moving with purpose,”// she says. //“Like someone running back to safety. Running home”//
+Josh’s jaw tightens. //“Yeah.”//
+They roll along the road that parallels the river, matching the route Bell is watching. Past and present overlap in her mind like two transparencies. She points once — a small gesture, and Josh adjusts course immediately.
+The car stays moving. The ritual stays moving.
+Bell’s gaze follows Taylor across invisible minutes and up a narrow stretch of land toward a cluster of neglected houses. One of them sits a little too quiet, a little too unloved — the kind of place with weeds swallowing the porch and blinds that never change.
+//“He went in there,”// Bell says, and her pulse jumps. //“That one.”//
+Josh slows just enough for Bell to take in details. A mailbox, half-leaning. A faded set of numbers. The kind of ordinary marker that becomes precious when you’ve been chasing shadows all day.
+Bell leans forward, squinting, and then reads the address aloud. She pulls out her phone and taps fast, her voice steady even though her heart is doing something else.
+//“I’m calling this in.”//
+She uses Weilin’s app for a group chat. Phone ring.
+When Jessie answers from his car, Bell doesn’t waste words. She gives the address, the cross street, the direction of approach. She describes the house. The mailbox. The way Taylor moved. The exact point on the riverbank where he emerged.
+Weilin says she is on it. But, someone is missing.
+//“Sam’s didn’t join,”// Bell says quietly, after she ends the group call. Not worried yet. Just noting it. Filing it away like a bad taste.
+Josh keeps driving, eyes forward, shoulders tight. //“He’ll call back.”// It’s not a promise. It’s a habit — the way you speak so the world stays orderly.
+Bell lets the ring slow. She lets the past settle back where it belongs. The present returns fully: heat, sun, dust, the faint rattle of the car.
+Her shoulders drop as the work leaves her body. It’s startling how quickly the adrenaline fades, and how young she feels in the empty space it leaves.
+She looks at Josh, and the seriousness cracks just a little.
+//“Okay,”// she says brightly, as if this is a completely normal day. //“We did the thing!”//
+Josh huffs a single laugh through his nose, feeling much older than his 27 years. //“We did the thing.”//
+Bell stares out the window at a roadside sign advertising something forgettable, then turns back to him with an expression that is pure, unashamed want — not for danger, not for answers, just for something sweet to balance the taste of the day.
+//“Can you take me for ice cream?”//
+Josh glances at her, and something in his face softens — not by much, but enough. Enough to be human.
+//“Yeah,”// he says. //“Yeah, Bell. Ice cream.”//
+And the Civic keeps moving, the afternoon sun still high, the river behind them, and the address ahead like a pin stuck into the map of their growing trouble.
+==== A ritual and a lab ====
+//”So, time to go?’’// asks Weilin, watching Jessie scan the waiting room.
+//”Not quite yet.”// Jessie’s eyes fall on a boy of no more than 5 or 6, //”There is something I have to do”//. Jessie heads to the gift shot and buys a rather large stuffed animal. A bear in the HCA hospital colors, blue and orange. He takes it back to the waiting room and approaches the family with the small boy. They all look tired and unhappy. Bear clearly up front as he walks up, Weilin watches as Jessie makes eye contact with the mother, asking permission with just raised eyebrows and his charming grin. A little light appears in the woman’s eye and Jessie moves forward.
+{{:game_systems:world_of_darkness:mage:jacksonville:places:boy_with_bear.png?400 |}}
+//”Excuse me, young man, I was wondering if you know anyone named Archibald?”// The boy immediately looks to his mother who nods and smiles.
+//”No”// comes the meek reply.
+//”Well, this is Archibald,”// Jessie says, //”And he needs a friend. He is scared and looking for someone to hold him. He thought maybe you might be that someone.”//
+There is a hesitation by the boy, who again looks at his now smiling and teared up mother. He reaches out and takes Archibald, clutching him to his chest.
+//”Fast friends, indeed!”// Jessie says, grinning at the mother, who smiles back and says a almost silent //”Thank you”//. Jessie makes a small bow of his head and strides out the door. Weilin notices he looks less - frustrated. Recharged somehow.
+//Interesting. He brings joy and it strengthens him. The experience of others is //sacred// to him.//
+Once in the car, Jessie calls Ray and asks him to work the street: who is this guy? Not important enough to be top-of-mind for either of them. He then calls Mae and asks her to assemble the De Rosa group to help in his examination of the vape. Then he turns to Weilin.
+//”We are not going to the Rally Point first. I want to explore the life magick in this thing. The De Rosa group can help me. It’s hard to explain how. I guess it would be like you having lab assistants that //KNOW// about what you can do and are believers. Able to help you work your own form of magick. We use my sanctum. The one next to my bedroom. Mages do best on their own turf.”//
+He takes a read on Weilin before continuing. She is politely listening as they drive.
