In 1938, Marshall, Carter, and Dark ran into a string of violent losses with regards to cargo being ferried through Chicago.
This work contains CWs for: gore, and mentions of torture.
‘Chicago Recoveries No. 12’ (Lot C8791S) by xexnoncores
| Initial Writeup | |
|---|---|
| Penned by: | Silas King |
| Date | August 15th, 1940 |
| Interest | Medium-High |
| Identifier | Chicago Recoveries No. 12 |
| Description | |
| Back in 1938, the company ran into a string of violent losses with regards to magickal cargo we were ferrying through Chicago. We have historically avoided the American Midwest for many reasons, but the Great Lakes and Mississippi River’s ancient mana imprints are unfortunately perfect for preserving perishable magicks which may find themselves at risk of fading from more earthly shipment methods. So we did what we had to do. It was to no one’s surprise that our stock drew the attention of unsavory types—what did trip us proper were the actual perpetrators. We expected the likes of mundane gangs like the Chicago Outfit, but instead we found ourselves at the whims of the Chicago Spirit, and that was a bigger nightmare than anyone at the office prepared for. Because of their destructive meddling, we lost the trust of a lot of clients we will have to put in double-time to get back, many of which the senior executives were very close to. How Percival managed to deal with those wannabe-magician ruffians, I do not wish to know. Nobody really wishes to know, not even Sir Carter or Madam Marshall. There is a dark air about him when inquired about the affair—and from the blood on much of the recovered inventory (of how much was originally ours I can’t fully parse), I hesitate to assume it was resolved cordially. If he asks me to get that out, I’m not doing it. |
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| File Opened Under: | Lot C8791S |
| Marshall, Carter & Dark Ltd. | |
| C8791S/MZ92S/K13FF | |
|---|---|
| Status | Selling |
| Demand | Very High |
| Value | 7500£/30225$ per piece |
| Availability | 5 pieces1 |
| Identifier | A Sugar Fairy’s Medicine |
| Description | Items are a collection of small, raisin-flavored ‘sugar plum’ candies filled with quartzwood dryad sap. When consumed, the individual will find their internal temperature completely stabilized for the next fifteen years, rendering them immune to not just a range of symptoms from a variety of illnesses, but to many of the deleterious effects of aging and mundane discomfort as well. |
| Notes | I can personally account for 5 of the missing pieces here—they were given out as bribes to Foundation agents in exchange for information on the whereabouts of a particular ‘nightly’ spectre I had been trying to hunt. Chicago is quite the dirty, pauperous city, and I didn’t want to stay there for any longer than I had to. Not sure how worthwhile that gamble was in the end, as I never found him intentionally. — Percival Darke |
| Marshall, Carter and Dark Ltd. | |
| C8791S/JEH82/LLX81 | |
|---|---|
| Status | Selling |
| Demand | Low |
| Value | 500£/2015$ |
| Availability | 1 unit of 5 cards (must be purchased together) |
| Identifier | Jester Jokedown |
| Description | A set of joker cards named Canio, Perkeo, Yoric, Triboulet, and Chicot. Items animate when held in the hands like regular playing cards, whispering jokes to each other and to the holder that are always guaranteed to make at least one person in the room laugh. Perkeo has the added effect of creating three photo-negatives of any photograph in the user’s left hand when substituted for the Fool in a Tarot deck and drawn. |
| Misc. Associated Items | Cards were acquired from a box given by a bribed police officer; it also contained photographs of what appears to be a crime scene. Subjects include: multiple piles of .45 caliber bullet casings, blood sprayed all over the furniture of an opium den, broken whiskey bottles, and dozens of severely mutilated bodies, most with the skin of their faces bitten off. The last photo is of a man with sharp, angular bite marks all over his windpipe and eye sockets. |
| Notes | I typically do not feel the need to hide my business from the authorities, however I don’t particularly like the kinds of rumors these photos could wring out from the public. Our company did just discover Chicago possesses a number of very rich vampire families—I’d hate for this to ruin them accidentally.— Percival Darke |
| Marshall, Carter and Dark Ltd. | |
| C8791S/V726S/OU21Q | |
|---|---|
| Status | Selling |
| Demand | Medium |
| Reserve | 1000£/4030$ per unit |
| Low Estimate | 2000£/8060$ per unit |
| High Estimate | 4500£/18135$ per unit |
| Availability | 17 units2 |
| Identifier | Not Your Average Skeleton Key |
| Description | Polished keys made out of ivory with a skull carved into the head. When pressed against the skin of any living human and turned clockwise, the skeleton of the victim will twist through the skin with the key’s movement, becoming completely separated from the body if rotated enough. There is no anesthetic property to this action; the skin keeps all of its pain sensations as the skeleton is forced through it. |
| Misc. Associated Items | Keys were acquired from an intercepted Foundation safe that contained various weaponry used by the Chicago Spirit such as tommy guns, pyromancy grimoires,3 and transmutative smoke bombs. These miscellaneous items were all severely damaged, covered in blood, salvia, and various other unidentifiable body fluids, rendering them unfit for sale. |
