Don Rhodes

'Rhadamanthus'

Played by: Rhadamanthus

INFORMATION

Mortal, Male, See Accounts

Aliases: Daryll Louis; Mr. Louis, Rhadamanthus, Shallow-6
Nationality: American
Residence: Transient
Employer: The Brotherhood of Phoenician Sailors
Function: Hatchetman, Hetairos (formerly)

Overview

History

Complications

Field Profile

Affiliations & Commentary

Footnotes

December 29th, 2017 - In regards to Don Rhodes & the Venice papers:

The contents here have been released to us (and others) via the Council of Venice by one Viktor Verascu, allegedly a senior agent within the Brotherhood of Phoenician Sailors and allegedly the former handler and operations manager for our 'problem-of-interest', Don Rhodes.

These "facts" have been supported by a handful of junior PR officers under Elias Berbera, but both Berbera himself and the Phoenician council ambassador have avoided comment for indeterminate reasons. (Though we have a fairly good idea why, See: Affiliations.)

As far as our luck goes in pushing the Council to fill in the gaps, they too have been uncooperative. Frankly, it feels like this release is just appeasement on the sailors's part, but to which party and for what is currently unknown. Certainly not related to us small fry.

In either case, we're regurgitating the gist of all we've gotten. What follows is all of the supplementary info we've received on our small-time menace, as well as our thoughts. Feel free to refer to any and all documents relating to him by name, but steer clear of citing the incident files until we've finished our internal review.

RECEIVE - initiate Cronenberg frequency - SOMETHING WENT WRONG, SETH

Background

Though no longer a matter of mundane knowledge for a number of riveting reasons, Don was one-of-two (criminally underpaid) workers in the employ of a notary in Seattle, translating and processing his office's immigration papers in total monotony. Where else but in Washington state?

Given the choice, Don maybe would have given anything to break the stress and disappointment. The typical dead-end life regrets, etc. He didn't have a choice. That much was stressed, put in bold and underlined; there are some intriguingly emotional accounts that have come out of Verascu's cooperation, considering he never crewed with more than a handful of people at a time. In either case, Don's absorption into the secret world began some time in the fall of 2011.

As it goes, The Dragon established a kamikaze cell, an uncharacteristically ballsy and desperate bid in preparation for the Mayan End of Days incident, whose activities centered around the northwest-to-midwest portion of the United States.

Their goal was to triangulate and draw Illuminati attention to the location of Mayan artifacts that later turned out to be vital in defeating the Vestiges of the Wayeb' during the Nameless Days of the Mayan calendar - The Dragon used various methods to meet these ends. One of these methods was torn straight from the Illuminati hand-book: subliminal conditioning. The making of sleeper agents via television feeds. Couch potato soldiers of chaos.

Don's dissatisfaction with work and life developed into paranoia, induced violent distractions, low self-esteem and, my favorite, unreliable memory recall. He never noticed, nor later cared apparently, how many lives he inconvenienced or endangered when he commandeered or botched workload after workload of sensitive paperwork at the office. Nor did he notice that his life was slipping into ruin, as Viktor Verascu put it.

By the next year, The Dragon's agents had accomplished their goal of luring the Illuminati to the burial grounds and the artifacts, snatching pieces of the 'prize' out from in front of them, inciting a merry chase, getting some of the other factions involved, etc. After that debacle, the different artifacts would eventually land where they needed to; Maine, Egypt, Transylvania. What can I say, typical behavior for the green-heels in the end. By then, Don had been without a job for at least two months and his power was due to be cut off.

The Dragon cell dissolved in the goose chases and flights to South America. The Dragon managed to reassign or decommission their incidentals in whatever ways they could accommodate; the Phoenicians did not specify details here because I assume they didn't understand just how the job was carried out. Don was the only hitch throughout the process anyway.