+//”You are welcome to observe if you choose. Otherwise, I’ll pick you up from your room. This is life magick so it will be a sexualized ritual. Maybe take an hour.”// Jessie says this casually, without a trace of embarrassment or shame. He is totally comfortable with himself.
+Weilin smiles at his straightforwardness. Other people, other women, could easily be put off. The traditional side of Weilin might be from someone else, but Jessie’s confidence and genuineness appeal to her. Here is a man she has watched be stunningly deceptive, even without mind magick, and yet with her he has always been transparent and authentic. With all the cabal and in his dealings with others. With that boy.
+//Do I want to see him having sex with other people?//
+//”I think it will be interesting to see how you work your magick. It will be fascinating to watch it happen over time in a totally unscientific way.”//
+Jessie grins. //”You did say you like the mystery of things. You are right, it won’t be scientific.”//
+At Moon and Wave, the De Rosa group is gathering. Tasha and Leo are leaving their kids in Ms. Dee’s hands. Everyone else is there but Rae who is hitting the streets to find out about one Taylor Price.
+//”Weilin is going to be an observer this afternoon. She is not like me and Bell. More of a ‘mad scientist’ type.”// this brings chuckles from the group. Weilin, standing there in her traditional cut shirt and pants looks nothing like a mad scientists, but the De Rosa cult members understand there are different paths to magick for others. But they know for a feel that Jessie’s way is the **right** way. Mae raises an eyebrow, however. Is this one of those times Jessie is maneuvering others and does not realize it? Another smart Asian woman, smarter than Mae herself.
+//Mr. Psychology Mind Magik Man Sex Cult Leader, can be so blind sometimes// Jessies long time friend and lover thinks shaking her head.
+As Jessie and De Rosa get ready, Weilin is impressed with how easily they accept her -clothed – presence. She had not seen Mae this way before. She was not in her CEO skin but in her ritual skin—hair down, jewelry minimal, calm like a metronome. Tina & Brad Rivera, easy smiles that didn’t try to hide their nerves. Cheryl & Donnie Vasquez in their disco-smooth confidence, like they’d walked out of a record sleeve and into a temple. Tasha & Leo Montrose, both a little tired in the honest way parents are, but holding hands as if they were plugging themselves into a battery. Sable Ray—leather-and-lace confidence turned down to a respectful purr in this space. Ronnie Blaze, bright-eyed and kind, his hands already unconsciously checking the room like a tattoo artist checks needles: safe, clean, ready.
+Jessie opened with a somber look. //“Thank you for coming,”// he said, voice low and clear. // “We’re not here for indulgence. We’re here for truth. This thing—”// He nodded at the tray. // “—is Life magick wearing a cheap disguise. We’re going to listen to it without letting it listen back.” //
+{{:game_systems:world_of_darkness:mage:jacksonville:characters:jessieinrobe.png?400 |}}
+Jessie passes a the tray of various items, vapes, gummies, pills, drinks, his hands calm and steady
+//“Receive what serves you—if it serves you. - Let the cup pass, let the smoke pass, let the sweetness pass. -Nothing is demanded. Nothing is assumed. -Only what is freely chosen may enter you.”//
+Members take what they chose, or they don’t. At the end, Jessie takes his own mild psychedelic for investigation work.
+//“Find your center. Check your body. Check your mind. If tonight is not a yes, you owe nobody an explanation.”//
+They step into a circle. Hands join—no squeezing, no pulling. Just contact. Presence. Jessie starts a clear ritual questions and response:
+**Jessie:** // “Why do we gather?” // - **Group:** // “As individuals—and as the Whole.”//
+**Jessie:** //“What is sacred here?”// - **Group:** // “Each mind. Each life. The Whole.”//
+**Jessie:** //“What makes us greater?” // - **Group:** //“Communion—freely chosen.”//
+**Jessie:** //“What cannot be taken?”// - **Group:** // “Consent. Sovereignty.”//
+**Jessie:** //“What is our rule?”// - **Group:** // “A clear yes to begin. A clear no to end.”//
+**Jessie:** //“Let us breath”//
+Then he stepped into the ring of bodies as the De Rosa members formed a loose spiral around him—couples and singles arranged not by hierarchy but by comfort, by who wanted to be near whom. Clothing became optional in the same way shoes became optional in a dojo: not eroticized, just removed because it interfered with movement and sensation. Touch began carefully, like a conversation in a language everyone was fluent in.
+At one level, this was most certainly people engaged in sexual activity with one another. At another, this was clearly ritual. It was practice. But it was not bound. Weilin could see ritual motions give way to pleasure, to ecstasy. This was not porn or spectacle – this was union through physical communion. This was understanding through an altered state of consciousness. It was also, she had to admit, quite erotic.
+Weilin couldn’t see Life the way Jessie did, but she saw the effects: the way the air thickened, the way sound softened as if the room became a velvet-lined box. The way heartbeat and breath started to align across multiple bodies, like oscillators syncing on a shared frequency.
