Right continues to explore the school and fiddle with his phone and a dozen other innocuous activities to kill time. He waits to see where Lucella goes after her interview and, if she goes somewhere relatively private, he makes contact.

You follow Lucella back to the Teacher's wing; realizing she must be assigned her new bedroom.  The female teacher's have their own section but it is still relatively close to yours.  Before long, Janet has said goodbye and Lucella has drifted back towards you, "You didn't think Reardon wouldn't send backup did you? Besides, I'm good at having your back." She smiles at you, her bright, most genuine smile and you wonder if she only lets the brokenness of her filter through or if it has finally leaked through her demon facade.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:46, Mon 11 Aug 2014.

Right is glad to see a familiar face in hostile territory. "I figured he would. I was hoping you'd do or, in this case, have already done, some legwork about the place. All I have to work on is that some kids have inexplicable abilities, and the old teachers disappeared.  And his contact disappeared too. I'm not the best at talking, as you have surely noticed, and while I might be able to turn up some coverage of the missing teachers, I doubt they will be so detailed as to indicate what building they disappeared in. So, I will likely have to conduct my surveillance on foot."

"Good to see you again," he appends, "I thought after our last meeting, you might not want to give it another shot. Or might be too embarrassed to."

"I'm afraid I didn't have much time for research.  It was a grab and go job of coming here, Reardon called me last minute.  One of his funny feelings again. And after our last meeting, who wouldn't want to see those fireworks again? So what are you teaching? Anthropology for me... Ironic.  "
This message was last edited by the player at 01:29, Tue 12 Aug 2014.

"English. Anthropology would have been more subtle, but riskier. Should we conduct some research, or just go investigating?" Right inquires, "I'm not sure what your timetable is."

"Classes don't start for another 2 days. Tomorrow I sign the contract, then I start the day after. I love exploring, you know that.  Have you seen this building? Absolutely beautiful, the gardens are exquisite. Gordon does a great job; who thought we could ever have such a green thumb. The marvels of being." She sighs wistfully.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:24, Tue 12 Aug 2014.

"Keep an eye out for the lawyers. They breathe smoke, and I think they might be pawns. I'm inclined to sift through the news and see what I can find out about this place, but I'm worried about tipping our hand," Right says.

"I'm afraid I know very little about what would or wouldn't tip our hand.  My contracts are of a more... mundane nature, typically.  Port Angeles was my first elevated one.  I have to defer to you on this one."

"Well then, I guess I'll see you when class starts," he says, "and watch out for the lawyers. Let me know what you find out."

Right sets up a dead drop to arrange for a new pair of burner phones for the two of them, and then goes to work. He tries to get old copies of the newspaper and sees if any of the local news stations offer caches of old content. Searching for "Wellington School Psychic Kids" might be suspicious, but surely watching a rerun of the Nine O'Clock News has to be legit. He can't be the only one watching old clips. Or can he? The paranoia starts to set in, but he continues to navigate the news site.

Throughout the remainder of the day, Lucella arranges for a burner phone for you, something small and prepaid.

Your research turns up only a little more detail.  The teachers loved their students and were very passionate about them, making pleas to EduTech to keep their jobs so they could continue to look after them.  When all the teachers were fired, they locked the gates of the school, and the school itself, and carried on teaching the children.  One reporter mentions an interview with one of the teachers saying, "They are special kids, they need stability and they need comfort in knowing they are safe and loved.  We have been working with these children for years, they need us." The last article talks about EduTech searching for a peaceful resolution to the situation and then... nothing.  No mention of a resolution, no mention of any of the teachers at all.

History of the school is also not abundant.  It seems as though a rich benefactor built the school so that his child could attend and began to select similar troubled and special children to also attend.  The school had been running since 1850.  The name of the benefactor does not appear, nor does the name of the child.

The relative lack of leads encourages Right to work on his English teacher persona. He steals a syllabus off of the internet, briefly skims the book he plans on teaching, and calls it a night after he makes a cursory attempt to find out the name of the founder of Wellington.

