Programmed To Kill
MutantsMichael — 5/4/25, 6:50 PM
Hey @Inverarity, question for you since I've caught the writing bug and I'll put it in this channel since the JFK thing will probably be a Marshall plot: how often is Marshall taking 2-CB since he got his supply from Shulgin? Is he continuing to regularly explore the noösphere or is he saving it for specific important research (like the Union Square trip)? (edited)
May 12, 2025
Inverarity — 5/12/25, 7:55 PM
I think he’s probably using pretty heavily, tbh.
MutantsMichael — 5/12/25, 7:57 PM
Excellent. I have a noösphere encounter that can happen at the Mission on Saturday when all this stuff is happening. I will kick that off tomorrow morning.
May 13, 2025
@Inverarity
I think he’s probably using pretty heavily, tbh.
MutantsMichael — 5/13/25, 7:33 AM
The buzz around Nixon's death is starting to filter through the Mission's workers and guests as Marshall retreats to his office to meditate (and commune with 2C-B in the aftermath of what's happened). Marshall's not sure what the noösphere will show him here and now—usually, his trips thus far have been keyed to locations and the genii loci of locations, like Bohemian Grove and Union Square—but given the strong vibes of belief now percolating through the Mission in all those keyed-in minds, Marshall guesses he'll be shown something important, meet some inspired memeplex, even without leaving his office. The roll for the physical effects of the drug and length of the trip as usual is a roll of HT-8: a success means no incapacitating hallucinations, a failure is how many hours long the trip will be. Whether or not Marshall is dragged across the ontological divide gently or roughly, Marshall's senses will start to grow more in tune with the world of symbols and thoughtforms, as quickly as on his virgin Union Square trip a few months ago. Repeated use of the drug seems to offer no increase in tolerance, as Marshall has been using pretty steadily and regularly since June. The noösphere around the Mission is alive and fecund, just as overgrown with ideas and thoughts and wishes and beliefs as the vineyards' trellises are heavy with grapes ready for harvest in mid-September. For a moment, Marshall feels like he could fall down into the cycles of birth, growth, and rebirth that are central to these grape-covered hills, but that feels like it might be an unnecessary distraction. The ideas created by human minds, not the cycles of the Earth, are his primary concern right now. The thoughtforms created by the celebrities and wealthy seeking succor at the Mission mix with those of the workers whose job is to pamper and inspire them, but over all of them hovers a ghostly, sweat-sheened, sickly face. That of the man Marshall interviewed a mere 16 hours ago in San Clemente. The Nixon thoughtform has been so constant and omnipresent in these people's minds and souls the past six years (longer—stretching back to Eisenhower—for the older guests), it seems almost impossible to dislodge. And it's not a literal ghost, of course; it's just what hundreds of Americans have been thinking and believing about Nixon in that time. The ultimate public opinion poll: one experienced sensually and spiritually by Marshall right now. There's joy he's dead, along with a frisson—among some of the more politically-knowledgeable and paranoid guests at the Mission—of fear at who really did it. Underneath that hovering ghostly face though, its creases and droplets of sweat shimmering with the lambent glow of the cathode ray tube, is another, less powerful and more hidden, memetic presence. Expert Skill (Memetics)-16.
Inverarity used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 5/13/25, 11:46 AM
@Inverarity rolled
3d6Expert Skill-Memes 16:(2+6+3)= 11May 15, 2025
MutantsMichael — 5/15/25, 6:25 AM
(Reminder on the HT-8 roll to see how long this trip lasts.) Usually, to detect a meme structure in a population like the one at the Mission, Marshall would have to do countless hours of research: interviews, checking out the rumors and moods of his guests and workers, and so forth. 2C-B has the benefit of opening Marshall's third eye to the spiritual landscape which makes detecting the prominent memes/belief energy present child's play. But it still takes Marshall some concentration and deliberate intent, using the hallucinogen, to understand and even, as we've seen with the Reporter Mark Twain and Xavier Martínez Self-Portrait memeplexes, eventually communicate with the symbolic energy on the Mission campus. As mentioned, the memetic presence is hidden, and Marshall can tell it's been actively hidden. Pivoting off of that, this meme is also designed; this is not a "naturally"-occurring presence like the ones created by memories and dreams of Young Mark Twain, or by the conscious evocation of ancient deific archetypes in the statue of Winged Victory in Union Square. Marshall senses an intricateness, almost a delicateness to this spirit-meme, one that makes it fairly fragile in structure but also hard to detect. Paradoxically, though, the overall vibes around the meme are violent. A furtive sort of violence, a violence that does not show its waking face to the world, but a buried, latent, eager, opportunistic, predatory sort of violence. It's up-close-and-personal violence; this is not the technocratic violence of a general or national security adviser pressing a button and ordering bombers to impersonally pound dozens of villages in Southeast Asia. It is misogynistic violence as well; this presence hates women and Woman, seeing them all as prey to be possessed, abused, gutted, consumed. Marshall is pretty sure if he tries to reach out to this presence, to get closer to it in order to try and discover who has designed it and loosed it on Marshall's physical and ontological turf, it's going to result in some kind of spiritual combat. It sits coiled, inchoate, not reacting to Marshall's light, surface-level "surveillance," and so it has not taken any kind of psychedelically-sensible form or shape or "personality" that could help in that analysis.
