The Book of Knots - Jags

Book of Knots - The Symposium
Revolution Girl
Her father’s rich. She got most of it from him so she’s rich. She’s angry
too: enraged. People say that if you’re with her at the wrong time—when
she Descends—she becomes a towering burnt thing with many long necks
ended with brutal, sightless mouths arching out from the top of it. They say
that if you’re with her at those times and she harbors even a trace of dislike
for you? You’ll be eaten … slowly. She likes to chew her food well.
She is the spider in the center of the web that is Pathogen, a cellular
organization devoted to the spread of destructive memes. When she came
to understand what Wonderland was, she brought in trainers, psychologists,
and mystics to prepare her—and then used her vast monetary reaches to
collect objects and people in an attempt to Infect herself. She succeeded.
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This turned out to be a big
mistake; the machinery of the
Department of Works hit back
... hard. So they tried a different
tact: if Wonderland infection
could be reconfi gured so that
instead of being hard to catch it
was much easier (say by reading
the wrong book or watching
the wrong TV show) then
humans could break open reality
themselves. themselves
Pathogen does things like try to destabilize the stock market with perfectly
timed rumors. They try to create food-scares and terror-alerts. They’re A few early successes were
working hard to try to spread the “new disease”––in some cases she’s just tempered by two things: Firstly,
trying to get the idea that there is a communicable psychological disease out although some of the new strains
there. In others she has actual, super-rare artifacts she tries to utilize for a (called Llamed by the humans
mass Infection).
who later catalogued them)
were moderately successful
In person she acts like a revolutionary: she has several homes (owned under there were always hard limits
a maze of corporations) and often has armed bodyguards with her. Those on how well any could really
who come looking for her are people with a twisted sense of right and spread. Secondly, and far worse,
wrong and an interest in her expertise: she meets these people for a price, preliminary projections showed
often in the form of favors. She has a small chain of mental health facilities that while a massive Infection
whose purpose is to study the people (many of her own) who have been could break open reality like an
Infected. She hires InNetwork doctors to conduct these examinations, as eggshell, as the Department of
they are willing to do what others would not.
Works was calibrated somehow
based on humanity’s perceptions,
even marginally out of control such an event could “fl at-line the
continuum.” If that sounds scary to you, it was exponentially scarier to
the Caretakers who think they’re the only ones who matter anyway.
But the Decons were willing to gamble a lot more than their more
established brethren and so, when the project was shelved, they took it
up themselves. What’s more, they realized that while the Caretakers had
never really been willing to interact much with humankind, the project
was potentially far more successful if they had human help.
And they had something to offer. The magicians wanted secrets of
the universe—the Decons had secrets aplenty. A small percentage of
Infecteds wanted to stabilize their condition, whatever the cost. The
Decons could help with that. The group of human nihilists wanted to
bring “the whole thing down anyway.” The Decons understood that.
So journeying magicians and desperate Infecteds and angry nihilists
(mostly in the ranks of the Underground) were contacted and the plans
were made. Test cases were created and operations are planned. They’re
going to perfect the disease ... and they’re going to spread it.