Did you know? Improper decommissioning can lead to severe psychological duress and lasting trauma. And so it did for Don, a guy chosen for his total lack of importance and mundanity as far as we know. The Dragon had no intention to pick the guy up and his well-being was an easily measured expenditure, we think.

Going off of the idea that even they make mistakes, The Dragon likely miscalculated how things would play out. They knew that Don wasn't totally unimportant, he tested positively - and negligibly - for empathic abilities. Relatively common. No, the math took a turn - as Don's mental state declined, his violent thoughts didn't just echo endlessly in his head, they echoed out, not through organic minds, but through the inanimate. Through electronics and machinery. The occultech reverberations took out the infrastructure of a whole city block and replaced it with static approximations of Quentin Tarantino films.

Purportedly, you could have heard generators sputtering to the sound of Jules Winnfield's "That IS a tasty burger!" ad nauseum for four days. Downed powerlines that produced sparks of electricity to the tune of Ironside notwithstanding, Don had entered a stable thought-loop in short time, becoming less of a person than an occult gadget.

Perhaps that's why the Phoenicians were so quick to locate him. Verascu was rising up in the ranks at the time and his previous crew were in the area; The Brotherhood of Phoenician Sailors were expecting off-the-rails contraband that they could reclaim, not a person. But they took that person in anyway. Hell, by all accounts they could have left him the way he was. Malleable - they could have commoditized him and his ability. Instead, they reprogrammed as much of him as they could to a semblance of personhood.

According to personal notes included by Agent Verascu, Don made sure "to never forget the mercy shown to him." Even when he got stuck crewing up on what became a suicide mission. Of course, there are issues when it comes to Don's movements pre-incident that we may need to discuss.

4f 75 72 20 67 61 6d 65 20 69 73 20 65 76 65 72 79 77 68 65 72 65 2c 20 73 77 65 65 74 6c 69 6e 67 21 20 45 76 65 6e 20 69 6d 61 67 65 73 2e

Background (Cont.)

As some of you 'Rhodites' in the organization that have stuck to this issue from the beginning know, things become complicated from this point on. Bear with us as we explain for the benefit of those new faces that we feel need to be brought up to speed with this crazy mess.

To do that, there are (unfortunately) two elephants in the room that we need to make clear:

Elephant the First: Ripples in Reality

The recent "temporal-spatial issue" that cabals worldwide have come to refer to as "reality ripples" puts a lot of our work into question. These are lost alternate realities, some people cite the Mandela Effect, whatever you want to label it, it is the latest entry in the Council of Venice's Book of Secrets.

Whatever you call the 13,521st entry, it is completely out of our field of knowledge as well as our capacity to deal with. If only we had better staffing, more agents, more money, more everything - to be frank, we don't, so we let the Council of Venice and the major cabals deal with the implications.

Whatever those implications are, the issue is a non-issue for most of us. After all, the only thing that the secret world at large knows is that something fucky happened essentially overnight and the people who know better have informed us and are investigating the matter. If we had a greater foothold, it would fall into our jurisdiction. We don't and it doesn't, so don't bother worrying.

All we ask is that you keep the concept in the back of your head as you read on.

Elephant the Second: Don Rhodes

Now you're asking "who is this guy?" Don Rhodes is a technopathic nuisance who has stuck his nose into our investigations time and time again. We have even developed a danger meter completely reliant on whether he's made a cameo on an investigation or not, it's absurdly effective and we don't like it.

First contact goes back to a series of jobs after the 'reality ripples' first came to public attention. The monkey on our back latched on when we got paid to snoop on it, in other words.

As far as the Big Three admit to knowing previously, Don Rhodes operated under the Phoenicians between late-2012 to mid-2014. After which he vanished, presumably to New Carthage. This was plenty of time for major players to rack-up surveillance, get their files in order, do up a decent write-up on the guy. Not to mention, the cracking open and retrieving of all official governmental paperwork from both topside and within the secret world.