+Her glasses—her proper lenses, grounded in her Etherite practice—caught something at the edge of perception: a faint lattice of warmth, a geometry of living patterns. Not glowing. Not flashy. Just… structure emerging where attention gathered.
+Bemused, Weilin thought, //None of this should be working. It makes no sense to Science// and yet, here she could see magick happening. The very room itself obeyed different laws.
+Jessie seemed to take energy from the group and poured it into concentration. His actual engagement with the group was to spend a limited time with each person or group that had formed, almost like dipping into their well. He finally grabbed the vape and stared deeply into it, and Weilin could see the crescendo of his will work. Jessie set it down and moved to Tina to release his pent up energy. The whole group seemed to radiate energy as Jessie’s own crescendo radiated out into the room. Weilin could watch it happen with her glasses and admitted she felt the wave too.
+It had been an hour. The members were leaving to clean up for before the Dolphin opened up this evening. Jessie approached Weilin.
+//”Well, what did you think?”//
+//”It was an interesting demonstration of ritual magick. I could see it working, even though it should not,”// teased Weilin.
+Jessie smiled, but it turned to a small frown.
+//”This has life magick that is not natural at all. Harsh. Technological. Unstable. It was fading even as I chased it. I think we should go to the Rally Point so you can investigate the mechanics of it.”//
+//”Sure, but I think you need to put some clothes on first”// grinned the other mage.
+Jessie laughs and heads to his adjacent bedroom to shower.
+{{ :game_systems:world_of_darkness:mage:jacksonville:weilin_lab.png?400|}}
+On the way to the Rally Point, Bell calls with the address of the home Taylor went into. Weilin easily runs a scan on her phone, and in moments says that there is no one even remotely related to Taylor at the home. In fact, it looks abandoned. One more home someone in Florida did not pay taxes on, but is not worth the government or the bank doing anything about it. Perfect drug den.
+Then it is on to Weilin’s investigation of the vape. Rally Point hums the way a good machine hums — not loud, not quiet, but decisive. A steady infrastructure note in the walls that says: //you are inside a place built to behave.//
+Weilin shrugs into a lab coat that doesn’t quite hide her style. It’s clean, fitted, the sleeves rolled with intention. Her glasses catch the overhead light when she turns, and for a moment Jessie thinks of a lighthouse lens — calm, engineered, unromantic… and somehow intimate.
+On the workbench sits the vape pen in an evidence bag, ugly in its ordinariness. A cheap, disposable-looking cylinder. The kind of thing a bored teenager would toss in the sand.
+Jessie leans against the doorway with his arms crossed, trying to look like the kind of man who’s simply supervising.
+He’s not sure what he’s actually doing.
+Weilin doesn’t look up. She just moves — like the room was arranged for her, like the tools are extensions of her hands rather than objects she has to think about. She lays out a silicone mat. A microdriver. Fine tweezers. A handheld scope. Her Lucky-Chan tablet sits nearby, angled toward the bench, with Lucky-Chan quiet as a cat that’s pretending it isn’t listening.
+Jessie watches the way she sets things down: not careful, not delicate — precise. The small pauses between actions feel intentional, like commas in a sentence.
+It hits him in an odd, sideways way:
+Mae is a force of nature in a boardroom. She turns people into outcomes. She can walk into chaos and leave behind a plan.
+But this—
+This is Weilin in her element. Not persuasion. Not leadership. Mastery.
+Her magick even when it looks like science. Or maybe especially then. Jessie can feel the difference the same way you can feel the difference between a song and a metronome. Both have rhythm. Only one has soul.
+Weilin’s shoulders shift when she leans into the scope. The collar of the lab coat falls into place like it belongs there, forming a line pointing downwards to her … bosom. Her hair stays tucked behind her ear, except for that one strand, and her expression… her expression is calm in the way surgeons look calm. Like panic is a problem for someone else.
+Jessie’s frustration — the one he’s been carrying like a clenched fist since the call came in from Josh — loosens a fraction. Not because the problem is solved. Because for the first time, he can see the shape of how it might be solved. And this beautiful mind is doing it.
+And then the thought arrives, uninvited and dangerous:
+//Is this starting to fall in love?//
+A second thought follows, sharper, almost defensive:
+//Have I been in love before?//
+He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. His mouth stays shut because his voice would do something stupid — crack, or flirt, or confess, or hide. He’s not sure which one is more dangerous.
+Weilin finally speaks, still not looking up. //“I’m going to start with casing integrity and seals. If this thing was altered, it’ll show in the adhesives and micro-scratches. People don’t realize how hard it is to lie to plastic.”//
+Jessie lets out a soft huff that might be amusement. //“Plastic. My greatest enemy.”//
+Her mouth tilts, almost a smile, but she stays focused. Under the scope, she turns the pen slowly, slowly, until the lens catches a hairline seam that shouldn’t exist. Her fingertip follows it like she’s reading Braille.
