The First Interbellum (1918-1939)

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

Jurgensen was crouching behind the cover of a pile of rubble, back on a still standing
wall, being covered by three of his surviving men, while he tuned his mind and his
highly-honed psychic senses into the storm of psychic activity all around them. This
was both easy and difficult at the same time. It was easy because there was so much
energy in the area, so much activity, that trivial to lock his senses onto that activity.

That same intensity, however, made the task of finding the pattern very difficult.
Jurgensen had to isolate the nature and detailed structure of what was happening, he
had to identify and pinpoint the ebb and flow of the activity. Jurgensen had extensive
training from the Unity, and many decades of practical experience. After a short time,
and a great deal of intense effort, he found the pattern and locked into it, and his mind
followed that pattern through the storm of psychic activity all around him.

Jurgensen could barely comprehend what he was perceiving, psychic energy seemed
to be appearing and disappearing, in defiance of the laws of nature. Waves of energy
would suddenly appear in his perceptions, only to vanish into apparently nothingness
moments later. He was sure that this meant that he was unable to perceive parts of
the phenomenon, he found that far more plausible than that energy could just appear
and vanish. Even if he could not fully perceive the phenomenon, however, he found
that he could trace its pattern through the structure, following the ethereal strands of
information that gave shape and form to the energy all around them.

Following these ‘strands’ of information, Jurgensen discovered minds, or at least he
discovered egos, he was not sure if his usual terminology fit these entities. They did
seem to be conscious, but not in the same way as a human being. There were many
of them, and they were the root of the activity all around them.

Jurgensen drew a deep, calming breath, and began to focus his mind, gathering all of
his own mental energies, in the subtle ways that the Unity had taught him. This was
going to be tricky, because he could not do what he intended by means of brute force,
he did not have access to anything close to enough personal energy. There was more
to psychic combat than raw power, however, just as there was more to physical melee
combat than pure physical strength. Jurgensen had discovered that the minds he had
discovered were working together in a gestalt of a sort, and he hoped to break that
gestalt. This was theoretically possible, if he struck in the right ‘place’.

When he was ready, he carefully tuned his mind to just the right ‘wavelength’ and to
just the right ‘place’, or so he hoped. He had to select his ‘target’ by pure judgement,
based on his training and experience and the perceptions of his espersenses. When he
had this ‘target’ selected, he suddenly lashed out, launching a mental attack directly
at the ‘target’ with all his strength. His mental attack struck, and the web of minds
that had been directing these strange phenomena came flying apart, their fragile and
unstable cohesion disrupted. The results were immediate and dramatic.

As Jurgensen opened his eyes, he saw that everything had changed. Though to him
the mental struggle had seemed to go on four hours, that was a function of altered
time sense in such moments. In fact, it had only been about thirty seconds since he
began, and now the ‘patches of light’ were gone, the periodic ground quakes and
other disruptions had ceased, and the night was quiet and still. The only figures in
action anywhere amid the devastated compound were his own surviving men, and
the surviving Aces. Here and there across the compound, members of both groups
cowered behind what cover they had been able to find, eyeing each other and now
looking around in amazement at the suddenly calm scene.

Jurgensen led out a breath, and looked around, taking note of how many of his own
men appeared to remain active, and how many of his enemies were active, from what
he could see. His eyes took in a peculiar situation.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

His own men and his enemies were spread among each other almost at random, here
and there, in places where they had ended up during the previous chaos. The sun
had just set, leaving the area dimly lit by the stars and a few still-burning small fires.
Most of them had at least some cover from the others, and if anyone opened fire on
one of their opponents, it was a nearly certainty that someone else could fire on them.

In effect, the two groups were in what some have called a "Mexican standoff'.

It was amazing how much had happened in a short time, Jurgensen mused. He had
not even known for sure the Americans were following him, until the strange new
attackers had come at them, barely twenty-four hours before. So much had been
happening, and now they had to get past this strange situation to proceed at all.

After a moment of evaluation, Jurgensen reached a reluctant conclusion. Though he
did not know this, his opposite number had been thinking very similar thoughts.

“Americans!” one of the Germans called out in English. “I want
to talk to your leader!”

Conners, who was no more than ten meters from the speaker,
sheltering behind one of the masses of rubble that had fallen from
the collapsed library, heart the voice of their quarry and swallowed.
He was nursing bruises, scrapes and cuts, one eye was swollen
shut from an blow from one of the ‘zombies’, but he was more or
less intact. Unfortunately, not all of his men were so fortunate.
He knew that Hicks was dead, he knew that some of the others
were hurt, but there had been no chance to confer or get a clear
picture of the situation. He could see their relationship with
their quarry as well as the enemy leader could, however.

