Retrieval
over 3 years ago
– Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 07:17:31 AM
Hello Heirs,
Yesterday we looked at some Great Old Ones from the Masks of the Mythos, so today we'll ping pong over to Scion: Dragon with a dragon tale by Lauren Roy.
Before we get to that, though, we're going to stray off our story path for a moment and listen to an interview Scion: Dragon developer Danielle Lauzon did with the Mage: The Podcast crew. Now, as you know, Scion: Dragon is an expansion for Scion Second Edition, and the folks at Mage: The Podcast normally talk about another game line entirely. But, if you're interested in story riffs and digging out some of the ideas and lore in our book and applying it in different ways, this may be worth a listen!
Retrieval
By Lauren Roy
In a ballroom on the other side of the manor, Randolph Lonergan bade the last of his party guests goodnight. At least, he believed they were the last guests. While he was busy squeezing hands and kissing cheeks, Mitch Chu and Ambrosia Cook were on the other side of the vast house, in Lonergan’s trophy room.
“Look at it all,” Mitch said. He unknotted his bow tie and let its ends hang rakishly as he moved from display case to display case. He knew exactly what type of figure he cut: The handsome young historian, preparing to steal back artifacts that had been smuggled out of their home countries.
“Little busy here.” Ambrosia stood in the doorway, on watch for any of Lonergan’s security or household staff. Any more of them, that was. The guard she’d knocked out lay in a heap just inside the room. His next scheduled check-in was in five minutes.
“Clock’s ticking,” Ambrosia said, as she rolled down her jacket’s sleeves. Tonight, she’d traded her usual business casual for a sleek bespoke suit. Mitch had insisted she dress the part, introduced her to his personal tailor, and footed the bill. Ambrosia suspected the suit cost more than she made in a year, but it felt nice, looked good, and hid her holstered gun perfectly.
Lonergan’s trophy room contained neither mounted animal heads nor first place pennants. The items on display here didn’t reflect their host’s hunting prowess, nor his sporting victories. The entrepreneur did, however, possess some golden cups — a whole case of them, in fact. It held the drinking vessels of ancient kings.
Randolph Lonergan’s trophies were other cultures’ historical treasures.
Mitch bypassed the cups. Tempting as they were, they weren’t his target. At least, not yet. Tonight, he was only here for the coins. They’d filled his dreams the last few weeks: in them, he’d twisted through rivers full of the little bronze discs. Each morning, he’d woken with the taste of metal in his mouth and rage churning in his belly. He felt it rising now. He couldn’t be sure where his anger ended and his patron Gōnggōng’s began. Was there even a difference, anymore?
The coins lay on a bed of black velvet in a case that looked simple, but was wired to hell and back with pressure sensors and temperature alarms.
“You sure you’ve got this?” Kiran Aamir asked in Mitch’s ear. They were offsite, guiding Mitch and Ambrosia from the comfort of — well, Mitch didn’t know exactly where. They were intensely private about their personal information, which was understandable considering their line of work. Kiran’s day job had something to do with smart home software. They’d never mentioned which company, though Mitch had his suspicions.
Whoever Kiran worked for, it made them not only extremely wary of how much people unthinkingly put online, it also made Kiran extremely good at finding that information. Their research into Lonergan’s habits had sped up Mitch’s timeline by at least a month. Tonight, they’d intercepted all of the manor’s smart device traffic, including its security cameras. The trophy room display cases, however, weren’t on the network. Here, Mitch was on his own.
“I know what I’m doing,” he said, glancing toward the camera overhead in case Kiran was watching. “I’ve bypassed one of these before — oh. Hello. When did you sneak in here?” The wall behind the coin display held a collection of mounted blades. Mitch had made note of them during his reconnaissance work, but the jian in the center was a new addition. New to Lonergan’s collection, that was, but not to Mitch. The double-edged sword had eluded him once before; why hadn’t he gotten wind of Lonergan’s acquisition?
Didn’t matter. He was here now.
“... Mitch? Who’s there with you? Who snuck in?” The sound of Kiran hammering at their keyboard — demanding data the cameras and their accomplice weren’t providing — transmitted over the earpiece.