+//“This seam is too… perfect,”// she murmurs. //“And the adhesive here—”//
+She takes a thin pick, slides it in with barely any pressure. The casing separates with a quiet click that sounds like a secret opening.
+Inside, Jessie expects a battery, a coil, a cheap PCB.
+Instead, he sees layers.
+A stack of chambers—like a revolver cylinder laid flat—each one sealed, each one independent. Tiny one-shot reservoirs with microburst membranes.
+Weilin’s head tilts, and Jessie realizes she’s hearing something he isn’t. Not with her ears. With that part of her that listens to how reality chooses to behave.
+//“One,”// she says softly, counting. //“Two. Three. Four…”//
+She sets the tweezers down as if they’ve suddenly become heavy. //“This isn’t a refill system. It’s a program.”//
+Jessie straightens without meaning to. //“Meaning?”//
+Weilin lifts the stack carefully and holds it up to the light. The chambers catch the glow with a faint iridescence that isn’t decoration. It’s structure.
+//“These are single-use chambers,”// she says. //“Each one is sealed and tuned. It delivers its payload once, then locks itself out. The membranes are engineered to rupture at specific heat signatures. Like it’s waiting for a particular inhale pattern. Or a temperature curve. Or…”//
+She stops, eyes narrowing. //“…a sequence.”//
+Jessie’s skin prickles. //“So it’s—”//
+//“Not Sleeper tech,”// Weilin finishes, flat and certain. //“Too compact. Too precise. Too consistent. You can’t mass-produce this without equipment that doesn’t exist in the public market.”//
+She looks at him now, steady through the glasses. //“It’s technomancy.”//
+The word lands with a weight Jessie doesn’t like.
+//“Technomancy,”// he repeats, and the syllables taste like a bad memory he didn’t live.
+Weilin goes on, quieter, like she’s speaking to the object as much as to him. //“The way it gates itself. The way it profiles delivery. This isn’t someone making a bad choice. This is someone building a device around a plan.”//
+Her fingers hover over the chamber stack, not touching it now. Respectful. Wary. Like it might bite.
+Jessie exhales once, slow. //“Progenitors.”//
+Weilin’s gaze flicks up. //“That’s what you call them.”//
+//“That’s what they call themselves,”// Jessie says, and his voice has gone flatter than he intended. //“Technocratic Union. Life sciences. Human optimization. They don’t do messy. They don’t do accidents. They do… initiatives.”//
+Weilin looks back down at the vape, and the air between them tightens—shared understanding, shared danger.
+Jessie watches her again, and the earlier feeling returns — that strange, soft impact in his chest. Not awe. Not lust. Not admiration exactly.
+Something else.
+Something-struck.
+As if watching her work has re-tuned him. As if her competence is a kind of shelter.
+He finds his voice carefully, like he’s handling glass. //“Weilin.”//
+She looks up.
+//“Good work.”//
+And Jessie, standing in the hum of Rally Point, watching her turn a nightmare into a diagram, realizes he is not alone in this the way he’s been alone before.
+Not anymore.
+==== Finding Sam ====
+Jessie knows instantly that this is big news. Not “interesting,” not “concerning.” Big, capital-letter Big.
+The Technocratic Union is at work.North Florida has been a kind of no man’s land for years — the sort of place where weird happens, but it happens without structure. Without… signatures. Until Weilin showed up at Calloway’s Castaways, Jessie hadn’t even met another local mage. Not one.
+Then Bell. Then Josh and Sam. And now this.
+Jessie tastes something bitter in the back of his throat that has nothing to do with alcohol. He realizes, with a spike of cold clarity, that the last three years might have been a blessing he didn’t appreciate. A quiet pocket. A lull. A mercy. He grabs his phone and activates the group call.
+Josh and Bell answer immediately, earbuds in, and Jessie can hear the faint noise of an ice cream shop behind them — a freezer hum, the soft clink of a scoop against metal, someone laughing in the distance. The normal world. The ridiculous normal world continuing as if it hasn’t just been informed it’s standing on a trapdoor.
+Josh is chewing something. Bell is mid-laugh, or maybe mid-sigh. Jessie doesn’t waste any time warming the air.
+//“This is Progenitor technology.”//
+Bell freezes mid-lick of her double scoop of mint chocolate chip. It’s such a small, vivid moment she will remember later — the absurdity of it, the bright green ice cream and the sudden stillness.
+She shouldn’t know what that means. Not really. Not yet. But Jessie has shared his mind with her before. Not like theft. Like an invitation. Like a door opened. And now, the word lands inside her with a second set of meanings layered over it: disgust, contempt, fear. //They are violators of all that is sacred. They violate the body and mind.//
+Bell swallows and has to sort out what she actually feels from what she remembers he felt. The overlap is messy, intimate, and unpleasant. Josh’s expression changes too — not confusion, not surprise. A soldier’s recalibration. Threat identified. Scale adjusted.