Conners took a deep breath and yelled back, “What do you
want?”

Conners chose to speak English. He did speak German, but with
a very noticeable accent. If his enemy was prepared to speak
English, Conners decided it would be just as well not to reveal
that he did understand German. That might matter at some point.

“I want to live,” the other man yelled back.

“I’m prepared to accept a surrender!” Conners called out.

The other man laughed. “So am I! But perhaps we might
consider...how do you Americans say it? Ah, yes, ‘getting
serious’? Right now, it seems that we have a mutual problem!
If either of us opens fire, it is likely none of us will survive!”

Conners looked over at Adams, who crouched a few meters
away under his own cover, and Adams looked back with an
expression of bleak agreement with that assessment.

He’s too right, Conners thought. This is a no-win
situation if there ever was one! And Heaven knows what
will happen if that craziness starts up again! We don’t
even know why it stopped!

“What do you suggest?” Conners called out.

“Truce,” the German (if he really was a German, Conners made
a point of reminding himself) said. “You and your men walk
out of here, we walk out of here.”

“Just like that?” Conners called back.

“Why not?” the man they had pursued from Chicago called back.
“Is it not better to live than to die? None of us benefit if we all
die here now. Surely you can see the logic of that?”

Unfortunately, Conners could. The question was how to arrange
that outcome, he had no illusions about the trustworthiness of their
opponents, nor any illusions about school-yard rules in combat.

Over the course of a few minutes and some yelled exchanges,
Conners and his opposite number worked out a plan that to make
a mutual retreat possible. When they finished, each party began to
make their withdrawals. To ensure mutual survival, each group
left the compound in matched pairs or doublets, one or two in each
group would expose themselves to enemy fire a the same time, in
a mutual hostage arrangement. The tension was high, but the
mutual withdrawal proceeded without incident, until at last only a
few men on each side remained to pull back.

“You next, Charlie, then you, Howard,” Conners ordered. “Take
command as soon as you’re out of here, Charlie, and get ‘em
home if I don’t make it out.”

“No,” Adams said. “Chief, you need to be the next one out, not
me. You didn’t see the way he looked at you, chief. One of us
needs to still be here, with a gun pointed right at the bastard, or
I can practically guarantee you he’ll pick you off as soon as you
expose yourself. The only one of his guys I trust that bastard not to
be willing to trade for you is him. He’s got it in for you, Nate.”

“I agree with Charlie,” Howard Lake said. “I saw that look, too.”

The two men prevailed on Conners to do it their way, and Conners
insisted that his opposite number leave at the same time he did.
That way the only way the other man could take down Conners
was if he was willing to sacrifice himself to do it, because both
Lake and Adams kept their weapons pointed directly at the man.

A few minutes later, the Aces were out of the compound and on the
move in the jungle, making their way toward the site where their
boat was hidden, helping their wounded and keeping alert for any
move from the other party, or for any sign of more of the bizarre
chaos that had befallen both sides earlier. Still, the night remained
quiet, and the Aces made their withdrawal without much incident.


Indeed, the surviving Aces now made their way back to their boat, still under guard
by the two men they had left on watch. Those men had spent the long hours
waiting and worrying. They had heard the sounds of combat at times, and seen
some of the flashes and other lights on the horizon, as much as they could through
the jungle canopy, but none of the ‘zombies’ had come close, those guards had no
idea such beings had even been present.

Likewise, Jurgensen made his own way back to the boats he had stolen from the
village he had raided, and begun his own trip on the river. Both groups were far
from safe even yet, and Conners and Jurgensen were both thinking about what
their chances of doing something about the other might yet be.

As for just what has been going on, and why, and what it meant, we shall soon know.

MORE LATER.

[Jasonft]

God help us all if the Unity gets into that place. It is entirely conceivable that it has been discreetly following Jurgensen trying to understand it's chief minion's actions lately...

Even damaged that library is a treasure trove.

Waiting as patiently as possible for the next installment. As always, this is excellent!

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

While our protagonists and antagonists make their separate ways to their next moves,
let us take a moment to try and understand more than they do about just what has
been happening over these strange days. To begin with, we need to understand how
this came to be, and recall that the ruined compound around which so much has now
occurred so quickly was the great Refuge established by Vylyrades in the dark final
years of the Antediluvian Age. Sensing that some great threat existed, though unable
to define what he feared, Vylyrades and his compatriots had arranged to construct a
secret Refuge, in the depths of that which we call the Amazon jungle. Even in those
times, the area chosen was remote and rarely visited, which suited their needs. They
build the Refuge over a period of many years, and during and after that time they
worked to store books, scrolls, maps, records, everything they could think of that
might be necessary or useful, in that deeply-hidden library against the danger of loss.