The next day he awaits his class. After everyone has taken their seat, he introduces himself and launches straight into a lecture on Catcher in the Rye. He concludes the end of the hour with an invitation, "As your teacher it is my job and my calling to support you all in any reasonable way I can, not just academically. If any of you has a problem, if you bring it to me, I will handle it personally as best I can. If that isn't what you want, I'll do my best to connect you with someone more suitable to the situation." He looks around the room, hoping that his plea doesn't go unfelt. A young, impressionable, reckless mind is just the sort of tool he's hoping to acquire.

You are given a folder with work plans for the class for you to follow, everything clearly laid out and specific.  Each student in your class has a bio in the folder as well and you can see that their backgrounds are complex and varied.  Jimmy Clifton, mute and hasn't spoken since the age of 6, Sarah Andrews, High Functioning Autistic, Kyle Porter, Severe PTSD, Alex Landon, repeatedly in detention at previous school and consistently always in trouble, Dana Young, attention deficit disorder, Peter Walker, oppositional defiant disorder. The list goes on.

That morning, you head to class.  It's a beautiful classroom and clearly no expense was spared for the children's comfort and enjoyment from the prior owners.  Beautiful colored maps on the walls have been pinned with stickers for literature from all over the world; it seems the children had been traveling across the world via books with their previous teacher.  Potted plants and ferns decorate the edges to bring the outside world into the classroom.  At the back of the room behind the usual classroom desks, a plush reading area is setup with decorative, yet comfortable, couches and big bookshelves filled with books of all kinds.

Your 7th grade class is waiting for you, seated quietly at their desks.  Many of them have concerned looks on their faces, furrowed brows or frowning lips.  They do not at all look like a group of troubled kids and instead look like a group of scared ones. You introduce yourself and try to start the teaching plan, each of the children listening carefully and taking notes.  Halfway through one of the lessons, Kyle suddenly bolts out. A shy looking Dana puts up her hand and says, "That's his thing. He gets scared sometimes - he's got ptsd. He'll be back."  Soon enough, within a few seconds, Kyle sheepishly returns with a muted, "Sorry." and sits back down. Another girl, Sarah, leans over from her desk and pats his arm and looks gratefully at her for another moment.  The lesson continues and occasionally you see the children passing notes, but outside of this, no other trouble occurs.

Finally, as the class draws to an end and you make your plea for them to come to you, some of the kids look as though they want to but aren't sure that they should. (Roll wits + empathy to see if they trust you after your day spent with them.)

The folder makes Right wonder about the philosophy of educating these larval humans. Could one normal or even above average human teacher, with his limited intellect, fallible memory, and self-centered human nature really keep up with the greatly increased needs of this many varied and uniquely crippled children, even if he were somehow an expert on each aberration they possess. The school must not really be a place of learning, but a way to sell parents false hope, even before the corporate takeover. This informs his understanding of the school greatly. Such a place would not be hard at all to subvert for the God-Machine, nor would many be able to tell the difference between the new and old states.

The class does not go badly, except for Kyle bolting out. That bothers him for some reason. At least the kids don't seem actively hostile.

11:19, Today: Mr. Right rolled 2 successes using 6d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s with rolls of 9,5,6,2,6,10(+4). Wits + Empathy (abducting kids).

The children seem interested, maybe even comforted by your offer.  All of them leave, except two; Kyle and Sarah.  Kyle is a small kid, blonde hair and two blue eyes, the dark green Wellington school outfit looks wrinkled and stained, and his voice quivers softly when he talks and breaks occasionally. Sarah, on the other hand, has a neatly pressed Wellington blouse and skirt.  She's tall for her age with thick auburn hair and small brown freckles all over her pale face. She has a small squeaky voice, completely mismatching her exterior.