+Jessie’s eyes flick to the edge of the call screen again. Sam still hasn’t picked up. The quiet space where Sam should be is suddenly loud. Jessie feels his voice flatten — uncharacteristically cold, clear, and commanding.
+//“We have to find Sam. If he is not responding to this, there is a problem.”//
+He doesn’t say I’m worried. He doesn’t say I feel it in my bones. He doesn’t say this is how people disappear. He doesn’t need to. The tension in his tone carries it.
+//“Bell, use your magick to find him.”//
+It’s an order, not a request. Not cruel — urgent. There’s a difference, and Jessie is hanging onto it by his fingernails. Bell straightens in her seat like the newest part of her spine just locked into place. The girl who asked for ice cream a minute ago is gone. Something steadier is sitting in her chair now, eyes focused, breathing slower. Jessie continues, clipped and decisive.
+//“We will meet you at his home.”//
+Josh nods once. //“Copy.”//
+Bell’s voice comes softer, but it doesn’t wobble. //“Okay.”//
+Jessie ends the call and stands there for half a heartbeat with the phone still in his hand, jaw tight, eyes fixed on nothing. Then he moves. Because if Sam Birchwood is silent right now — truly silent — then something has reached into the cabal’s new, fragile world and closed a hand around one of them. And Jessie Calloway does not tolerate that. Not now. Not ever.
+{{ :game_systems:world_of_darkness:mage:jacksonville:places:civic_in_mud.png?400|}}
+Bell and Josh arrive at the house to find Sam is not there and neither his is truck.
+Bell stands on the porch like she’s been caught between relief and dread and can’t pick one. Josh has already circled once, eyes on tracks, posture set into that practiced readiness he falls into when things go bad.
+Bell’s voice is quiet when she says it, and she sounds almost offended by reality.
+//“He’s not here.”//
+Josh's expression doesn’t change, but the temperature in his gaze drops.
+//“Then we find him.”//
+Bell hesitates. For a second, she looks almost young again — not the wheel-of-fortune mage, not the time-bender, not the new member of a cabal being pulled into a war she didn’t ask for. Just a girl who didn’t realize friendship could turn into emergency this fast.
+She swallows and nods once.
+It hits her, sideways and sour: she is about to use the same magick to track her new friend that she used to track the drug-head. Same tools. Same inner motion. Different stakes.
+Josh opens the Civic’s passenger door for her without ceremony, like this is just what you do. Like this is what they are now.
+They repeat it — the strange teamwork that’s already becoming habit.
+Josh’s wayfinding starts while he’s still getting the car into motion. His fingers brush the wayfinder token at the dash, his breath measured, his focus split in that unnerving way he has — half driving, half listening to the thread of fate under the road. The world narrows for him into right turn / wrong turn, now / not yet.
+Bell turns her spinner ring once, then again. Crystals click softly in her palm. Her eyes lose their present focus and look through the windshield instead of at it, vision winding backward as if time is a film she can spool and rescan.
+The Civic turns off pavement and onto dirt.
+Then onto worse dirt.
+Then into mud.
+The roads are thin, half-swallowed by summer growth. Palmettos and scrub pine crowd in close. The air gets heavier, wetter. Mosquitoes thicken.
+Josh does his best to coax the Civic through terrain it was never meant to understand. Tires slide. The undercarriage scrapes once, and Jessie — watching from Sam’s driveway — feels that phantom wince of sympathy through the call connection before he forcibly ignores it.
+Josh mutters to himself, not quite prayer, not quite math.
+Bell keeps pointing. Again and again.
+//“Left.”//
+Josh obeys.
+//“No—right. Now.”//
+A sharp turn. Mud sprays. Josh guns it at just the right moment, and somehow the car catches traction like luck reaches down and gives it a shove.
+He is always lucky in his choices.
+Bell keeps steering them deeper, and the woods change around them. The light gets strange — not darker, exactly, but filtered. Stained. As if the canopy is starting to behave like colored glass.
+And then they see it.
+Sam’s truck.
+Parked at an angle like it was abandoned mid-thought.
+Josh stops and both of them go still for a half-beat, like their bodies are waiting for the other shoe to drop.
+Then they’re out.
+On foot now.
+The woods are louder here — insects, the distant chitter of something small, the soft scuff of their steps. Bell’s heart is banging a little too hard. She hates that she can’t tell if it’s fear or adrenaline or simply the awareness of being watched by something that doesn’t have eyes.
+They follow the pull.
+And find Sam.
+He’s standing between the trees, mid-step, as if someone hit pause on the world with him in motion. His eyes are open. His skin is fair enough that the sun has burned it raw where it’s exposed. Leaves cling to him. Bird droppings mark his shoulder. The kind of indignity nature gives the helpless. Bell reaches toward his mind — not prying, just touching the edge of presence the way she’s learned to do. It’s there. A slow hum.