In time, the premonition of disaster that had haunted Vylyrades came horribly true,
in a way so ironic that it might have driven that man mad if he had understood it
before the time came. The Refuge served its intended purpose, it survived the
chaos and destruction of the Great Cataclysm, and for some few centuries after it
preserved an echo of the lost world of the time of Atlantis, though in the end failure
overtook the Refuge, an entirely preventable and all too predictable failure.

This is explained in somewhat more detail here: Atlantis and the Antediluvian Age.

The final fate of the Refuge can be read here: The Fate of the Refuge.

So what, exactly led from those events to the events that were experienced by Karl
Jurgensen and the Seven Aces? A simple question, but one that has a complex and
strange answer. To begin the answer, we must recall that the descendents of the
original staff of Refugees were of Atlantean blood, and though they were no longer
of pure-line descent, they did retain enough of the Atlantean ancestry to possess the
substantial psionic abilities that marked the people of the Great Island.

Their powers were weaker by the final generation than had been the case at the time
of the Great Cataclysm, but they were still present. Telepathy was still common in
the Refuge, interpersonal communication was as much a matter of telepathy as the
spoken word, though both were used. An outsider listening to a conversation among
those people would have great difficulty in understanding it, even if he or she spoke
the language, because so much of the discussion was telepathic rather than verbal.

We must also recall that along with their native psionic abilities, which in the basic
nature are natural to human beings, the old Atlanteans wielded a separate set of so-
called ‘paranormal’ abilities in the form of manipulation of that power we have
called the Matrix/Flux. These abilities are not native to human nature, as we
have seen, they are immensely more powerful than psionics, but also far harder to
control, far more dangerous if misused or carelessly used.

The power of the Flux was made unavailable for a time, after the Cataclysm, this
for reasons explained in the threads linked above. When it returned, the people of
the Refuge remembered how to use it, but had allowed some of their skills with it
to lapse over the generations, and also they had forgotten how delicate and how
very dangerous the Flux could be, as well. When the power of the Flux resumed
in the world, the descendents of the Refugees made use of it, but they did so in
ways that were both cruder and less safe than the methods used by their ancestors.

By the time the Flux returned, the Refugees had created a slave-labor economy and
society, based on coercion of less advanced (in terms of technology and power) folk
from that region of the world. The return of the Flux made the Refugees stronger,
but it did not end their slave society, for a number of reasons.

There was another factor in play, as well. One of the ‘paraphysical’ (for want of any
better English word) technologies of the ancient Atlanteans had involved the creation
of entities known by various names, but which we have known as ‘Flux Revenants’.

Information about Flux revenants can be found here: Antediluvian Revenants.

There should not have been any Flux revenants anywhere near the Refuge. They
certainly did not have the necessarily facilities to create such on site, and though the
Great Library did contain the necessary knowledge, Vylyrades disapproved of the
practice for a variety of reasons, moral and practical. Thus, Vylyrades never did
authorize the inclusion of any such in the ‘equipment’ of the Refuge.

Unfortunately, just because something is not authorized did not mean it was absent.
A number of Flux revenants were secretly taken the Refuge by some of the staff,
hidden away against eventual use as labor. They were carefully preserved by the
use of psionic and Flux-based preservation techniques, and hidden away in one of
the underground chambers carved into the ground below the Refuge.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

So what did the presence of these Flux revenants signify?

In the short term, nothing. The small group amid the staff of the Refuge who had
arranged for their presence had no immediate use for their mindless labor force,
and they knew that many of their fellows would be upset about the decision to
bring them. Their thinking was that such a an asset might come in useful later on,
and in the short term only a handful of people even knew of their presence. As the
years passed, even those who had secreted them rarely thought about them, amid
the ongoing details of preparing and maintaining the Refuge and keeping it secret.

Then came the Great Cataclysm.

The Refuge had been well-protected against most threats that Vylyrades had been
able to foresee or reasonably imagine, by both physical and paraphysical means.
Though Vylyrades never came close to imagining the Cataclysm as such, nor his
own role in that event, his precautions, together with the sheltered and remote
location of the Refuge, did enable them to survive the catastrophe more or less
intact. That is not to say, however, that the Refuge endured completely unscathed.

Many of the original staff perished in the enormous earthquakes that rippled over
the region, or in the storms and fantastic winds, or as a result of the various more
exotic paraphysical elements of the event. Among those slain were the members
of the group who had secreted the Flux revenants. After the Cataclysm, when all
the chaos and horror calmed, there was no living Refugees who still knew that the
revenants were lying quietly in a chamber in the tunnels, still waiting for a call.