| Notes | Interesting how those simpletons managed to get their hands on so many useful baubles. I’d be more impressed if they hadn’t destroyed most of their stock with untrained hands. But since these are still intact enough for auction, the only question is which market we are most interested in: the rusałki,4 the Soviets, or the Italian mafia. I’m not sure if we could corral those types into the same room without someone being stabbed. — Percival Darke |
| Marshall, Carter and Dark Ltd. | |
| C8791S/BY52Q/LH881 | |
|---|---|
| Status | Selling |
| Demand | Very High |
| Reserve | 4000£/16120$ |
| Low Estimate | 6000£/24180$ |
| High Estimate | 10000£/40300$ |
| Availability | 1 case of 52 components5 |
| Identifier | Bottomless Beer Bounties |
| Description | Items are a collection of clear, unlabeled nonic pint glasses which ‘age’ any alcohol poured into them over the course of twenty minutes. This aging process imparts the notes of white oak barrels onto the spirit in the case of whiskey, gin, and tequila, and French oak for all other types. There is an upper limit on the age a drink can take on this way; generally, the glasses do not age the alcohol more than 50 years. |
| Notes | Finally, I can put the inquiries of when we’re putting this up for auction to rest. We are lucky that there are as many intact as there are, though you will not find me thanking the drunkard bootleggers who swiped these for that. (I should have considered more completely what they would have weaponised against me, especially when pinched.)— Percival Darke |
| Marshall, Carter and Dark Ltd. | |
| C8791S/YT591/BB20A | |
|---|---|
| Status | Not Selling |
| Demand | Unknown |
| Value | Currently Unassigned |
| Availability | 1 copy |
| Identifier | Maddest Of Rabbits |
| Description | A copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland. When read for at least five minutes, user gains the ability to summon a horde of white rabbits and direct them where to go. Rabbits are immune from most kinds of damage, but will die and begin rapidly decomposing after approximately seven hours. This decomposition releases massive amounts of sulfuric acid into the environment, equal in mass to fifty times that of the rabbit. |
| Misc. Associated Items | Copy was acquired in a box of other goods obtained through the blackmailing of a UIU detective. Inside were cigars, fae corpse paperweights, and letters from someone with the surname of “Chappell” to a one “Mr. Night”, discussing use of the book to intimidate police officers, factory owners, and one “obnoxiously British snob”. |
| Notes | This ruined so many of my best shoes. — Percival Darke |
| Marshall, Carter and Dark Ltd. | |
| C8791S/HY29O/FB22L | |
|---|---|
| Status | Not For Sale6 |
| Value | N/A |
| Availability | Not For Public Use |
| Identifier | N/A |
| Description | The soul of a one Richard Chappell, former leader of the Chicago Spirit. First name has been stripped using a disjoint fae-based chaining spell, drawing power from a jawbone embedded with numerous pieces of glass, rusty nails, and razor blades. This jawbone was sourced by Percival’s hands from one of Chappell’s high-ranking subordinates known locally as “Sawteeth”.7 Item possesses an unusually negative soulbound polarity, rendering it a suitable conductor for large loads of magickal energy.8 When placed into a metallomantic amplifier, the soul is capable of processing metals from non-metals at an efficiency unmatched by any current technology, extending even to magickal metals such as kjorium and byzerl, normally unable to be refined without lunar evocation. It can also purify faebound iron and steel, reversing their decay and freeing the material to be smelted once more. |
| Internal Use | Due to the item’s properties, mechanisms to harness this power are currently being developed by our magickal constructs Persephone and Merlin. Projected revenue from completed plans stand at approximately 3.53£ million per year for the first five years, with 6.70£ million and higher in all following years due to anticipatory trends in fae-adjacent market conditions. Estimates on the completion of the blueprints is 3 months, 1 if they can figure out how to offset the exponential pain quotients their calculations are running into. Both have reported that there is no upper limit on how much soulular stress the soul can tolerate (optimal for maximising its productivity), but a plateau in how much time-dilation illusions can assist in the production of anguish. Because of this, the item is being probed for the torture methods it employed against others while alive for use against itself.9 |
| Notes | You never fail to find new ways to disgust me, Percival. Did you suspect his soul was worth something or did you start this project just to spit on his nonexistent grave? — Silas King |
| Marshall, Carter and Dark Ltd. | |
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INTERNAL MEMO No. 328
ATTACHMENT CODE: Lot C8791S-01
DATE: 20/08/1940
TO: PERCIVAL A. DARKE
PENNED BY: SILAS KING
Someone dropped by to deliver us something. Slipped through every thaumaturgy lock we had, including the new ones you put on your office door this morning. Made eye contact with me as they were doing so—actually, they made it a point to deliberately leave them all in a pitiful little pile on the floor that reeks to Elfame of burning hair.