+{{:game_systems:world_of_darkness:mage:jacksonville:saminring.png?400 |}}
+Sam is awake inside himself. He’s just… held. Josh sucks in a breath, sharp. His gaze drops to the ground. A ring of mushrooms circles Sam’s boots. Not random growth. Not nature. A deliberate pattern. A faerie circle.
+Josh’s voice goes quiet, like he doesn’t want the forest to hear him.
+//“Don’t step in.”//
+Bell frowns. With the occult knowledge Jessie shoved into her head during her Awakening, she should know better. She knows the theory. She knows the stories. But theory doesn’t help when your friend is standing there burning in the sun. Impatience snaps through her like a whip. She reaches out to pull him free. The moment her fingers brush the invisible boundary, mushrooms erupt up around her in a quick, obscene bloom — pale caps punching through leaf litter as if they’ve been waiting for permission.
+And Time shifts. Not a big cinematic shift — something worse. A wrongness. The air thickens. The sound of insects stretches and warps, like a tape player dragging. Bell’s stomach lurches as her inner sense of now tries to detach from the moment. Instinct takes over. Bell releases a burst of will — not pretty, not elegant, just raw refusal.
+//NO//
+The time-snag recoils like it’s been slapped. The mushrooms around her dry and shrivel in seconds, collapsing into brittle husks. The circle’s power falters — not broken forever, but disrupted, stunned. Bell grabs Sam’s arm. And pulls. For a second, it feels like tugging someone out of thick syrup. Resistance without weight. Reality trying to insist. Then Sam stumbles forward, free, and the spell snaps like a thread.
+He blinks hard, like waking from a nightmare he was forced to watch. His breath comes in fast, shallow pulls. His eyes dart — truck, trees, Bell, Josh — and for a moment he looks like a man who expects to see something standing behind them. Then recognition lands. And with it, fury.
+//“That bitch!”// Sam spits, voice ragged and incandescent.
+Bell’s face tightens. She starts to speak — a reflexive correction, a moral reflex — and Sam cuts it off with a sharp shake of his head.
+//“Not you.”// He wipes a hand down his face, then looks at his arm like he can still feel the grip of the spell. //“Her. The fae thing.”//
+Josh keeps his eyes on the trees, like he’s expecting laughter from the canopy. Sam’s jaw works. He’s angry enough to shake, but the anger has a thread of humiliation running through it too — like being caught in a trap he should have seen.
+//“She set it. I walked right into it.”//
+Bell’s voice comes gentler now. //“Why?”//
+Sam laughs once, bitter.
+//“Because I still don’t have the damn wood.”//
+He says it like it’s an answer to everything. Like it’s a curse and a punchline. Like his entire month has been a spiral of this single stupid need. And then his body remembers it has been locked in place for who knows how long. His expression contorts.
+//“I need water,”// he groans. //“And I need to pee.”//
+Josh’s mouth twitches — almost a smile, almost relief. He knows these needs. The needs of a soldier. Sam darts to the tree line as he downs an entire canteen like a man trying to erase the taste of enchantment from his mouth. When he finishes, he exhales hard and looks more like himself again — not safe, not okay, but present. Then they head back.
+After putting down a blanket to keep the seat clean from him, Sam drives his truck, hands tight on the wheel, as if he’s proving to the world he still owns his own body. Josh follows in the Civic with visible relief, as if each bump they don’t have to take feels like mercy. Bell watches the rear window the whole time, half expecting to see mushrooms blooming in their wake like a laughing signature.
+They get back to Sam’s home to meet Jessie and Weilin. Jessie is already outside when they pull in, standing in the yard like he belongs there. Not //owns// it — Jessie’s presence is too courteous for that — but like he’s decided this place matters, and that decision makes it real. Weilin is nearby, quiet and observant, her eyes moving over the property with the same appraisal she gives a workbench: what’s here, what’s useful, what’s dangerous, what it means.
+Sam steps out of the truck and pauses, blinking once like the sunlight is too bright or the world is too normal after what just happened. His shoulders are tight. His jaw is set. He’s trying to hold himself together with sheer stubbornness. Jessie’s gaze flicks over him — the sunburn, the grime, the way Sam’s hands still flex like he can’t quite believe they’re under his control — and then Jessie does something that is almost invisibly kind. Jessie turns slightly, gesturing toward the backyard as if they were simply continuing a conversation that started ten minutes ago.
+//“This is a hell of a setup, Sam.”//
+Sam’s eyes follow the gesture despite himself. The node sits back there like a secret the land is proud of — the kind of quiet power you can feel without knowing the name for it. There’s the old-fashioned brick barbecue pit too, solid and honest, built like somebody meant it to outlive trends and storms and whatever weirdness Florida decides to throw at you next. Jessie nods toward it with genuine appreciation.
+//“And that pit? That’s not decorative. That’s a statement.”//
+//“Yeah,”// Sam says, and there’s real pleasure in it, stubborn and human. //“I’ve get is set up so I can move my  cauldron right into it. Boom.”//
+Jessie’s smile is quick, warm, uncomplicated.