In the aftermath of the Cataclysm, simple survival occupied most of the abilities
and attention of the Refugees, as they dealt with drought and flood, volcanic ash
and disease and the other horrors of their post-apocalyptic age. There was no
time or inclination to explore every nook and cranny of their storage tunnels, no
reason to do such a thing. As time passed and calm returned, and the Refugees
and the locals who filtered into the area over time played out their tragic story,
the revenants remained where they had been placed, still protected and waiting.

Eventually, as we have told elsewhere, a combination of bad judgement, horrible
luck, good planning on the part of their enemies, and a fresh round of disease
enabled the final fall of the Refuge. Their enemies butchered those remaining few
Refugees, many of whom died horrible deaths. Likewise, many of their enemies
died in the event, because the Refugees, corrupt, lazy, and weakened thought they
might have become, proved to be capable fighters in the desperate final crunch.

When it was over, as we have told, the victors destroyed what they could of that
hated place, declared it a forbidden place, and left it to the elements and time.
As the years passed into decades, then centuries, then millennia, the truth of the
event passed first into legend, then into myth, then into multiple distorted and
conflicted myths, eventually merging and vanishing away into the larger stories
and legends of the peoples of the Amazon Basin.

Those peoples, too, changed with time. The original tribes that slaughtered their
enemies in the Refuge intermarried with other tribes, merged, split apart, in time
were themselves conquered by newer arrivals. Generation after generation, the
genetic, cultural, and linguistic identity of those people changed, further wiping
away the memory of what had once been.

Still, throughout all that time, in various forms and ways, the area around the old
site of the Refuge was almost always a forbidden place, in one way or another.
The exact nature of the forbidding varied, the religious/cultural context of that
taboo varied from people to people, and time to time. Still, it was always
seen as a place that one ‘just did not go’. Sometimes this was explicit and
emphasized by ritual and warning. Sometimes it was a barely-conscious sort
of thing, something most people did not talk about or even think about, it was
just a part of the background of life. Always, though, the forbidding existed.

It might strike a folklorist or mythologist as odd that such a continuity would
endure over multiple millennia, through myriad languages, cultures, and peoples.
Such a person would be quite right to find it remarkable. The forbidding endured
because it was based on fact: the area around the Refuge was a dangerous place.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The nature of the danger that hovered over the former site of the Refuge changed
over time in detail, but the essence of it remained the same. The key to the matter
was the fact that, contrary to the belief of many post-Enlightenment Westerners,
there are such things as ghosts.

Whether a ghost should be seen as a ‘supernatural’ entity is a matter of various
definitions and semantic choice, it depends on what the word ‘supernatural’ is
assumed to mean. The Atlanteans had legends and stories of ghosts, just as all
other human cultures did, but it was not until the last years before the Downfall
that their paraphysical sciences began to perceive ways such entities might
come to be, and how they might ‘function’, and how they fit into their larger
picture of the world. This understanding had begun to flow from their studies
of the Matrix/Flux, but they were far from a real understanding of the matter.

In essence, what the Atlanteans had begun to grasp is that all living minds had
a basis both in their material substrates and also in the same Matrix through
which the Flux pulsed. A living mind was at least of two simultaneous natures,
and possibly more, the Atlanteans were still just beginning to grasp what all
this meant when the Great Cataclysm put a final halt to their scientific inquiries.

We shall come to know more about the nature of ghosts (and other entities that
are in some ways related to them) in due time. For now, suffice it to say that on
some level, some of the minds, or at least the awarenesses (a subtle distinction,
but one that can be of importance) of some of the last inhabitants of the Refuge,
along with some of their enemies who died in that last battle, endured after their
physical deaths, remaining in this world and trapped near the site of their deaths.

Those minds that achieved this (or were cursed with it) were among the strongest
wills, the most potent psionic minds, of the group, or else were entangled with
such at the moment of death. Every telepathic link, as a matter of physics, is a
two-way connection between the minds involved. Thus even the basically
non-psionic minds of those who attacked the Refuge at the end could be affected
by the contact between their minds and the telepathic minds they were battling.

Thus a psion who was attacking, or probing, the mind of an enemy during that
last struggle might unintentionally pull that other mind with him or her into that
ghostly half-existence. This effect was amplified by the interacting Flux power
used in the Refuge, or unleashed in that final battle. The details involved would
require a combination of very advanced paraphysical and conventional science to
analyze, and the math of such an analysis would require immense computational
power to be of use in any reasonable time.

For our purposes, suffice it to say that a handful of inhabitants of the Refuge, and
a handful of their enemies, remained after the battle was over, in a state of ghostly
half-consciousness. Their undead (to use the unavoidable but imprecise term) was
rooted in violence and bloodshed, the dominant emotions of their ‘rebirth’ were
fear, terror, panic, anger, hatred, loathing, passions driven higher by adrenaline
and battle-haze. These emotions remained imprinted on the ghostly half-echoes
of the former living men and women, shaping the entities that emerged indelibly.

