Nailah's Office: Black Magic Woman

[Will Stanton]

Will, back from his mission, knocked on the door to Nailah's office.

[Nailah Weaver]

"Come in." comes Nailah's vaguely distracted sounding voice from inside.

[Will Stanton]

"Professor. Is this a bad time?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"No, this is the perfect time. You have news for me?" Nailah is standing in the middle of the room. Chairs have been pushed aside and she's even nudged the desk a little closer to the wall in favor of the spread of Tarot cards on the floor. Here and there a piece of paper with a quickly scrawled image and name has been put down due to the lack of a Seven of Flies or The Jester in a regular deck. The cards fill most of the available space on the floor and one wall has pieces of paper pinned to it for note taking.

[Will Stanton]

"Er, yeah...what's all this?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"The future. Some of it is the present now." she adds, pointing at one part of the spread where The Fool and the Three of Pentacles were sitting next to each other. "You have a missive of some sort, maybe a question or some information?" she says, scribbling something on one of the notes on the wall.

[Will Stanton]

"I hope I'm the three of pentacles.

I need to become an expert on satarim."

[Nailah Weaver]

"You're The Fool, but never mind that, I'll explain how that is not an insult some other time if you care." she says, finishing writing down something and finally turning around to face Will. Satarim you said? Where did you hear about that?"

[Will Stanton]

"We'll table my foolishness for now.

The agents investigating the house where the giant cockroaches appeared--you know, on the news--were speaking of a possible incursion of satarim, and were drawing chalk designs in a foreign language."

[Nailah Weaver]

"What kind of agents draw chalk designs?" she mumbles and it's not quite clear whether she's asking Will or herself. "You wouldn't happen to remember what they were writing? Maybe if I showed you some examples?"

[Will Stanton]

"I'll certainly do my best, but I didn't recognize the language."

[Nailah Weaver]

She walks over to her desk and pulls a couple books out of a stack, opening them up to show various circles and diagrams in various languages. Some of them don't even really look much like language to begin with.

[Will Stanton]

"Um, that one doesn't look very much unlike not being too different," Will said, pointing.

[Nailah Weaver]

"Sumerian protection circles. MI 13 must have someone from the Hermetic Order on their pay roll... The good news is, if they didn't mess it up then things might already be under control. The bad news is, this outbreak probably isn't all there's to it. Satarim are vermin. Opportunistic. They indicate and perpetuate already existing problems. Like flies drawn to the corpse at a crime scene, except the corpse in this metaphor are rituals, summoning circles, things that pierce the veil and let them crawl in around the edges. You didn't happen to catch one by any chance?"

[Will Stanton]

"Our other team should be bringing something in, but I don't know if it's the same thing.

Vermin from where?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"Elsewhere. That's really all anyone can say for certain." she goes on before Will can give that answer the derision it deserves. "Summoning circles are the most likely culprit because they are meant to attract beings from outside our own reality and the Satarim are eager to comply. Depending on who you ask they're either a dangerous nuisance or a convenient asset, because they will try to maintain the conduit that brought them here in the first place so they can spread their incursion. They're not necessarily dangerous themselves but unchecked they will try to overlay what they can of our world with their own."

[Will Stanton]

"What sort of thing might they have been trying to summon?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"That's a very good question." she says, letting her eyes wander across the spread of cards on the floor as if she was looking for the answer. After a moment she faintly shakes her head. "No good way of narrowing it down right now..."

[Will Stanton]

"Are we talking world-ending demon things or, like, a dimension where the pizza is really good.

No, seriously, what kind of cost would this summoning entail, because surely, whoever's responsible would want a consummate gain."

[Nailah Weaver]

"It's unlikely to be good at the very least. Considering that this doesn't appear to be a particularly large infestation I wouldn't expect something too big..." she says but she sounds uncertain. "I don't know. I'll keep looking into it. It could have the potential to be bad just from the number of possibilities. If we're lucky someone inept merely botched a ritual to conjure a familiar."

[Will Stanton]

"You say these creatures strengthen the pathways. Is it possible that whatever summoning this was is incomplete somehow, and we could stem it in the bud by exterminating them?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"Possibly. I can't really tell without knowing what it is that was done. Either way getting rid of them is a good idea."

[Will Stanton]

"What would happen if we didn't remove them?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"If nothing at all was done? After a while London would have a new district that was claimed by an alien ecology."

[Will Stanton]

"Gotcha. That's the stakes then.

Anything else useful you can tell me?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"That seriously depends on what you consider useful and how much rambling you can take. Because I have a lot to work with but very little solid information right now. Some of it probably isn't even related."

[Will Stanton]

"I need to know everything if we're going to do anything about this," Will nodded, sitting down.

[Nailah Weaver]

"I suppose a different perspective might help." she says, apparently considering the cards clustered around the Fool. "Okay, so this is almost certainly what directly relates to this." she says, gesturing at two clusters of cards. The Chariot is sitting at the top, underneath The Magician and the Queen of Pentacles. Then a hand-drawn card reading 'The Conduit' and underneath it The World upside-down, flanked by more hastily scribbled paper, the 'Six of Flies' and the 'Ace of Shadows'. The Fool and the Three of Pentacles are sitting nearby but not quite connected as if she hadn't been sure how they connect to the whole.

"Ambition or some kind of self assertion, recognition, a quest of some kind in a broader sense. The Magician and the Queen of Pentacles are both symbols of arcane power and are probably who is responsible for this. The ones being driven by what the Chariot represents. The Conduit connects them to the inverted World, which makes sense considering what you've told me about. Which means the Six of Flies likely represents the Satarim. The Ace of Shadows is tied to it in the same manner but I couldn't tell you what it means yet. And then that whole grouping somehow relates to the rest of this through the Two of Cups..." she says, gesturing a the rest of the spread. "It usually indicates an offering of some kind. The twisted snakes lead to or give raise to the winged lion, which stands for pride and strength..." she elaborates on the image depicted on the card.

[Will Stanton]

Will nodded, considering.

"An offering. Ambition. A conduit to another world.

This sounds like some sort of...dark ritual for power. Ace of shadows...how literal are these cards?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"Not very, but the metaphorical meanings are often what the name implies. What they can lack is morality. This constellation could apply almost as is to the recreation of the lighthouse. An ambition to create a conduit in order to gain significant arcane power. But the Ace feels less like a granted boon and the Two of Cups almost implies more personal gain, yet it isn't what this culminates in. It could be the strength that makes this possible in the first place, but it acts as a connection to other things, including The Moon over there, which implies misdirection and subterfuge."

[Will Stanton]

"So it doesn't culminate in personal gain...are you implying this is, I dunno, a group of some kind?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"Yet it's motivated by... such..." she trails off, staring at The Magician and back at the Two of Cups. "There's another possibility. The Two of Cups can indicate the Winding Path. Power gained as one person passes another on a twisting road. But Victoria wouldn't be this foolish."

[Will Stanton]

"...she wasn't in, because I was going to ask her first."

[Nailah Weaver]

"I really hope I'm wrong on this."

[Will Stanton]

"I'd better go track her down. THanks professor--stay in touch, and if your cards reveal anything else, call the Fool immediately, please."

[Nailah Weaver]

"Yes, of course." she says, her attention already drifting again.

[Will Stanton]

Will frowned a tad, and then left the office.

[Samantha McManus]

"Well, this looks like a bit of a project," Samantha says, ducking her head in.

[Nailah Weaver]

"Would have gone to the Lighthouse but I was worried about losing sight of things on the way over." she says, her back to the door but not really surprised to hear Sam's voice.

[Samantha McManus]

"Is this a hint as to what you'd like for your birthday?"