I have seen spirits, and I have seen abominations without names. I have seen the ungodly offspring between demons and fae, dragons and manannagals, hua po and bison gods—but that thing, that thing—
Percival, who the bloody hell did you anger this time?
Percival,
By the time you receive this, the “nuisance” you whinged so ignobly about will have been dissolved. Subjugated is perhaps the more appropriate terminology—by the time your eyes make it to this paper their ranks will have scattered unto the brisk chills calling down from Lake Michigan, nary to be spoken about except as legends, lunacies and local rumors, as bastards, thieves, and gangsters with magic guns.
I am not surprised in the slightest you achieved in six months what it would take years for others to accomplish. There are not many souls in the world that combine a ravenous bloodlust like yours with a proper serving of intelligence to dress it.
I continue to be impressed by your shamelessness, your arrogance in molding the world to your pithy little whims which only ape the European ideals you clothe yourself in. The both of us know you don’t actually see Chicago as the rat-infested shithole your lesser-minded right hand and left hand do—the both of us know you’ve lived too long for human divisions to matter, for your pretenses of cocktail parties and gentlemen’s clubs to be anything more than a means to an end. A mask to wear for the short lives of such impressionable sacks of meat who will keep betrothing you with more than you could ever hope to spend or swallow.
How pleasant it was for you to finally allow me to see the animal within you that you refuse to take out for the humans. The dirty stinking animal you are blessed to be, that you will never rise above, as is the nature of those born of flesh and blood who come into ethereal power.
Did you enjoy it? What did they taste like? Was your rampage through those neighborhoods with their bodies and innards hanging from your mouth worth it? Did you have fun making housewives scream, little children squeal, grown men cry like they were fresh out of the womb? Did you have fun being just another brick in the wall of the endless bloodshed Chicago is mired in?
Did you have fun making the poor scream in their squalor?
How did it feel rendering me powerless, for just that single moment? Did it soothe all of your anxieties, your troubles? Your miserably crooked heart, the skeletons stacked like trophies in all your closets you refuse to open? Don’t act like I don’t know. Don’t act like we didn’t know. The streets know your type because we know your waste—we are simply more honest about the bodies it takes to climb towards a throne.
Yes, you were right that Chappell didn’t need my powers. I didn’t require his presence to be a threat. I didn’t need his command to turn a snitcher’s skin outside out, I didn’t need him to provide a reason to cut a councilman to pieces and have the dogs rut and die in his blood. We were not a symbiosis, or a mutualistic pairing; we were that which no sapient language could ever hope to describe, a turning of points that human emotion wishes it could encompass.
That does not make your theft of his life any less of a thorn into my existence, however. Of my work, you little insect. I’m sure you understand how I feel to some degree; in that language called capitalism, of which you breathe like it is second nature, loss is inconsolable, it is unthinkable, and it is intolerable. It is an affront to not just the floor but the foreman as well.
And yet, I will not launch any retaliation against you. Did that make you breathe a sigh of relief? It would not only be a senseless, pathetic waste of my infinite efforts, but of yours as well. It would be the most useless of endeavors for the pair of us, a misery waltz for the tired, poor, huddled masses that inhabit my city, a plague of boils upon which your bottomless coffers would inevitably save you from as I rise from the abyss to do it all over again.
You have won this battle. And perhaps, you have won this war. Perhaps you will pretend to win every war until the end of your days—this I do not know. I do not think I care.
But know this single, undeniable fact, Percival: I will outlive you, as I will outlive this century and every century after that. I will outlive you as I will outlive your inevitable, pathetic descendents, given their powers through silver spoons and no effort of their own because I am forever. I will always be forever, always be unmovable, and nothing you could ever possibly invent will manage to take this away from me.
I am eternal just as your humanity wears thin on your face, a face I anticipate will soon change like the mortal little human it is in the end, as the years drudge on for you in miserable cascades. Can your millennium beat eternity? You’ve already half spent it—how is middle age going for you? Do you deign yourself to the realities of what that would mean if you were a lesser-lived creature? Of the bones creaking, the lines wearing on your face, the graying of your already thinning hair? Does everyone at the office know the borrowed time you are running forth into modernity with?
Whatever you do to me, I will outlast the rocks.
Because you possess no real power that actually matters.
~ Mr. Night