Both sit whispering at their desks, occasionally looking up at you.  Kyle starts towards you but Sarah holds his arm and shakes her head just briefly but it is enough for you to notice.  Kyle shrugs and whispers something else and then Sarah frowns and shrugs back.  Finally, she gets up and leaves without another word.

Kyle starts to pack up his things and says simply as if you'll understand, "Our other teacher's left us..."

Right puts on a face of concern, "I won't leave, and I don't think the others did either. I think that something happened. Don't worry about me though, things can't happen to me. I am special. Do you have any idea what could have happened?"

"We know you are." He shrugs and shivers for a moment, "There's rumors... We don't like the Company, they took away our teachers.  Our parents think its better for us, but its not.  They wanted to stay, and they locked the school and told us to keep going like normal and so we did.  We trusted them.  The reports were outside and helicopters and they were trying to get into the school and the teachers would talk to them and tell them that they just wanted what was best for us," He slumps back in his chair, staring at his hands, "Then one night we went to sleep and the next morning they were gone, and some new teachers were here, and a new principal, and the Administer.  We had an assembly and they told us it was for the best, that our school would be better now and that if there were any problems, we should talk to the APT or the Counselor.  My favorite teacher.... Mr. Carr... he was our History teacher... he.. he said he'd send me a postcard if anything happened and he had to listen to them and quit... he said he'd send it from Rome. But I haven't heard back.  Some of the new teachers are nice, some of them are boring... It isn't like their bad... It's just... I dunno. We think someone's watching us, I guess. And things have been happening. Ahh... I can't really explain this. Just... just forget it, okay?" He starts to get up and puts the backpack over one shoulder and looks nervous and concerned, pulling at his shirt and looking out the windows and over his shoulder occasionally.

Right nods along as he listens. The boy tells him a lot of what he suspects, but little he didn't already know. He presses Kyle for details in a whisper, checking the windows and doors himself, "What kind of things have been happening? Trust me, I'll understand"

"Someone is watching us in our sleep."  He gulps. "And some of us have seen shadows trying to get into the school grounds. They look like shadows but like smoke because of the way the shadows move.  One time, I thought I saw one in the bathroom stall, and when I opened it, the toilet seat was singed.  Then I was really worried someone would get in trouble for having burnt the seat and the next day, the seat was fine.  We don't know what's happening.  We have always had people see strange things, always. But this is like way different."
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:37, Tue 02 Sept 2014.

"I see. Thank you. I will do my best to get to the bottom of this. Don't worry, your secret is safe with me," Right assures the boy, ""Is there anything else you can tell me about the shadows? Do you see them at day or night? Alone, or with others? How long ago did it happen? Is anyone else saying anything about it?"

"Other kids talk sometimes, but we have gotten more quiet lately.  They want us to report anything strange and none of us want to go to counseling. Some people say that some of them don't come back, but I dunno if that's true. About the shadows... well, I dunno either.  It seems to be different every time." He starts looking nervous and watching the door and quickly says, "Anyways, I gotta go. You asked... so... so I thought I should tell you."

Right nods the boy goodbye. He pulls a notebook out of his briefcase and runs his eyes back and forth over it, pretending to read it. In fact, he is planning his next move. He was hoping to get more information from the students, but all he has is disparate pieces. He hastily throws together a new plan, a three-pronged approach to plumbing the depths of the mysteries of Wellington:

Step one. He makes it an absolutely priority to remain alert and vigilant for incorporeal ghosts or angels or smoke monsters. If the God-Machine had a plan to enact at the school, it would have to make another move, and all he had to do was catch it. Sooner or later he'd be in the right place at the right time, hopefully before the plan is finished. Based on what it targeted, and what it was targeted with, he might be able to deduce the greater design. He makes sure to warn Lucella and Gordon to watch out for shadow smoke ghosts too.

Step two. He looks up the lawyers using the business card. He keeps the inquiries either benign (checking their reviews and references, casually browsing their website if they have one) or offline (conducting a background check by going to city hall and checking the records in paper form).