Inverarity — 5/15/25, 5:30 PM
“You must the one killing those girls,” Marshall says. being careful not to look in the meme’s direction. “The one Atwood is looking for.”
Inverarity used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 5/15/25, 5:30 PM
@Inverarity rolled
3d6HT-8:(1+6+4)= 11@Inverarity
“You must the one killing those girls,” Marshall says. being careful not to look in the meme’s direction. “The one Atwood is looking for.”
MutantsMichael — 5/15/25, 6:47 PM
There is a puff of hot breath against Marshall's face: whether this is just a hint of the diablo winds that come off of the Sierra Nevada onto the Sonoma hills in September, or an actual sigh of delight from this invasive meme, Marshall's 2C-B-addled sensorium isn't quite sure. The meme isn't speaking to Marshall, not yet anyway, as Marshall keeps his gaze averted. But the presence grows stronger, closer, encroaching on Marshall's will. Marshall knows the agitation inherent in the spirit/meme's behavior right now is because he managed to nail its identity on the very first try. Marshall's knowledge of the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders makes him sure that the killer is on the Mission campus... Wait. Marshall stops himself from further thinking about the meme, at least for the moment. That's not quite right. Without looking at the meme and engaging directly with it he can't be completely sure, but it's less that the killer himself is on campus than a story about the killer being on campus has been spread. It's been spread fairly recently, and by a recent visitor. And if the memeticist who created this demon, this monster, this Being that Marshall wisely does not bring his eyes onto, is skilled enough, perhaps it could be the case that the killer having been here at the Mission will have been true all along.
Inverarity — 5/15/25, 7:01 PM
Well, with his Eidetic Memory, Marshall is going to take a beat and search his memory for any visitors who could be responsible for this — maybe someone snuck onto campus without his knowledge, but he suspects it was someone who was “supposed” to be there. At the same time, he’ll try to stall: “So what brings you here, of all places? I have to imagine the pickings are easier further north. Washington. Oregon, maybe.”
1
@Inverarity
Well, with his Eidetic Memory, Marshall is going to take a beat and search his memory for any visitors who could be responsible for this — maybe someone snuck onto campus without his knowledge, but he suspects it was someone who was “supposed” to be there. At the same time, he’ll try to stall: “So what brings you here, of all places? I have to imagine the pickings are easier further north. Washington. Oregon, maybe.”
MutantsMichael — 5/15/25, 7:12 PM
(I think the eidetic deduction process will happen hand-in-glove with the "interrogation" of the meme/spirit, we'll make rolls for each as we go. I'd like Marshall to start with two rolls, a Fright Check-13 just to cover the psychic impact of chatting with a serial murder (meta-)spirit, and then to kick off the engagement with it, since it seems to only respect force (perhaps paired with guile and trickery), an Intimidation-19 roll (your 18 plus 1 because if there's anything this spirit is, it's American, and Marshall has a Reputation with them.) The spirit breathes its first words right in Marshall's face on that hot diablo wind. "I'm everywhere, I'm every Man. Right now? I'm supposed to find a home here."