It took some time before these entities (the term ‘ghost’ carries connotations and
associations that are imprecise, but not other word fits) coalesced sufficiently to
have much effect on the living world, either mentally or physically. Both were
possible, though complicated in practice, because a ghost as an entity has access
to the Flux/Matrix by its very nature. There are limits to what a ghost can do, of
course, some set by the physics of the matter and some set by the inner limits of
a given ghost. The latter limits vary considerably from instance to instance.

In this case, however, the time involved was relatively brief, in part because these
ghosts were relatively powerful, within their area of influence. Within no more
than five years, they had coalesced sufficiently to make the entire area (a region
perhaps ten kilometers across) somewhat dangerous, and the area within one or
two kilometers of the ruins of the Refuge extremely dangerous, though this
danger was mostly mental/psychological in the earlier stages. The presence of the
ghosts, and the imprinted, unchanging emotional aura they generated, permeated
the area with the equivalent of a telepathic attack that affected most beings that
came within range. Only a strong will, or a well-protected mind, was likely to
be able to remain in that area for long. Others were driven off by inexplicable
but irresistible sensations of fear, terror, ‘being watched’, and in some cases an
array of terrifying visions and nightmares. [1]

At first this mental influence was the only danger, but it was quite sufficient, when
operating in tandem with the legends from the last struggle, to produce and sustain
a taboo that endured generation after generation. As time passed, however, these
ghostly entities mastered or manifested other abilities, and the area became not just
mentally dangerous but physically dangerous as well. This was never as steady
and consistent as the mental danger, because manipulation of the material world
requires, by its very nature, much more energy and effort than telepathic activities.

The nature of these physical dangers ranged from the subtle, such as branches and
the like breaking off and falling at ‘convenient’ times, to the blatant, such as the
rare (but terrifyingly effective) manifestation such as being strangled by invisible
powers or having rocks or other objects come flying at the victim at high speed.
These latter sorts of attack rarely happened, because they required considerable
attention and ‘focus’ on the part of the ghosts, and a great deal of physical energy.
Still, they did happen, and added to the dread of the region.

MORE LATER.


[1] In GURPS 3e (modified) terms, this would consist of a general blanket
effect, any unshielded mind must make a Will roll at -3 every hour or panic and
flee the area. The penalty would worsen if the subject was tired, weak, sick, or
otherwise inhibited in resistance, or naturally skittish or easily frightened. Any
attempt at sleep in the area requires a Will roll at -4, plus additional Will rolls
every hour to avoid nightmares and night terrors. A critical success on a Will
roll leaves the character completely free of the effects for 24 hours, s/he has
managed to ‘throw it off’ for a while. If a character fails a Will roll and flees,
he or she will need to make another Will roll at -3 to attempt to return, dropping
to -2 after a few weeks. A critical failure on either the roll to stay in place or
the roll to go back means the character has developed a Phobia about the place.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

So matters were in the early stages of that time, but Time leaves nothing untouched,
in the physical or paraphysical worlds. As the decades and centuries passed, the
peoples around and in the region changed, merging with other peoples, sometimes
by force, sometimes peacefully, sometimes new arrivals flooded in, and as they did
the local legends mutated and changed. Only the dread and avoidance of the site
remained steady, the reasons the locals believed the site cursed changed much over
the centuries, in part by natural change of stories and myths, and in part because of
the fact that the actual nature of the danger did change with time.

As time passed, the ‘psychology’ of the ghosts driving the danger also changed, in a
variety of subtle and gross ways. It should be kept in mind that these ‘ghosts’ were
not just the minds of the original living people in continuance, they were basically
different in many ways. In some ways it would be a mistake to even say that they
did any ‘thinking’, they were more like disembodied awareness, without much
in the way of active cognition. In some ways, they might be seen almost as simply
very active psychic impressions rather than sapient beings.

One might have expected, for example, that the ghosts of the natives slain in that
last battle would be more sympathetic with the living natives in that region. Such a
belief would be naive. The raw rage and hate that permeated them was too great
for nuanced distinctions. It was true enough that those ghosts would be even faster
to strike at someone of Atlantean blood than one of their local kin, but this was but
a small difference. In reverse, the same would have been true of the ghosts of the
last men and women of the Refuge, and again the difference would have been but
a small one. As time passed, whatever sense of kinship to the locals some of those
ghosts might have known faded, as the locals themselves changed and the ghosts
became more and more removed from their former humanity.