We were outsourced by two of the factions, the Illuminati and the Templars, in an effort to sort out low-level paperwork and assist with the public angle of the aforementioned reality rippling. Out of all of the work handed to us, we determined that most of it had translated perfectly to our "new" reality. Except for a handful, unwritten from reality and all, but we blew through those, until we ran into Don Rhodes.

We thought he was another 'goner' to throw into the garbage bin and we continued to make similar assumptions, as you will see, throughout the investigations that followed. The Illuminati in particular were vehement and provided fresh observations that proved the man was alive. At that moment, the job changed tracks.

It went from fact-checking to a serious investigation into why this one guy was such an outlier. Illuminati resources on him were all 'wrong' - screwy, anomalous. Not factually deficient. (Though, the Illuminati being factually deficient is typically an anomaly in itself.)

Everything they had on Don Rhodes was wildly inaccurate. Documents were mis-dated or populated by nonsense data. Observations were inconsistent compared to newer information. In general, things had not transferred like the previous cases. Ditto with the Templars, though they were not nearly as vehement as their rivals.

Initially, we thought it was an open-and-shut case. Consensus reality had changed and it seemed logical at the time to tell our employers that there must have been a glitch in the Matrix and they'd have to start spying from scratch. However, that is never an acceptable thing to mention to the people that are paying you. Especially when high-level administrators come down and involve you by name. (Paying reparations for botching Whitechapel, I'm sure.)

So we tried to finish the job as succinctly as we could. We know how that went, hindsight is 20/20.

At first we thought maybe there had been a security leak or other nonsense that took advantage of the recent phenomenon. Maybe top-office redaction? Maybe it wasn't the same guy after all? We were given agents, as always, to help with the more obscure bits.

Ultimately, no matter how hard we tried to justify it, the "reality ripples" could not account for the findings we uncovered. None of it checked out within the parameters we were given, so we took a risk to tap the United States government and that's when the rabbit hole deepened.

The moment we went down that hole, it attracted negative attention from Don Rhodes himself, but we immediately blew open an existential and bureaucratic nightmare:

• It wasn't just the secret societies laboring with bad info. Every single official document we found was riddled with errors. Not only did it seem as if they were filed out by someone criminally incompetent, there was recorded evidence of people referring to the documents and even scrutinizing them rigorously with no problem. Even information coming from unofficial and clandestine channels are marked by these mistakes. Bonus points for completely contradicting the Illuminati and the Templar's takes on things.
• According to numerous copies of his birth certificate, which also all passed muster, his age ranges from 22 to 27. There was no doubt here that the documents were the real deal and not just fakes.
  • All documents that made use of his DoB suffer from permutations. Basically anything from medical reports, state IDs in the United States, to online profiles, anything that relied on his age as a frame of reference all cited something different and made separate conclusions based on what was cited. This is less obvious with, say, Illuminati records - of course that is because they rely on internal metrics and usually not crap like birthdays.
• CCTV, civilian footage and eyewitness accounts taken from before 2015 point to drastic changes in physical and mental state that, again, contradict the Big Three - but also completely contradict one another.
  • Prime example: video taken at a block-party from a rival agent's phone in 2013 depicted 'Don' as a taller middle eastern man; CCTV shows a thickset possibly-Eastern European man at the same moment. Neither of these corroborate the usual description given by the partygoers of an aloof dark-skinned Hispanic parked to the side of the affair.
  • His bank history describes transactions in both Tokyo and Cairo at the same exact time and date which went completely unremarked until we looked into it.

After some time, we were still operating under the idea that someone preternaturally talented, best in the world maybe, had gone through and doctored everything they could get their hands on in reference to Don Rhode's life.

If someone was responsible, calling them a ghost was an insult. Nothing the Black Watchmen or the Illuminati did could reveal their presence. The thing that struck us the most about the whole thing was that there was no discernible reason for any of it - we had never seen such a legendary sleight-of-hand done just to scramble one guy's papers.