Inverarity used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 5/15/25, 8:27 PM
@Inverarity rolled
3d6Fright-13:(4+4+4)= 12Inverarity used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 5/15/25, 8:27 PM
@Inverarity rolled
3d6Intim-19:(5+3+6)= 14MutantsMichael — 5/15/25, 8:35 PM
Marshall feels like he both has this spirit's attention now and has erected a formidable defense against it. That Intimidation check reflected Marshall's force of will inflicting on this meme... and that gives Marshall his first clue on the origins, delivery, and design of the meme. The kind of person this meme will seek out to transform/retrocreate into a serial killer won't be a willful, public figure with alibis and travel records up the wazoo like Marshall. He's safe from this thing worming its way into him to make him into the Santa Rosa killer. It will, instead, target a figure who is servile, laboring in anonymity, resentful about their place in the world, who's perhaps had to cow himself before a domineering authority figure in the past: a boss, a parent, an imaginary enemy, even. This is how the spirit of the serial killer finds purchase in the human soul, Marshall realizes: it's a simple matter of broad-spectrum memetics and applied psychology. And someone has been designing them the past several years. The explosion of this type of crime recently has its origins both in the material world, and in the spiritual/memetic. This meme is a time- and battle-tested one. You could easily imagine that it's been shaped in a lab, to target the precise kinds of men who are a dime a dozen in 1970s post-Vietnam America. It would be a trip if the material conditions were sculpted by the same people, wouldn't it? The 2C-B in Marshall's system lends itself to these big deductive intuitive hunches, but something in this theory feels true: you make the environment materially fertile for your memetics, and then your memetics work to create the kinds of servants you want.
May 26, 2025
MutantsMichael — 5/26/25, 8:39 AM
The other element of the spirit-meme's confession before Marshall's Intimidation kicked in is that it was slightly altered to specifically target the Mission staff looking for a host.
May 27, 2025
Inverarity — 5/27/25, 10:44 AM
OK, Marshall is going to continue ignoring the killer-meme while the 2C-B is in effect — keeping it on the periphery of his vision but not engaging otherwise. At the same time he’s going to mentally work his way through the guests, staff, volunteers, and hang-arounds currently on campus and try to determine, using Psychology or Expert Skill: Memetics, who is most likely to “catch” this “bug.”
@Inverarity
OK, Marshall is going to continue ignoring the killer-meme while the 2C-B is in effect — keeping it on the periphery of his vision but not engaging otherwise. At the same time he’s going to mentally work his way through the guests, staff, volunteers, and hang-arounds currently on campus and try to determine, using Psychology or Expert Skill: Memetics, who is most likely to “catch” this “bug.”
MutantsMichael — 5/27/25, 10:49 AM
Oooh, I really like this. I feel like any use of Marshall's Eidetic Memory plus a skill like this will be tinged with and influenced by the 2C-B trip as well—the collective unconscious and what have you, poking its way into Marshall's mental process—so I think Psychology aided by your Mission Rank 3 and Empathy would be the best combo. 18 + The Mission Rank 3 + 3 for Empathy (to reflect everyone you've spoken to on campus ever) + 3 for the drug as an equipment bonus = Psychology-27.
Inverarity used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 5/27/25, 10:54 AM
@Inverarity rolled
3d6Psych-27:(1+4+5)= 101
@Inverarity
OK, Marshall is going to continue ignoring the killer-meme while the 2C-B is in effect — keeping it on the periphery of his vision but not engaging otherwise. At the same time he’s going to mentally work his way through the guests, staff, volunteers, and hang-arounds currently on campus and try to determine, using Psychology or Expert Skill: Memetics, who is most likely to “catch” this “bug.”
MutantsMichael — 5/27/25, 11:18 AM
Carefully keeping the serial killer meme in his psychotropic blind spot, Marshall turns to look out at the Mission campus, already bustling and rising in the Saturday morning sunshine. The women on site Marshall can clearly eliminate; none of them on campus right now would have the kind of self-hating femicidal impulses necessary for the meme to take root in them, although he notes with interest, after some memetic and psychological analysis, that it wouldn't be strictly impossible for a woman to bear this meme as host; they'd just have to be uniquely self-hating and poisoned by patriarchy. "Servile, laboring in anonymity"... the A-listers on campus this weekend definitely don't count in this bucket but Marshall considers the profile of a B-list celebrity so beaten down by the Hollywood system that he becomes a killer... or a shepherd to killers. Marshall sees a round transparent floating head—a drugged, chloroformed Jolly West singing not Brian Wilson's "Hang On To Your Ego" like he did in the warehouse in Texas but instead Charles Milles Manson's contribution to the Beach Boys' discography, "Never Learn Not to Love"—Jolly's thoughtform evaporates while being overlaid—flickering, stuttering-projector style—with Charles Manson's face... and suddenly Marshall knows innately, thanks to the numinous insight granted by the 2C-B, that Jolly West was one of the (many) men behind the original psychological design superstructure of this serial killer