January 17th, 2017
Courtney lost his soul last night. None of us are entirely sure exactly what happened; Benton was especially upset. I suspect with himself as much as anything. Emmie suggested that we just get rid of the fucking Ankh and I almost agreed, but after she looked at it, Kathryn suggested it might be the only thing that can 'fix' him. Too dangerous to keep around the Sanctum with Courtney, however, so I had Kevan take possession of it. Not entirely sure that's a habit I should get into, just hoisting all of the dangerous artifacts that we find over to Kevan, but as he keeps reminding me: he is our Warden and my Sword.
January 21st, 2017
We managed to get Courtney a soul? I guess? I'm not 100% sure that I understand what happened, but both he and Siet seem entirely okay.
Jackie is looking after both of them, to Siet's annoyance, since he insists that he's fine.
It still kind of freaks me out that my Brother doesn't actually have a soul anymore? I wish I understood the Begotten a bit more, but it's hard to find concrete information on them,- Tyche has so far turned down all of my requests to look at the information that the Mysterium has on them, and I get that it's 'for my own good' but it's still aggravating. The question is, though, if Siet doesn't have a soul then what exactly did he do to Courtney and how did it fix everything? Are we going to be paying for this later?
Courtney is... well, he's been broken ever since the incident with the Ankh. It's like he doesnt' really interact with reality the same way as the rest of us anymore, sort of like he's trapped half-way between here and the Supernal and... it's not exactly clear what's going on from the Sight but it might possibly be something like that? I'd hoped that getting him another soul would help, but it really doesn't seem to have, except stopping the degradation that he was going through.
*several pages torn out*
February 1st, 2017
Third week in a row of... Well, Emmie woke me up and said that it was like I was shifting in and out of the Astral? I only barely remember the dreams. I think they might be some kind of calling. From who?
*an elaborate sketch of Glorianna's palace, in exquisite detail, in Harriet's own hand.*
February 7th, 2017
I think we need to go into the Astral, soon, and talked to Sebastian about beginning preparations. It's actually kind of involved, despite the fact that I can short-cut there through the Diamond,-- he actually suggested that we just go the normal way, using our Hallow, especially if it was in seek of any kind of traditional answers. Not sure I buy his rationale, entirely, but he knows more about this kind of stuff than I do. It's going to slow us down a bit, though, since I'll have to learn a spell to help Siet tag along with us. (Not going without him.)
I'd just have Courtney do it, but...
...well, he's still pretty bad.
February 19th, 2017
Returned from the Astral. I can't tell most of the others what I learned, Glorianna's strict orders,-- this must be what Tyche feels like,-- but since I'm the only one that will be reading this until after it's all over...
...we're living in a bubble. That's the best way that I can describe it.
There was a timeline before us, the original, which was apparently sort of like the one we're currently in minus some changes. The most extreme of which seems to be that Courtney never got his soul shattered by the Ankh and that Jackie never awakened in the first place. Apparently, in this timeline, Courtney went all kinds of evil and corrupted Benton along with him. Glorianna didn't tell me what all happened but I got the impression that it was pretty dark. This led to the timeline 'after' us, where Benton went on some kind of killing spree and made all sorts of changes to History. Even kept Trump from getting elected.
In this timeline, all of us-- plus Jackie, who remember wasn't in the original timeline,-- apparently got press-ganged into fixing things.
Which created 'us', the current us, which would be great except apparently they also made a deal with Glorianna to stay themselves even past the timeline changes. As I understand it, the Aeon of Time has been fucking with our timeline (just like the Evil Benton was) to cause certain things to synch up... but once they do synch up, we're going to suddenly remember our lives in the previous timeline and no longer remember our lives in this timeline.
I freaked out a little, even if Glorianna doesn't seem to get that this will result in us ceasing to exist,-- she says that we're the same people, and in any event, apparently the people that we are right now aren't real in any event because this entire interlude is apparently just... time rebooting itself..?
I don't claim to understand half of what she said, honestly.
There's an Archmage involved in all of this, though, and some of the stuff that she told me calmed me down. I promised not to write that down, though, but apparently she'll be in touch.
She's your problem now.
*various designs for clothes, cars, etc, that Harriet wanted to make sure lived past the time-shift*
April 6th, 2017
I'm not sure what we did, exactly, but Argos-- Tetrarch of Panopticon, just in case you don't know,-- has been scrying us to the point that we can barely leave the Sanctum.
Not even entirely 100% sure that he can't see everything we're doing in the Sanctum, honestly, even a fully ritual cast warding spell to shield the area...