At the same time, the ghosts became more and more intertwined with each other,
though the hated never faded. In some ways, those psychic remnants almost fused
into one single self-hating, personality-split awareness. In other ways they remained
separate from each other, but interlocked. A seething something, something for
which no modern language has a really appropriate word, an immaterial web of fear,
rage, and hate, with no physical form but very definitely real.

Normally, if that word could be applied, this thing, this ghostly remnant, would
have faded away with the passage of time. Under the conditions that prevail in most
places and most times, the passage of just a few decades would have reduced it to no
more than a telepathic force, unable to affect the physical world, the passage of a few
more decades would have removed even that power, and not long after that it would
have been gone. That would have been the ‘normal’ progression of events.

In this case, however, circumstances were not normal. There were various reasons to
be found for this, but the most important was to be found in the tunnels below the old
Refuge, in the form of several items of Atlantean paraphysical technology. Located
in sealed chambers within that network of tunnels were a dozen Flux paralenses, those
items of Atlantean technology that amplified and concentrated and stabilized the Flux,
making it more readily accessible, safer and easier to use, more constrained and calm.
They had been almost the sine qua non of late-Antediluvian Atlantean technology.

Their presence in the tunnels under the Refuge had been fully authorized and planned,
it was part of the basic design of the place. Modifications had been made to make the
devices harder to detect, harder to trace, the rough equivalent of carefully shielding
and grounding electrical equipment, or applying sound-deadening devices to engines
or guns. Still, these paralenses are basically standard Atlantean paralenses. [b][1][b]

One side-effect of the presence of the paralenses, however, was that they acted to
make the Flux more amenable to sustaining ghosts. This effect was something of a
malfunction, though one that would not normally arise. There were several reasons
why these devices were not working quite properly.

To begin with, the Great Cataclysm itself had shaken them, both literally by means
of earthquakes, electromagnetic disturbances, winds and storms, etc, and also in a
metaphorical way through the Flux-shock generated by the event. After that, those
devices sat unused and ignored for centuries, because the Flux was interdicted and
inactive around Earth, for reasons detailed elsewhere. [2]

When the Flux began to respond once more to human commands, these old devices
were used once more, but after the Cataclysm, followed by centuries of disuse, they
were ‘out of tune’, they needed various adjustments and maintenance, that the men
and women of the Refuge no longer retained the practical skills to perform. It was
true that the Great Library held the necessary information to relearn the skills, but
the descendents of the Refugees had other priorities, and the work was never done.

The devices still worked, but the subtle misadjustment of the paralenses caused the
safety features built into them to work imperfectly. This left the local Flux in a
state that was well-suited to sustain ghosts over centuries and millennia. As long
as the paralenses were operating, these ghosts were able to endure...and even grow.

MORE LATER.


[b][1][b] These would be the two-meter long versions of the devices, which resembled
metal-capped ovoids made of yellow faceted glass.

[2] See here: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...=71326&page=20

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The growth of power on the part of the ghosts was slow, creepingly slow, but also
steady. It was exponential growth, albeit at a very low rate, and like a small
investment that compounds over a long period into a fortune, the power of these
ghosts grew steadily with the passing centuries. Though (fortunately for those in
the area) it remained primarily confined the area of effect of the paralenses, that
power grew to the point that if the ghosts were stirred to activity, they could so
steeply affect the physical world as to be able to take on almost any intruder and
kill him or her quickly. Their power, both telepathic and physical, was terrifying.

Fortunately, simply entering the area did not automatically stir that power.
The ghosts were lost in their own half-conscious, half-insane half-dream, and
might not necessarily notice an intruder immediately. They might immediately
detect and attack an intruder, or the intruder might be able to enter and leave in
safety. The longer one remained in their domain the greater the risk, and the more
‘noise’ one made, physical or otherwise, the greater the risk. Enough people did
go in and rouse the ghosts, to maintain the fear associated with the region.

The direct power of the ghosts was contained, for the most part, to the volume of
effect of the ancient paralenses. The indirect effect was wider. Any entity with
any psychic sensitivity at all would tend to feel something wrong in that area, for
some miles in all directions. Most animals instinctively avoided the area, and
even humans uninformed of the local taboos and legends would tend to dread the
area for no reason they could specify. Many people sensed the on a subconscious
level and avoided the area, changing paths without even realizing why. This was
part of why the site of the old Refuge remained undiscovered for so very long.

Sometimes the ghosts would be more active than at others. For a time, perhaps one
or two centuries, the ghosts would become somewhat dormant, it would be slightly
safer to approach or enter the area. Then would come an active time, which might
also last a century or two, during which the ghosts would be very active and fairly
alert, and the danger would become acute. It was never zero, it was never entirely
safe to enter the ruins, it was merely that the risk level rose and fell with time.