+//“Perfect you old Witch.”//
+Sam huffs a laugh that almost counts as normal. He rubs a hand over his sunburned face, then glances back at the yard as if seeing it again through different eyes.
+//“I bought the place without looking at anything but the backyard,”// he admits, like it’s ridiculous and also completely defensible. //“Agent tried to show me the kitchen and I was like—no. I’ve seen the backyard.”//
+Jessie’s head tilts, approving.
+//“That is the most Verbena thing I’ve ever heard.”//
+Sam’s eyes flick up, and for the first time since they found him, he looks fully present. Not just rescued. Not just back in his skin. Seen. The two men hold the moment for a beat — a quiet, masculine understanding that doesn’t need a speech. Jessie is giving Sam something he needs more than questions right now: dignity. A place to stand that isn’t victim.
+Weilin watches it all with that subtle, analytical softness of hers — seeing the social engineering in Jessie’s kindness, and also recognizing it isn’t manipulation. Not here. Not now. Her heart is beating faster. It must be the heat.
+==== The Party ====
+{{:game_systems:world_of_darkness:mage:jacksonville:places:chatgpt_image_dec_25_2025_01_01_00_pm.png?400 |}}
+Having come prepared to crash a party, the group lets Sam clean up, heal himself in his node, and get his feet back under him. Then they head for the woods where the rave is supposed to be happening.
+Jessie is the most stylish — linen pants and a linen shirt that somehow look effortless instead of delicate — but the others look good too. Josh is practical and squared-away, the way he always is. Bell has the casual confidence of someone who can pass as “party” or “problem” depending on what the moment requires. Weilin is all controlled lines and quiet readiness, her satchel riding at her side like it belongs there. Sam looks like himself again, which is to say: dangerous in a calm way.
+The trip in is through brush that shouldn’t feel like a maze… but it does .As they move deeper, the greenery thickens too fast. The air shifts. Branches seem to lean inward like the forest is curious. Or hungry. Something is at work here. Something magic. Jessie slows, eyes narrowing, irritation building with every snagging vine and every “accidental” thorn that isn’t accidental at all. He can feel the manipulation — that subtle pressure of a place trying to decide who gets to pass.
+Jessie is not having it. He extends a hand toward the choking grass, and his voice is flat as a verdict.
+//“Die.”//
+The blades wilt at once. Not a blaze of light. Not a glow. Just life turning off, clean and brutal. The thicket parts like it’s suddenly remembered how to behave. They move on unmolested until the music reaches them — bass thumping through the trees like a second heartbeat. And then the brush opens, and there it is.
+A clearing full of bodies and sound and colored lights slung between trunks. A half-hidden rave lit by cheap LEDs and car headlights and someone’s generator humming behind a pile of coolers. People sway and laugh and pass things hand to hand. It’s not a huge crowd, but it’s enough to disappear in. Enough to get hurt in. Taylor isn’t here.
+Bell mistakes someone for “Steve,” a guy she knows from the weed trade. She goes up to him with a familiar tilt of her chin, testing the connection, trying to pull a thread. The guy blinks like he recognizes the shape of her but not the name, and that alone tells her something: people here are blurred, intentionally.
+Jessie mingles. Or tries to. He takes three steps and trips on a bramble that was not there a moment before. The thorny vine bites his ankle like it’s pleased with itself. Jessie catches his balance, straightens, and his expression changes from charm to contempt. But without Taylor showing, Jessie decides to pull the hook hard enough to catch whoever’s holding the line. He lifts his voice and starts offering drugs like he owns the clearing. Loud. Obnoxious. A salesman in paradise. It works.
+Two men break from the edge of the crowd and approach with purpose. Not high. Not dancing. Not here for music. They have that “we handle problems” posture. They confront Jessie, close enough that their words don’t have to fight the bass.
+//“You’re not invited. You need to leave.”//
+Jessie smiles like he’s amused, like he’s dealing with bouncers at a club he owns.
+//“I’ve got the goods,”// he says. //“If Taylor doesn’t, that’s not my fault.”//
+A set of thorns rises as if the ground itself decided to lash out. They strike Jessie across the side and shoulder — sharp, fast, meant to punish. Jessie flinches only enough to acknowledge it happened. He shrugs it off like an insult. Then he gets louder. He taunts, voice carrying. He’s not just baiting these two — he’s baiting whoever is behind them. Whoever thinks they can police him. Whoever thinks they can make him behave. And then Jessie locks eyes with one of the men, going deep in the way he does when he stops playing nice.
+//“Who is your master?”//
+The man stiffens. His face goes blank for half a second. In that half second, Jessie sees it — a mental image shoved up like a reflex.
+Taylor. Not here. At the golf course.
+Jessie’s smile vanishes. That wasn’t what he expected. Taylor Price was supposed to be a user. A flunky at best. A pawn. Not a player with enough leverage to move pieces like this. And that’s when it escalates.