...it's beginning to get to us, but whatever, we're dealing. I think it's hitting Jackie the most. Her reputation is still in tatters after her awakening on set, but she's staying put for now following the attempted assassination, and we're pretty much just dealing with this as best we can. It's given us all a lot of time to think, do Astral Journeys, and such forth.
The Hierarch offered us additional protection, but I turned him down, since apparently Divination reveals that it wouldn't be a good idea to accept it?
April 11th, 2017
Kevan killed an innocent today.
Sullivan was a member of the staff, someone we'd brought in a while ago, and even he didn't know that he was one of Argos' lynchpins. The Tetrarch was using him to keep tabs on us, even while we were in the sanctum, which is part of why it seemed like he was so omniscient. It wasn't that he was constantly watching us, per se, so much as we'd basically let him inside and given him a way to bypass our wards.
There's no doubt that Sullivan himself was completely innocent, though, he didn't even know.
It kills me, what we had to do, but I'm having to remain strong because of Kevan.
April 24th, 2017
Made it back from LA, and a big meeting with both the Studio and Jackie's Agents, and I think it went pretty well?
The Order's contacts were a big help, in any event,-- me and Courtney got 'permission' to do seven more episodes of our You Tube? special. They're going to turn the script for the screenplay over to some of their own people but we'll get to look at it and help with some of the production and stuff. They liked my designs too!
Also, made contact with the local LA Consilium, will include some notes on that.
*notes on the LA consilium, some of its cabals, and so on*
May 2nd, 2017
Someone broke into Kerberos House the other night, only stole one thing: the Cypher.
I don't know how you got your hands on it, since I doubt it was how we did, but suffice to say that we had to really freakin' WORK to get that son of a bitch and I'm seriously seriously pissed.
You know how big a deal this is, anyway,-- I've already done some preliminary work, and I even brought Wraith and a few others in despite my reluctance to do so (as I don't want the fucking thing to end up locked away in Tyche's freakin' lockbox. We might seriously need it someday.)
I'm not hopeful, though.
This guy was a ghost.
Even Benton was impressed, in an exceedingly angry kind of way,--
--me, I'm just exceedingly angry.
May 7th, 2017
I'm not entirely sure how this figures into anything but it seems notable enough to write down:
I think Fafnir knows about this timeline shit? He's been spending a lot of time over here in Seattle, all of a sudden, a lot of it with the Hierarch. I've felt a good bit of attention on me, too, and I have absolutely no clue why either but the way that he looks at me... I don't like it and Siet says that he likes it even less. He says that he looks hungry.
I have no idea how he could know anything about this timeline shit, the only reason I know is because of Glorianna, but still,--
--if you have some kind of history with him, keep a watchful eye out, because I don't think he's forgotten you.
Still no sign of who stole the Cypber, by the way, and the trail is beginning to get cold.
Addendum: Ran into him just a bit ago at a Kerberos House event. He was weirding me out; I asked him what his problem with me was and he just smiled back at me-- creepy,-- and said, "with you? Nothing. Nothing at all. I'm just being.. patient... and I don't much like being patient."
What the fuck did you do??!
May 19th, 2017
Look, you probably don't know exactly how time works in Seattle because nobody really understands that. It's something that I've done a bit of research into for reasons that you can probably understand.
I've heard some people describe it as a place with... multiple timelines, like existing side-by-side, and that's true enough sometimes? Othertimes, you hear it as if all of Seattle exists unwound like a wire, and the entire cities history-- including bits that never happened (or never happened anymore; or won't have happened anymore; like time doesn't rewrite itself here so much as just fill out more of the recording medium without any regard to casuality as we would understand it),-- but the point is, everything out there for you to visit and interact with, and that ALSO is kind of true. There's also a sort of thing that time in Seattle is like... a window.. except, it's a window through which someone tossed a sledgehammer.
I, personally, prefer that last explanation for what's going on in Seattle.
It doesn't really make sense because it's broken.
Irreparably broken?
I don't know; maybe.
I think I can say this: The Archmage says that we only have anything approaching a sane timeline here, at all, because someone built this giant machine that forces time stable around us. She didn't elaborate on who built this Time-Machine (not that kind of Time Machine), note, and I didn't get the impression that it was any kind of Mage.
May 29th, 2017
Tomorrow.
I guess, the next time I read this, I won't be me.
I told Emmie, I owed her that much, and she's not going to remember it tomorrow anymore than I will. Take good care of each other.
It's all on you, now, other Harriet.
Good luck.
I have faith in you. ♥
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