Step three. He physically investigates the school, walking the halls and looking for any sign of the God-Machine's influence. He checks the locker rooms, and the workshop, behind the buildings, in the boiler room, anywhere that seems out of the way or hidden. If caught by anyone suspicious, he simply claims that he was trying to find a nondescript, dark haired vandal who ran off when he had confronted him.

Lucella manages to pass you in the hallway often enough that day that passing a message to her is easy.  She shares that she too has heard a little about these smoke beings and she heard a rumor that some of the children have found smoke beings hovering over their beds in the night, only to find the tips of their toes and fingers singed with black soot.  She seems concerned but overall, she’s leaving the planning to you.  You aren’t sure why she is deferring to you so quickly, but you get the sense that more is going on with her than you understand.

You walk the halls as best you can, peeking into rooms and hallways with your excuse at the ready should anyone ask questions.  You begin to notice a pattern, corners of the school are subtly decorated with diagrams etched into the stone; diagrams with broken gears, clocks and gadgetry.  At one point, near the main meeting hall, a clockwork dragon is being defeated by a handful of young children wielding feathers. At another, a giant praying mantis built of wires and metal plates and wheels is holding a giant eye.  Similar designs peter the halls.  You find a set of stone doors at the foot of a stairwell in a portion of the building, with no clear way forward.

You continued your search, and as you near the administration building to begin the search there, a young man is walking the hallway.  He looks like a young hispanic man, in his mid 20's, black hair and a pleasant smile greets as he carries a large cardboard box into one portion of the building. "Heylo, would you mind?" He says in a slight Spanish accent, smiling broadly and nodding his head towards a box. "Are you new here? The Principal's assistant, she usually help me, but I don't know where she's gotten to. Thank you so much."

Right wishes that Lucella were a bit more straightforward, but she was like him. It was unavoidable.

He procures some paper and crayons or other suitable writing implement from the school's supplies and stealthily makes etchings of the diagrams in the school's architecture. The patterns themselves suggest occult influence, but try as he might, he cannot interpret children defeating a clockwork dragon as a hostile sign. He puzzles over them, trying to draw forth meaning from the cryptic diagrams.


11:26, Today: Mr. Right rolled 1 success using 4d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s. Int+Occult to decipher the etchings.
11:25, Today: Mr. Right rolled 1 success using 7d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s. Downloading Occult.

When approached by the staff member, Right puts on smile ninety two (subdued, obviously fake, polite nonetheless) and goes to pick up the box, "You got it, amigo. Yes, I'm new here. I'm one of the teachers. What are we delivering?" he inquires. As they carry the boxes, he tries to steer the conversation towards towards rumors of strange things happening at the school, anything the man may have heard. The help tends to see things and talk about things, yet don't have the same stake in keeping quiet that the administration does. This man could be a good source of leads.

"Thank you much." He smiles shyly at you, "These, they are school supplies, from Edu Tech. To teach the childrens. How you like it here? How things go for you? What you teaching? How are the children?" The two of you walk together, moving the boxes into the administration building, at the foot of the assistants office.

As you speak to him, you continue thinking about the diagrams throughout the building.  It seems reminiscent of some kind of religion, the basic symmetry of the drawings, the collection in general with its themes of good and evil, the progression of images and some of the symbolism. It isn't something you recognize specifically but it resonates as something familiar. You feel as though it's something you might need to research some more, perhaps some obscure cult or religion, or perhaps the artist was interested in those themes.  More questions than answers again.

"No problem, chief," Right remarks, "I teach English. The children are very unique, a little difficult at times, but very rewarding. It's exactly the kind of job I was looking for, you know?"

Right makes it a point to use his next scheduled downtime to investigate the school library. Maybe it would have something about the themes of the building structure and geometry, or failing that, he goes to the nearest public library. He doesn't trust the internet, for good reason, and a little difficult to trace someone from looking at books in a building. Then again, just for safety, he doesn't check anything out and he doesn't make photocopies.