Exactly what could befall someone in that site could vary, as well. Sometimes it
would be a telepathic attack that would drive a victim to madness with its sheer
power and focused insanity, sometimes it was a physical attack that might rise to
the level of being ripped into shreds, or something in between the two. Some of
the victims might be ‘telekinetically’ strangled, swiftly or slowly. [1] Many
horrible fates could befall someone who intruded into the ruins of the Refuge.

Roughly two centuries before the arrival of Jurgensen and the Aces, a new horror
developed. Some time around 1700 AD, after the passage of over six thousand
years, the ghosts finally discovered the Flux revenants that had been lying quietly
in their storage room, waiting to be roused and used. By now the ghosts had so
much ‘power’ that it was almost a trivial matter for them to awaken the revenants,
and control them. It was not long before the ghosts discovered something that was
of even darker portent for the peoples who lived nearby: the Flux revenants could
extend the reach of the ghosts beyond the bounds of their ‘natural’ demesne.

The ghosts found, with some practice, that they could give the revenants instructions
and turn them loose to roam beyond that small area that was both their power
and prison. This was less effective than it might have been because of the fact that
the revenants had little in the way of mind and less in the way of initiative, but they
could and did attack others in the area, driving people further away and making that
entire region that much more a focus of fear and terror. The ghosts found these
revenants so useful that most of their attacks against intruders came to focus on and
around them. They provided both physical bodies to use and anchors to focus the
diffuse attention of these beings. Acting through these arms and hands, the ghosts
could vent their hatred and rage far more effectively.

It was the Flux revenants, directed by those malicious ghosts, that had created that
clearing full of mounted skeletons (and it was only one of many). The revenants
used a rope of synthetic material from the supplies in the Refuge (it was actually a
variant on polymer plastic) and other materials to preserve and mount the skeletons,
almost like a serial killer that kept souvenirs of his or her victims. The victims of
this were initially people living within the reach of the revenants, and then later,
when most people had removed to a safer distance, those daring or foolish few who
entered the region to prove their bravery or satisfy their curiosity.

MORE LATER.


[1] Strictly speaking, this was a Flux attack, not psionics.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

So matters stood, more or less, when Jurgensen and the pursuing party of Seven
Aces members arrived in late 1925.

Though it was possible to enter the zone of influence of the ghosts without being
immediately detected, this was not the case for either Jurgensen or the Seven
Aces. Both groups, indeed, were quite ‘noisy’ in both physical and psychic terms.
Both were filled with intense, focused emotion, both groups were relatively large,
between the two parties this was the largest intrusion into the site in centuries.

To make it the more noticeable, they were actively examining, prodding and even
going so far as to detonate explosives in the heart of the ruins. The ghosts were
aware of the presence of both groups almost from the moment that they arrived.

On the other hand, the ghosts were, for want of a better word, confused. Lost in a
state of half-awareness at the best of times, it took them time to react to new
things, such as this huge, loud, active intrusion. Though their ingrained, defining
hatred quickly coalesced against the intruders, though they longed to strike out at
them, they were slowed by uncertainty, confusion, and by the sense of something
strange about the groups. Jurgensen, especially, was alarmingly unusual, it was
easy for the ghosts to sense the aura of power associated with the man, possessed
as he was of native psionic power and a extensive training from the Unity.

The Aces, for their part, lacked the psionic power of Jurgensen, but they, too, were
unusual, trained in unusual mental disciplines by the members of SG-7, their
British counterparts, and veteran combatants rather than the over daring young men
and women that had been their usual prey for many centuries.

This confusion was why both parties were in the site for many hours before those
ghosts finally struck, sending their Flux revenants against them. When they did
strike, the results were far less effective than the ghosts were used to, the Aces
and the men of the party with Jurgensen were carrying modern high power guns
and were capable fighters, they were much harder prey for the revenants than the
locals who had been their victims up until now. Further, once Jurgensen sensed
the basic mindlessness of the revenants, he found it easy to disrupt the control
the ghosts exercised over the creatures. This demonstration of power added to
the confusion, uncertainty (and also the fury and hate) on the part of the ghosts.

This slowed the attacks, and enabled both parties to survive, along with one other
factor about which neither group knew. As it happened, when Jurgensen had used
explosives to try and open a way into the Great Library, the shock of that blast had
been conducted by the rock directly downward, where it had shattered one of the
ancient paralenses that enabled the power of the ghosts. This left eleven others in
operation, but weakened by rather more than just one twelfth, because the balance
of the machines was disrupted, leaving the remaining machines both weaker and
further ‘out of tune’ than they had been before the explosion.

