The Vanishing of Abigail Wright

[Mr. Handy]

"Thank you, sir," says Vanessa. "One more thing: who else was at her party? What sort of people were they, and did you recognize any of them?"

[Silver Priest]

"Seemed like most of them were her artist friends. I also saw Mr. Post and Mr. Manuel, two of the other tenets. Mr. Manuel might know her circles better, I believe they dated some time back."

[HoneyDog]

"Thanks for your help, sir" says Nik. "What is your name, by the way?"

[Silver Priest]

"Indeed. I hope I provided some assistance. My name is Roger Carun." From the way he says his name, the agents get the feeling he expects them to have heard of him.

OOC,Any agent who is a sci-fi fan has heard of Roger Carun's work. He writes the [i]NightSea [/i]series of novels, about human settlers who struggle to build a functional society on a hostile aquatic world. The books are reasonably popular and have a fervent fanbase, though as of now they straddle the line between niche title and more widespread literary appeal. Four of them have been written already in the last six years. The 5th was due to come out last month, but was delayed for unknown reasons.

[HoneyDog]

Know,Know 60:[url=https://orokos.com/roll/784483]Know[/url]: [u]1d100[/u] [b]41[/b]

Nik has heard the name, although he hasn't read any of his books.

"You're the science fiction writer, aren't you? Say, there are a lot of artists in this building! I can see why you'd want peace and quiet, Mr. Carun."

[Anatomist]

José will stand in the background following Nik's and Vanessa's lead

[Mr. Handy]

"Oh, of course!" says Vanessa, who is a fan of niche fiction such as Outlander. "I do enjoy the NightSea series, and I'm looking forward to the next book. Speaking of which, we'd better let you get back to working on it. Thank you for your time, and we'll be careful to keep the noise down."

OOC,INT x 5 roll (55% stat) to recognize [b]Roger Carun[/b]: [dice]0[/dice]

[Silver Priest]

"Indeed I am," Replies Carun, and the agents see the first genuine smile out of him. "As for artists, that's not so surprising. ArtLife owns the building and provides it to artists at a subsidized rate. I quite appreciated it when I first moved here. Now I don't see a reason to leave-- anywhere else in the city would cost three times this much."

But his true affection is reserved for Vanessa. "So good to meet a fan! Young lady, if you'd like I'd be happy to sign any of your books once you're done with all of this. Just stop by my unit. As for the next book, it should be out soon. The ending is proving a bit difficult to make exactly right." Indeed he does look a bit tired, with circles underneath his eyes; he seems to have been working hard.

If there's nothing else, he takes his leave, leaving the agents alone once again.

OOC:   Next steps for our agents?

[HoneyDog]

“What an asshole” says Nik, when Carun has gone. “He couldn’t give a shit about Wright. Remind me never to buy his books.”

He looks around.

“What the hell happened to those Portuguese drawings? Did we lose them? This place is driving me nuts!”

OOC:   Can we keep on searching?

[Mr. Handy]

"Thank you, Mr. Carun," says Vanessa. "Take all the time you need to get the ending right. I'll be patient." After he leaves and is out of earshot, she responds to Nik. "Never meet your heroes, I guess. They'll always disappoint you." She looks around to see if she can locate the Portuguese drawings.

OOC,Yes, let's keep searching.

[Silver Priest]

OOC:   You all can keep searching; indeed your main mission is to continue to catalog all of the room's contents for anything unnatural. You've made some progress, though you're unsure how much longer it will take. Probably at least a few days. One of you can roll 1d3 for hours, and then each of you searching can give me a search roll. I believe we're at around 10:30 in the morning now.

[Mr. Handy]

Vanessa resumes her efforts, this time taking more care not to make noise.

OOC,Hours spent: [dice]0[/dice] Search roll (57% skill) cataloguing stuff: [dice]1[/dice]

[HoneyDog]

Nik resumes searching, keeping an eye out for the diagrams, but cannot find anything.

Search,Search 44: [url=https://orokos.com/roll/785093]Search[/url]: [u]1d100[/u] [b]85[/b]

[Anatomist]

Search 20%,[dice]0[/dice]

José gets at it, but this place just confuses him he ends up looking at stuff they already have been trough finding nothing new.

[Silver Priest]

The team continues to work. They're actually starting to make some progress-- they've managed to clear away the junk from a small part of the wall entirely, and a window looking out into the back of the building can now actually be seen. But at best they seem about half done.

They're almost done this part of the cleanup when two of the agents notice something:

Jose,Near the end of his cataloging, Jose suddenly senses eyes on him coming from the other side of the room. If he turns around however, no one is there. Try as he might to dismiss the occurrence, he can't shake the fact that someone is inside the room and watching him. He cannot pin down the location of the feeling; it seems to almost be coming from the entire room at once, as if there are dozens of eyes on him. Neither of his partners seem to notice, and after a few minutes the odd feeling passes. But it still leaves him a bit shaken. Take 1 san loss for Helplessness, please. Remember that if you take san loss from 3 helplessness sources without going insane in between you become hardened to it.

Nik,Nik suddenly hears voices in the hallway. It sounds like two people, one man, one woman. They sound muffled and he can't quite make out what they are saying, though the woman appears to be laughing-or crying. Neither of the other agents appears to hear it.

Vanessa meanwhile manages to stumble upon something. Removing more junk that had obstructed the position, she finds a a torn sheet of old linen parchment inscribed with a symbol in golden ink tacked to the wall.

The Symbol,[url=https://postimages.org/][img]https://i.postimg.cc/GthrT3wL/020-Seal-of-Purson-q100-500x500.jpg[/img][/url]

[HoneyDog]

Nik

Ignoring Vanessa's find for now, Nik walks out into the hallway to see who is there.

[Mr. Handy]

"Now this looks interesting," Vanessa says, showing whoever will look what she found. "I wonder what it means?"

OOC,Occult roll (10% base skill) about the symbol: [dice]0[/dice]

[Silver Priest]

Nik,Nik makes his way out into the hallway, the voices still sounding muffled. He opens the door and looks out-- Only to discover the hallway is empty. The sounds as well abruptly cutting off. There was not enough time for anyone to have left the hallway in the time it took him to open the door. [ooc]Nik loses 1 san point to the unnatural.[/ooc]

Vanessa can't figure out what the symbol could mean. Perhaps it's another art piece? It certainly looks important, however. It hung loosely to the wall.

Vanessa and Jose can see Nik get up and go to the door. He opens it and looks out.

[Mr. Handy]

"Who's there?" asks Vanessa.

[Anatomist]

José shrugs and talks out loud "what a freaking feeling i just got, like all the walls or sometinhg inside here was watching me" he turns hs head towards Vanessa "is that book guy back? and what the heck is that you found Miss.Marchand? Let me take a look at that."

failed Occult 20%,[dice]0[/dice]