meme, and Cielo Drive was one of the many test laboratories for it in the late 1960s before it mutated into what it is today. The meme could find purchase in one of the Mission's menial workers for sure, but Marshall figures all the janitors and chefs and wait staff and towel boys here on campus haven't touched that feeling of grandiosity, of being close enough to a charismatic, commanding man that they will seek to ape him by becoming a hunter of human beings. Marshall saying hi to them in the halls once a blue moon doesn't count. Ah, but that means that the folks close to Marshall conceivably could. Could Dave be turned by this meme? He's a loner, with a history of religiosity and being drawn to/repelled by strong men, plus the trauma of Vietnam as a grunt. Well, he's also got basic SANDMAN training now, which includes resisting Annunaki tech, including memetics. The meme certainly wouldn't have an easy time with him, and Marshall knows that meme just wants to find the lowest collecting place, like radon in a basement or water that gets into a foundation and crumbles it from within. And then in a flash it comes to Marshall. The Special Ones. All the original boys who came to Karuṇā that day in February of last year—Ethan, Stanley (here Marshall chuckles at yet another Stan, thinking of the embossed handkerchief he got from Mark Twain at the St. Francis a few months ago), Will—are all casualties of a specific patriarchal "cult," Costa Mesa Calvary in Orange County, and its leader Chuck Smith. They're young, impressionable, full of hormones, full of a vision of a corrupt world led by hypocrites... maybe one or more of them would have enough darkness in their worldview to admit the idea of becoming a Nietzchean superman/killer. The boys all seemed and seem to this day so gentle... but they've also been just sort of... hanging around since the stuff with URIEL went to a bigger level involving the war against the Owls this spring and summer. They were so useful as a honeypot in the St. Francis, and they collected so much ontological energy once the temblor happened, Marshall thinks to himself, thinking of the reality shards that emerged from the Special Ones' suite. It might have marked them for later memetic infection.
June 18, 2025
Inverarity — 6/18/25, 10:15 PM
Marshall won’t engage directly with the meme. He keeps it in the corner of his eye but just tries to ride this one out. Yes, his plan, he thinks, will be to ride it out. Then, tomorrow: have Genevieve intervene with the male Special Ones. “Perhaps she can engineer a counter-meme to open a pathway for young men like this to take as an off-ramp from the manosphere,” he says, not quite sure where that idea came from. (edited)
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June 19, 2025
@Inverarity
Marshall won’t engage directly with the meme. He keeps it in the corner of his eye but just tries to ride this one out. Yes, his plan, he thinks, will be to ride it out. Then, tomorrow: have Genevieve intervene with the male Special Ones. “Perhaps she can engineer a counter-meme to open a pathway for young men like this to take as an off-ramp from the manosphere,” he says, not quite sure where that idea came from. (edited)
MutantsMichael — 6/19/25, 12:21 PM
Yeah, I do really like this idea. Getting Viv up to the Mission ASAP this weekend should be no problem. She's not on assignment for URIEL doing much of anything else. And I can abstract out her findings in 1-3 days of in-game time; she will need time to subtly chat with the Special Ones, unless Marshall wants her to make it like a formal therapy session. She's already up here a lot anyway since Marshall and she came to their work agreement after the initial bumps last year. She can be trusted to work this thing lightly so as not to trigger any memetic infection unnecessarily. She's not trained in memetics per se but between her Anthropology, Psychology, Enthrallment skills, and Savoir Faire (New Religious Movements) she should be able to at least give a detailed diagnosis psychologically and anthropologically.
July 7, 2025
MutantsMichael used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 7/7/25, 7:45 AM
@MutantsMichael rolled
3d6Psychology-21 (Genevieve):(4+4+2)= 10MutantsMichael used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 7/7/25, 7:46 AM
@MutantsMichael rolled
3d6Savoir-Faire (New Religious Movements)-19 :(3+4+2)= 9July 8, 2025
Inverarity — 7/8/25, 5:19 PM
Later: riding out the tail end of the 2C-B, Marshall does some coke. “This’ll help,” he thinks, pinching his nostrils and sniffing. That’s the last thing he remembers. When he wakes up the next morning — not morning, afternoon, in fact — he’s sprawled out in the conversation pit. Besides and all around him are … papers? Notebooks? He reaches for one and blearily reads, squinting without his glasses: “i wonder to what degree my overwhelming desire to live in a city is a product of feeling that there is safety in numbers, like, as part of the pack. it would also explain the social anxiety — to stay in the pack you have to appeal to the pack, though perhaps not so much as to stand out. not that i don’t stand out in day-to-day life. there’s a tension there. anyway, if you can separate people into two categories — urban and rural — based on their affinity for those environments, what could you say about them? what could you predict? people who prefer rural settings, what does it say about their relationship to the pack?” It goes on like this for pages. Marshall sighs and puts the paper down. He rolls his head back and has a good long cry.