But there was absolutely no evidence of tampering or even scrutiny over obvious discrepancies until our investigation poked the hornet's nest. Let me wax lyrical for a moment to say that everything we do as people has a trace, a link, a suspicion behind it - this is what our jobs are predicated on here at the Black Watchmen, but not only did we find nothing, nobody in the relevant channels seemed to question crucial mistakes on their own - that's when we stopped thinking it was anything but high-caliber magic or a separate phenomenon.

Our investigation wound down with us looking into a bit of info that kept cropping up. We initially threw it out under the 'preternatural censor' theory, but: Don Rhodes was declared dead as of 2014. This would explain the "disappearance," but we had no way to verify if the information was planted or falsified by the Phoenicians. Intel is generally slim on New Carthage, there was no way we could swing locating a needle in that haystack.

Long story short to finish catching you up, Verascu's information gave us a lead too juicy to follow - either this is all a yarn being spun by the Phoenicians, or they had nothing to do with Don Rhode's could-be death, because to them, he actually was gone; papers signed, sealed, and cited.

If you're finally caught up to speed, you now know why the papers from Venice are such a big deal: the documents released by Viktor Verascu have given us the okay to relinquish a long-standing contract, while also offering some form of insight on Don Rhode's capabilities, but not much else.

Unfortunately, we're left with more questions than answers with no recourse to solve them. Things are beginning to fly completely above our heads, Don Rhodes is still a menace and officially, we are at the limit of our manpower and we are considering ending our investigation here before we make enemies for digging too deep.

Highlighted below is one of the reports that has contributed greatly to our realization. As of this briefing, our focus will be on utilizing the rest of the gathered information in minimizing Don Rhode's chicanery and coordinating our interactions around him. Everything else going forward is under heated discussion until further notice.

If you fancy going deeper, we ask that you disaffiliate and turn in your equipment - go for it without us, because we can't risk it. As for us others, we will have to feign closure and use the rest of the resources granted to us to tie up the loose ends and continue on with what we do best. This is the part that's not up for discussion.

Initiate the full fathom five protocol - WHEN YOU WENT THROUGH, SOMETHING WENT WRONG

The Yellow Anchor Incident

𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕 𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕 𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕 𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕 𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕 𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕 𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕 𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕 𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕 𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕 𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕 𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕 𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕 𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕

𐤀𐤌𐤓 𐤅𐤂 𐤍‬𐤐𐤕

This page has been marked as a work in progress.

The information on this page is incomplete and should not be relied upon as accurate or official. Please check back later.

Are they demon-possessed? A skilled Elementalist? Want to describe their awesome powers or trademark equipment they always carry? This is the place to do it.

4d 65 65 74 20 68 69 6d 21 20 41 73 6b 20 61 62 6f 75 74 20 74 68 65 20 73 75 72 76 65 69 6c 6c 61 6e 63 65 2e 46 69 6e 64 20 74 68 65 20 6c 6f 67 73 20 61 6e 64 20 63 6f 6e 74 69 6e 75 65 20 74 68 65 20 67 61 6d 65 21

This page has been marked as a work in progress.

The information on this page is incomplete and should not be relied upon as accurate or official. Please check back later.

Everyone knows someone. What groups, people, friends, and relatives does your character have ties to? Would other characters know them from a favorite hangout or a particular organization?

This page has been marked as a work in progress.

The information on this page is incomplete and should not be relied upon as accurate or official. Please check back later.

OOC Notes

• Don's SWL incarnation is almost entirely salvaged from an NPC from an old private event. He's thus the walking consequences from the finale of that storyline.
  • Dig deeper and you might even find out what those consequences are! Get your highlighters out and have a grand old time.