“He’s talking to an artifact, Kiran. Stand down.” Ambrosia had come over to see who Mitch was talking to, too. She scowled at him as her hand eased away from her holster. “Four minutes, Mitch. We’ve only got time for the coins.”
“I won’t get this chance again,” he said. “Not for a long while. Years, maybe.” Even if everything went exactly according to plan and they got away clean, Lonergan would beef up his security as soon as he realized the coins were missing. The jian wasn’t something Mitch’s family or the Sky Breaker wanted him to take. He rarely kept anything he stole, much to his family’s chagrin, but this ... this was worthy of adding to his hoard.
“You’re going to do a smash and grab, aren’t you?” Ambrosia asked.
“Not on the coins. But on the jian? Yeah. Yeah, I am.” He flashed her his most confident grin, and turned one on the camera, too. “Because I have the best team backing me up.”
Ambrosia closed her eyes. Mitch was fairly certain she was counting to ten. “Kiran?” she said. “We’re going to need a distraction.”
For a moment, Mitch thought they’d cut the connection entirely. Then came a long sigh. “Fine. I can’t stop any alarms you set off when you grab it, but I can try to peel a few of the security team off to another part of the house. Best I can do.”
“You owe us,” said Ambrosia. The phrase carried weight behind it.
Mitch couldn’t tell if by us she meant herself and Kiran, or whether she was speaking on behalf of her Flight. Either way, he needed them. “Sure. Of course.”
“Three and-a-half minutes,” she said, and returned to her position by the door.
Mitch only needed two to bypass the various alarms and monitors on the coin display. It took him another minute to disable the proximity sensors on the swords, but the jian had its own complex series of wires discreetly attached.
“Thirty seconds,” said Kiran.
Ambrosia bent to confirm that the guard was still unconscious.
“Twenty.”
Mitch patted the coins where they were tucked safely in his pocket.
“Ten.”
He cracked his knuckles and held his hand over the pommel, waiting for Kiran’s countdown to finish.
“Three. Two. One.”
With one smooth, sharp tug, he tore the jian from its moorings. The ancient steel came away easily, unharmed.
Alarms shrieked out news of the intrusion.
“Let’s go,” said Ambrosia. She led the way out of the trophy room, keeping low and hugging the wall. Mitch skulked along behind her. As they ran, more bells and whoops echoed down the corridor. Lights flashed off and on in out of sync patterns. Music blared from every room they passed, and a voice — a pleasant but inflectionless alto — recited shopping lists, search results, and driving directions to Mount Rainier.
“Kiran, is this you?” Mitch asked.
“Sure is. I threw a little chaos at Lonergan’s smart home. You still have some guards coming your way, but it’s not the full force. Company in about ... fifteen seconds.”
Ambrosia signaled for Mitch to halt as they came to an intersection. “I’ll take care of them.”
While she took up her position, Mitch held utterly still. Most of the time, he enjoyed being seen, having all eyes in the room on him as he charmed a small crowd with fascinating tales from history. Right now, though, his job was to go unnoticed. They wouldn’t even know he was there.
Ambrosia glanced back toward where he stood, and looked right through him. “I hate when you do that,” she muttered.
The first guard rounded the corner seconds later. Ambrosia flowed up from her crouch smooth and quick, like fire spreading along a trail of gasoline. The butt of her gun made a solid thunk as it connected with the back of the guard’s head, and he toppled in a heap.
The guard’s partner, a few steps behind, had more time to react. He stepped up as Ambrosia turned and made a grab for her gun hand. She jerked her arm out of the way, so he only caught the sleeve of her new suit. He didn’t get a lock on her wrist. Still, he held tight, yanking her in close so she couldn’t control her shot.
The guard swung with his free hand, going for a jab to the kidneys. Ambrosia grunted with the impact, but it wasn’t enough to make her drop her weapon. In fact, all it seemed to do was piss her off. She clobbered at his head with her empty fist, ringing his bell three or four times in quick succession.