(It so happened that one of the underground paralenses was almost directly below
the site of the explosion, and so was readily damaged.)

So confused were the ghosts by all this activity, after thousands of years of relative
quiet, that both the Aces and Jurgensen and his men were able to evade the horde
of Flux revenants and escape into the tunnels below the ruins.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

Neither party went very far as they made their retreat from the site of the Refuge.
Indeed, neither party dared go very far, for a number of reasons.

For Jurgensen, matters were especially dire, because the small boats that he had
stolen from the village he raided were ill-suited to a long river trip. They could
carry little in the way of supplies or equipment, and the site was remote. To add
to the situation, Jurgensen knew that his mysterious American enemies, and the
Brazilians who appeared to be working with them, would likely have access to a
better vessel, and would quickly pursue them on the river.

Indeed, the Aces did have a working transport, but Conners had no intention of
leaving his quarry unwatched and unchecked in the midst of whatever it was he
was so obviously seeking. Further, he was not entirely confident that they would
be permitted to safely leave the area, because it was becoming obvious that the
strange ‘supernatural’ effects that they had been experiencing were not ceased.

Over the course of the next few hours, the men of his party scouted the area, and
discovered where the Aces were keeping their own vehicle, with a careful watch
in place. A direct attack on the Aces seemed suicidal, because on their vessel they
could have heavy weapons, and his own men would be making such an attack
across a zone of open ground between the jungle and the river.

Night was falling, and the area remained very dangerous. Jurgensen, with his own
honed espersenses, could feel the power of the entities that had brought down
the previous attacks, he knew that if they remained in the area, they were certain to
have further ‘supernatural’ difficulties. Yet he also knew that even if they could
get out of the area safely, and elude their American pursuers, the problem would
be unsolved. The Americans would surely tell someone of what they had seen
and found. In time, the news would directly or indirectly reach the Brazilians, and
they would quickly occupy the sight in overwhelming force. The precious knowledge
in the Great Library would not become his personal resource, indeed he might even
be unable to gain access to much of that knowledge for many decades, even backed
by the Unity. If his decades of work were to matter, he knew had to gain control
of the situation very quickly, preventing the Americans from escaping and also
managing to keep them from killing or capturing Jurgensen himself.

Unfortunately for him, his options for regaining control of the situation were very
far from extensive. His party still outnumbered the American group, but no longer
by very much, and they had lost the advantage of firepower. Further, his own men
were tired, hungry, thirsty, frightened, upset, and rattled. The fact that they still had
their own vessel available meant that the Americans could eat, drink and rest far
more easily and quickly than his own party could manage.

As he reviewed his options, while he and his men sheltered on the shore beside a
fire, on watch for enemies human and otherwise, Jurgensen came to a reluctant
but inescapable conclusion. Though it was exactly what he did not want to do, and
in many ways it defeated the whole purpose of much of his complicated planning
and years of work, it was necessary. The only way to regain even a partial control
of the situation in time to make any difference was to call in help from the Unity.

Jurgensen did not want to do that. Though he certainly worked for that dark
multiplex entity, he was also serving his own interests. Jurgensen had always had
the intention of bringing in the Unity when he found the ancient Library, but all
through his planning and work, over the course of decades, he had hoped and fully
intended to give himself first access, to set up the process so that he could ‘skim’
off the most interesting and relevant (to him) information for his own needs. He
wanted to make himself independent of his need for the Unity to stave off his own
aging process, to give himself a fallback position and other options in case his
support from the Unity was ever taken away. The knowledge that he believed to
be available in that Library was central to this goal. [1]

Jurgensen knew that if he called in the Unity at this point, he would not have full
control, he would not be able to count on slipping anything out past the watchful
gave of his master. It was a galling situation, because Jurgensen had spent quite
literally decades and enormous amounts of effort in attempting to set things
up to permit him first access to the precious knowledge, and all that time and all
that effort would be nullified if he called in the Unity before he was ready.

Yet Jurgensen was no fool, and there was no escape from the cold facts. He had
to chose, as it were, between ‘half a loaf’ and ‘no bread’. All of the other options
were even worse, the Americans had so disrupted his plans that he was left with
no other options than calling in the Unity. With a reluctance so deep that it was
difficult for Jurgensen to even contemplate the decision to bring in the Unity,
he came to the conclusion that just that decision now had to be made.

Jurgensen, as we have observed, was not stupid and not usually slave to his
own emotions and passions, ‘wishful thinking’ was not a vice characteristic of
the man. Reluctantly, he concluded that what had to be, had to be.

MORE LATER.



[1] On this point, Jurgensen was entirely right. The Library held the key
secrets he wanted and others he could use as well.