• It goes without saying that I'm not an awful person despite the character I play. I can be occasionally acerbic and confrontational about really dumb (dumb) stuff when I'm not roleplaying, but I'm not above apologies or toning it down when things get serious - and never will bad IC vibes leak into my OOC stuff while I'm roleplaying. I'm a writer first, after all!
  • If you're businesslike about any grievances, I'll be businesslike. If you're calm, I'm usually calm, etc, but I'd like to think that's not necessary! However, Don can get heavy and abrasive out of nowhere so it's necessary to clarify this and communicate when things bother you.

• I have a habit of writing too much about Don and moving entire pieces out of his SWLRP profile (which you should investigate if you haven't) since they're too long and uninformative. Some of these pieces can be found on the email servers of various groups-of-interest in-universe. (wink)

From the internal email servers of the Council of Venice & the Black Watchmen:

Memo rerouted to the Black Watchmen from the Illuminati

The man you're asking for is like a unicorn. Enigmatic, a smidge self-explanatory. Our agents typically overlook him after a while. But don't be fooled, he's the one snake hidden in the bushes.

Or an anomaly if you wish to dispense with analogies. Put bluntly, we don't know what to make of him. We know he's not one of our's. He doesn't fall under The Dragon, the Templars, even the Illuminati.

We have files on him that could generously be considered outdated and contrarian - in the best case, a fuck up. Worst case, a major glitch. Potentially as bad as when history unwrote the real Helena Blavatsky from reality for a weekend.

But don't get us wrong. We have our eye everywhere and it will be a cold day in Hell when we're caught unaware on our own turf. While there are still discrepancies, we can fill you in on what we know - namely that:

• Physically, Don Rhodes has gone from out-of-shape college burn-out to carrying himself like a proper licensed killer. With enough focus and liberal use of nootropics, he might even one day pass as an Olympian track-and-fielder. One thing that hasn't changed is his shitty hand-eye coordination.
• Psychologically, I'd hazard a guess and say about the same trend as above as far as we know; burn-out to sudden sociopath, narcissism glued in-between. Possible hidden depths, very specific triggers. Still volatile, but approachable for our purposes.
• Some of our older files frame this guy as harmless, unambitious, and hardly lucid. One of those socially-stilted blogger-types, you know, the kind that could easily be discredited as a delusional schizophrenic if he ever crossed any lines? Except Due Dilligence shows an inexplicable lack of present or prior internet activity. (So where did the fucking observation come from?)
• It bears repeating that he's not home-grown as far as we know. No real explanation for his skill-set and when we need a dispensable killer, the headline usually goes: college wimp with no prior symptoms loses it, rampages and then regains lucidity - instant regret followed by either criminal litigation or suicide.
• He is not one of our's, as previously mentioned. He was actually once accountable to The Dragon, a sleeper agent whose programming was minimal in both scale and duration. He was decommissioned unsuccessfully after the End of Days fiasco in 2012.

(We know his decommissioning was botched because he eventually gained cognizance of his programming and whacked a small camp of The Dragon's sleepyheads in Bolivia. Whole different story, whole different department.)

• Rhode's botched decomissioning does not actually account for the drastic change in his personality nor the sudden shift in his potential. More on that later.
• Intel snatched from The Dragon clues us in that the greens picked him to be their stooge-for-a-day because he was naturally compliant, led a dead-end life, and had no aptitude for anything that couldn't be trained for or implanted.
• The Dragon did not intend to utilize Don Rhodes as an agent, thus they threw out all investment. Didn't even give him a mental resistance regimen, which contributed to the aforementioned hiccup that spiraled out of control in Bolivia.

You see, mistakes in deprogramming have a way of unraveling even the hardiest of psyches, full stop. None of this half-measure shit that we're seeing with Don - we'd be looking at a less coherent Jeffrey Dahmer and not narcissistic John Wick.

• Despite all of the above, this 'new' Don Rhodes not only flaunts a greatly-expanded set of knowledge and skills, he retains autonomy and sanity on a level equal to our own field agents. This is a problem that just doesn't add up.

