| From: | Jaimie Nicholson sandral@****.co.nz |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Letter home |
| Date: | Thu, 13 May 1999 17:25:08 +1200 |
>>>>>[My god. I find it dreadfully stereotypical, but I’m forced into the
role of being shocked by the Americans. And the main culprit was this woman from the
colonies... New Zealand, or Aotearoa, as she demands it be called. I shouldn't really tell
you her name, but she’s one of the psychos... added to which she had a terrible little fat
dog, that ran around me in circles and barked at the top of it’s squeaky little voice. I
believe it's inhabited by her ally spirit... if so, she's conjured an unusually stupid
one. Anyway, she’s part of the flock now, her and the rest of the magical group I've
inherited from Kirk. The rest of them seem quite civilised, I gather that most of their
hard capabilities were wiped out by the recent deaths of a troll shark shaman, and a human
hit mage. A lively couple I’m sure. One of them kept chickens, and sacrificed them in his
rituals. And now they still keep them, but they eat them instead. Supposed to be more pure
food, not so much magical interference. Or at least that’s what Kirk says. Speaking of
Kirk, she’s changed, not quite so hard as she was. She says, "as she had to be",
not "as she was". But I swear, she used to be evil. She’s looking to join them,
I think. She’s still in hospital, but she’s calling me every so often to smooth things
over between us and them.
And it needed some smoothing. I went to see the warehouse we pay for,
and that's where the shock came in. The dog ran around me in circles,
giving my astral bodyguard quite a scare at first. He drove it off, only
to be assaulted up there by the psycho Aotearoan I mentioned, who said
as defence that he shouldn't have kicked her dog. She let him live,
which was some consolation to him, not so much to me. There were some
miscellaneous miscreants lounging around on cars out the front,
apparently they were associated with the group in some way, through the
psycho. Don’t get me wrong, she’s effective and I’ll use her skills, but
I don’t like her friends at all. She does quite a businesslike act when
she’s on her own. I walked in to the warehouse, and they watched me as I
walked past, smoked pot, ran chips, I saw one guy wrestling a snake for
some reason... some of the other group members met me then, after I’d
run the gauntlet of thugs. They even apologised for them, referring to
them in a joking manner as a protection racket of some sort. I offered
some rent-a-cops to disperse them, and they thought I was being serious.
Sigh. Anyway, we sorted that out, and I took a tour of the warehouse.
After that, I could stop being shocked. They'll all be useful in their
own way. There's a physad who I may be able to entice into training some
of our c-men in hand to hand combat (they can use it too, Kirk let them
get a bit loose), plus the psycho and her merry men for wetwork, and a
mage who runs with a surveillance team. The warehouse itself is better
than I expected it to be... it wasn't particularly tidy, but I was
actually impressed by some of what they'd done with the space available.
Very nice work on the ritual circles, for example. Their astral warding
is reasonable as well... I'm trying to arrange for them to maintain
wards around some of the facilities we have around town, but as usual
the managers of those facilities mistrust me more than they fear assault
from outside the corporation. The Dragon may find that we work harder as
individuals when we don't trust each other, but it cuts down on
cross-corp co-operation, and it gets tiresome fast at this level.
Anyway, I guess that's about it... I'll see you at the july conference.
-Sam.]<<<<<
-- Lifeline <17:37:15/05-12-60>