+Josh and Sam both see the vines. Both see the forest making decisions. They’re already shifting — spacing out, watching angles, readying themselves with that old muscle memory of danger. Jessie keeps taunting, and the clearing tightens around them like a fist. Then Weilin is suddenly grabbed.
+Vines whip out of the treeline and coil around her arms and torso, yanking her backward. It’s fast, predatory, and for a split second the only sound in Jessie’s world is the sharp intake of her breath. Bell sees it and reacts on instinct — not with magick first, but with psychology. She throws her voice upward like a match, touching the man closest to her, her mind pushing emotion.
+//“Cops! Cops are coming!”//
+Panic catches in one person immediately — one spark in dry grass. A head turns. Someone stumbles. Another person shouts something incoherent, and suddenly the crowd’s energy shifts from “party” to “stampede” in a heartbeat.
+Josh weaves Entropy around himself as he moves — a subtle un-luckening that makes him a harder target. Vines reach and miss. Thorns snap where he was instead of where he is. He keeps moving, eyes scanning, choosing lines like a soldier choosing cover.
+Sam charges straight for Weilin. Knife out. He empowers it with elemental force — not showy, not glowing, just real, the blade suddenly carrying the authority of something older than steel. He slashes at the vines and they recoil like they can feel pain.
+Thorns spray at them both. Sam grits his teeth and shouts over the music and the rising screams:
+//“Tree spirits!”//
+Josh sees them then — five figures moving through the edge of the clearing. Wood-like silhouettes, not quite human, not quite beast. Bark bodies. Branch limbs. Faces carved by malice and old instinct. Josh plants his feet like a man who has stood his ground before.
+Jessie is less patient. He turns and sees one of the spirits angling toward Bell — and whatever is happening in his chest turns sharp as glass. He doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t negotiate.
+//“Bell! Look out!”//
+Then he extends his mind toward the tree spirit, anger fueling the command with a purity that feels like lightning in his veins.
+//“FLEE!”//
+The spirit does. It turns and runs as if its courage was cut out of it.
+Weilin pulls her gun from her satchel and fires at the spirit nearest her. The shot hits — but the thing barely registers it, as if bullets are just rude weather.
+The spirits slash.
+Weilin takes a cut across her side. Josh takes a rake across his arm. Sam gets tangled again, vines trying to pin him like a sacrifice. The crowd is screaming now, bodies pushing, Bell’s shout echoing into a real panic.
+Jessie stops mid-fight — not because he’s afraid, but because he sees what panic can do faster than thorns. He pushes calm outward, just enough to keep people from trampling each other to death. Just enough to keep the chaos from becoming a massacre.
+//Have to talk to Bell// he notes
+Weilin tries again — this time not with lead, but with the kind of science that crosses the line into magick: A plasma bolt snaps out, hot and vicious, and that gets their attention.
+Sam breaks free and attacks again, knife carving through vine and intent. Josh moves with him, covering angles, choosing targets, surviving.
+The spirits flee.
+Not all at once — but like an enemy deciding the cost is too high. They retreat into the trees, vanishing back into the dark like they were never there.
-==== adklfjd =====
+The music keeps thumping because no one has thought to shut it off. The lights keep flashing because machines don’t care about terror. The crowd staggers, some running, some frozen, some staring like they can’t process what they just saw.
-Jessie: // “Why do we gather?” // - Group: // “As individuals—and as the Whole.”//
+Jessie races to Weilin’s side. Her clothes are cut. Her skin is bleeding. She’s breathing hard but steady, that same surgeon-calm fighting through pain. Jessie’s expression is different now — stripped of performance, stripped of arrogance. Just worry, bright and raw. He pulls up his shirt and presses his fingers to his dolphin tattoo. Then he touches her — careful, consent in the gentleness of his hands — and extends healing energy into her. Life flows into torn flesh. Warmth replaces shock. The bleeding slows. The pain dulls. Weilin can see it in his eyes.
-Jessie: //“What is sacred here?”  Group: // “Each mind. Each life. The Whole.”//
+Concern. And something else behind it — the kind of intensity that doesn’t come from duty alone. It means something.
-Jessie: //“What makes us greater?” // - Group: “Communion—freely chosen.”//
+Nearby, Josh murmurs a quiet prayer under his breath — old words for steadiness, for endurance. Sam pulls a modern flask and drinks an ancient potion like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Their wounds close. Their breathing steadies.
-Jessie: //“What cannot be taken?”//  Group: // “Consent. Sovereignty.”//
+Jessie helps Weilin stand fully, still watching her like he’s checking that she’s really there, still with them. Then his gaze shifts, hardening again as the adrenaline re-forms into purpose. Taylor Price isn’t here. But Taylor is somewhere.
-Jessie: //“What is our rule?”// Group: // “A clear yes to begin. A clear no to end.”//
+And they are going to stop him and whoever is behind him. Jessie’s face hardens.
-Jessie: //“Let us breath”//
+//Not in my home!//

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