Our conclusion is that somebody else picked him up and reprogrammed him up to the nines. Our bet is on Orochi or the Phoenicians, maybe even the Council of Venice seeing how often and how vigorously they don't learn from their own mistakes or the mistakes of others. It may be that Don's just the product of another cluster-fuck between the three.

But. The hitch in that suspicion is that the whole thing is way more trouble than it's worth and we would have dug up something in the way of answers by now if they were stupid enough to try anyway.

Fact is, we find the "infodump" angle exceedingly unlikely. You just can't stuff huge volumes of instruction into somebody's conscious mind all at once, it's a huge time and R&D sink with a colossal paper trail and a Pyrrhic-ly slim chance of success. Trust us, we've tried and we got over it quickly, that's why we still use sleeper agents, implants and drugs if we want super expendable foot-soldiers that can operate outside of the test-chambers.

Besides the bragging rights, why bother with any of that when we can just use Google? (FYI: The success rate of 'brute-force cognitive training' is way below 1%. Globally.)

We digress, our point is that there are a few very concerning reasons to keep wasting our attention and memo-space on this guy - namely:

• We don't know when or how, but Don Rhode's raw occult metrics have grown to rival that of anima-infused infantry, themselves second only to the average Bee by dint of fancy clothes. This is a clear departure from anything we have on file for him.
• Don's previously negligible aptitude for empathic abilities has now manifested as wild technopathy. Which has been used with 'Home Alone'-grade creativity, let's say. (Now, when we say 'negligible', we mean '1 in 3 people have this level of aptitude' - it's common enough that your local Psychic Hotline can nail the diagnosis with 80% accuracy.)
• Signs point to an increase in overall stamina and flexibility in line with the exponential scaling of several occult parameters. In other words, we've seen this guy raw-fuck Newtonian physics just by asking reality nicely. We get it, RE: no hand-eye coordination, RE: no clue where it's all coming from.
• On that note, we played around with the idea that late-stage Darwinism took a rare pity on him via Bee. No such case - in fact, he seems to be persona non grata anywhere close to Agartha. We can only guess as to what that means.
  • He hasn't been dismantled on sight by any Agarthan drones or seen suffering from any unusual signs from just being around the gateways - only TSA in the form of a wall of bees.

You can imagine our frustration. He obviously shows no sign of infection by the Filth, hasn't sold his soul to Hell, isn't rocking any implants (cybernetic or arcane), and we'd commit genocide to get our hands on a psychic infodump that doesn't render our acquisitions into drooling messes, but we have nothing that points to the existence of such a project.

So what's up? We're obviously missing something even after several rounds of observation. Which has forced us to start officially 'encouraging' as many armchair investigators and 'volunteers' as possible to tail Don Rhodes in their 'free time'.

Even though this includes you, we like to think of all of our hires as competent and self-reliant at all times.

Thus, here are some common sense guidelines for you to follow:

• DO engage Rhodes on non-hostile grounds when you encounter him.
  • Do NOT incite a hostile situation. We need organic footage, not a Michael Bay sitch with our investments blown or picked out as kill-on-sight by whoever owns his leash.
  • Do NOT clue him into the fact that you are one of our's or that he is being observed. If it's obvious or inevitable, spin it into a personal project and not a corporate mandate.
  • Do NOT approach him if you value your cybernetics above your life. Or if they are what keep you alive in the first place.

• DO get into his good graces. Like, if he's Phoenician, it pays to have a merc open to us. He apparently likes a good macchiato.
  • Do NOT get attached. Seriously, you are not in a chick flick or a romance novel; if he doesn't somehow kill you after you bang, we will.
  • Do NOT believe anything he says at face value. We'll tell you what to believe and what not to believe. Yes, even if he tells you that he prefers getting it on with guys - you would not believe the incidents. See bullet above.
  • Do NOT involve yourself in his business without prior authorization, keep it on acquiantance-level as we compile data. We are literally in no hurry to meet the doggy's masters.