Still, the contested gun waved between them, the rose in their deadly tango. Then it went off, its report reverberating down the long hallway. The bullet tinged as it punched through antique tin ceiling tiles.
The gun’s discharge, awfully close to his face, surprised the guard into releasing Ambrosia’s sleeve and taking half a step back. Even startled, he was far from out of the fight. Ducking beneath her wild swing, he barreled into Ambrosia. The momentum drove them both into the wall right beside Mitch. Plaster cracked with their impact, splitting the damask wallpaper.
Mitch might’ve felt bad about the cost of repairs they were sticking Lonergan with, but the jian in his hand and the stolen treasures in the billionaire’s trophy room scattered his guilt pretty handily.
The guard pulled back just enough to slam Ambrosia into the wall again. She grunted, but it’d take more than that to knock her out. Ambrosia stomped the hard sole of her shoe down his inner calf. The big man yelped, and she used the distraction to shove him backward.
With several feet between them, they took aim at each other.
“Drop the gun,” the guard said. “Drop it and keep your hands where I can see them.”
“No.” Ambrosia wasn’t a tall woman; the security guard had at least a foot on her. Yet as she spoke, Mitch had the sudden impression that she filled the corridor. The air around her grew hazy with heat. The flashing red lights from the fire alarm glinted in her eyes, and made them glow like hot coals. “You drop yours,” she said. She spoke quietly, but the roar of a blazing fire filled her voice.
The guard’s eyes widened. His gun wavered. “I’ll shoot. I will.”
Ambrosia took a step toward him. Just one. The ground trembled with her footfall.
The big man dropped his gun. A low groan sounded from his throat, but he didn’t flee. He couldn’t seem to unlock his gaze from Ambrosia’s.
Mitch moved at last, revealing his position. The guard’s eyes widened as Mitch strolled up to him and plucked the earpiece from his ear and the mic from his collar. “I’m just going to tell your commander everything’s fine here, if you don’t mind.” He admired the two-way system a moment as he looked for the mic’s controls. “Oooh. This is a fancy one. Lonergan didn’t skimp on equipment, that’s for sure.”
“Dibs,” Kiran said, still monitoring. “I can get you two a clear shot out of there, but you have to get moving. The fire department’s on the way, and the police are sending a unit.”
“I thought you had everything locked down,” said Ambrosia.
“Yeah, well, turns out when you overload the system, you find a few bugs. I’ll fix it in the next build.”
“What’s your name?” Ambrosia asked the guard.
“Jones,” he said.
He sounded sincere enough to Mitch, but Ambrosia sniffed out falsehoods as part of her day job. “Lying is a bad idea. I don’t think you want to find out what happens if you’re trying to trick me, so we’ll tip off your captain.”
His shoulders sagged. “Byers.”
Mitch toggled the mic and matched his tone to the guard’s. “Byers,” he said. “East wing, third floor is clear. Just more system glitches, looks like.”
“Acknowledged,” came the reply.
“I’d say I’m sorry about this,” Ambrosia said to Byers, “but I’m not.” She clocked him hard and laid him neatly beside his unconscious partner. She straightened up and smoothed out her suit, paying special attention to the sleeve. It was a little wrinkled, but otherwise fine: Mitch’s tailor crafted them to withstand plenty of abuse. “Okay, Kiran. Lead the way.”
Kiran called out their escape route, sending them down back stairways and through vast connected suites in Lonergan’s manor. Mitch couldn’t help but catalog other pieces of art on display as they passed. It’d be a long time before he came back here, but a long time wasn’t never.
They spilled out into the night, well away from the main driveway. Red and blue lights wound their way up the hill, but the tree line was close. “You’ve got a bit of a hike ahead of you,” Kiran said. “Keep heading west and you’ll hit a road in about a mile. I’ll have a ride waiting for you.”
“Hey. Thanks, both of you,” said Mitch. The coins were a reassuring weight in his breast pocket, and the jian’s pommel cool in his hand. “This means a lot.”
“Sure thing,” said Ambrosia. She glanced at the sky, where heavy clouds were rolling in. “Let’s get out of here before it rains. I want my partner to see how good I look in my new suit.”