• DO keep in touch. With us, not him - see bullet above. We want eye-witness reports, uncompromised footage, occult telemetry, the whole shabang that you can get away with in casual weekend wear.
  • Do NOT compromise yourself or go out of your way to dig dirt on this guy. We've tried, it's confusing, obnoxious, and lethal for reasons that are on a need-to-know basis.
  • Do NOT fabricate or fluff-up your reports out of fear that your career, i.e. your life, is on the chopping block. That will put it there, and 'impressing us' with 'groundbreaking' information is not cause to unflag you for termination anyway. Cite, cite, cite.
  • Do NOT pester us with minutiae on his comings or goings. We have a dedicated team for that now and you're not getting yourself any favors for playing off as diligent.

Keep to this plan and you'll be golden. I'm sure we'll get something out of your effort, so just keep forwarding your thoughts up the chain and we'll get back to you.

Also, it goes without saying that there will not be another public update on the matter of Don Rhodes. Assume that all new information is on a need-to-know basis and that that basis applies to you and only you. Yes, we're encouraging redundancy here. Don't wait up.

Ambassadorial E-mails

From: CoV-Consul
To: Elissa Hanna
Date: Sat, Dec 23, 2017 at 2:34 PM
Subject: Re: As Discussed

Dear Elissa, There is some time yet before we next convene. I am sure you understand that the current state of affairs is a sticky one that requires an exceptionally cautious approach.

While I would love to give an official statement on behalf of the Phoenicians, I am afraid that it would be rather compromising without further investigation into the documents presented.

Allow me to extend an invitation for lunch tomorrow so that we can discuss this further.

With fond wishes,
Sienna

---

From: Elissa Hanna
To: CoV-Consul
Date: Sat, Dec 23, 2017 at 2:22 PM
Subject: As Discussed

It is within our interest to reconvene before the New Year.

As per our previous meeting on November 22nd, we are fully prepared to show our cards if it will mean quelling the recent bout of unrest in the council chambers.

My staff and I take the allegations of colluding with fringe groups very seriously and we will not stop until we have rooted out every harmful element within New Carthage.

Awaiting your response,
Dr. Elissa Hanna
Phoenician Ambassador to the Council of Venice

---

From: VLEVE-2
To: CoV-CoT
Cc: Elissa Hanna
Date: Sat, Dec 23, 2017 at 2:19 PM
Subject: Relinquishing Intelligence

In response to grievances lodged by numerous cabals and per negotiation between council intermediaries and my superiors in New Carthage, I have attached a formal disclosure of the activities of my agents, present and previous.

We continue to remain vigilant of actions undertaken by rogue elements within our number and it is with much shame that I personally denounce any of my brothers that the Council deems as a threat to the Secret World and to all of our efforts to secure the public.

Let this information be a sign of our continued cooperation,

Viktor L. Verascu
Phoenician Agema

---

From: Elias Berbera
To: Elissa Hanna
Date: Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 4:10 PM
Subject: RE: Narrative Control

I have the situation under hand as we speak. There are remaining contingencies we have had primed for use on the CoV since the clean-up operation in Tokyo.

My assistant just now got off the line with one of them. They are ready to deploy in two days. You will know what to do when the missive arrives, ambassador.

Just take the Illuminati as this week's inspiration, Elissa. They love to pollute their channels with nonsense. Have a Merry Christmas and give the Consul my regards before you fool around with her for once.

---

From: Elissa Hanna
To: Elias Berbera
Date: Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 3:29 PM
Subject: Narrative Control

We are wasting time, Berbera. The Bohemians and the Druids have come together on this matter. If the other societies arrive at a consensus by next week, no amount of favors or blackmail is going to cushion the blow.

If we do not execute a plan before then, I will have to legitimately vacate my seat on the Council. There are only so many times that one specific threat will work before it burns out. You are in charge of public relations; do your job and pull something out of your ass.

Or else it's Delphi all over again.