Fragment Twelve: Aorthora
Overview
Fragment Twelve started when members of the Mountaineers started to receive emails from Aether. In these emails, Aether sent the following messages:
Want t0 help but hard Is trying to keep me out. Need to get bck to body. to help them. Weaker. Losing myse/f. Lo0king for me. Try in to trap me hurt me. Trying to kill me.
Wanting to save Aether, as well as the others trapped by Kemetic Solutions, the Mountaineers asked Martin Rank to reach out to Whistler, a Kemetic insider with whom he had been communicating via email. Whistler had been recording the day to day experiences at Kemetic Solutions, as KS attempted to track Aether’s digital self through their systems. When Marty asked Whistler to gain access to their facility to find Aether, Whistler responded with the news that KS was starting up a new experiment the following Monday, and that Theodore Fallon had asked Whistler to supervise security on the sub-level, where it would take place. When Whistler sent a nervous message, asking Marty what they could expect to see, the Mountaineers agreed with Marty to reveal everything they knew about Aether, Portencia, Climber, and magic.
Forced to observe the horrific experiments performed by Kemetic Solutions, Whistler came up with a plan to disable their security that would allow Marty to enter the building, locate Aether’s body, and rescue him, Climber, and Portencia. The Mountaineers contacted Aether, hoping he could find a spell which they could cast to protect Marty when he infiltrated the facility. Aether responded that he was too weak to assist and that the Mountaineers would have to create their own spell, to help Marty. The Book of Briars then sent the following email:
Storms clouds gather
Winds that howl
Something coming
Dark and foulGather friends
Forge a spell
Before we venture
Into Hell
The Mountaineers worked together to create two spells. Fern and Way’s Concealment invoked the six elements to create a field that would hide Marty, Whistler, Aether, Portencia, and Climber, while The Mountain’s Shroud blinded the Kemetic Solutions employees and security cameras. Twelve Mountaineers performed both spells together, over a live Hangout. Six casters chanted the rhyme to complete the first spell, and six more casters put on blindfolds representing each of the six elements, enacting the second spell.
On the evening of May 31st, Marty entered Kemetic Solutions wearing a Bluetooth earpiece through which Aether broadcast live audio of the break-in to the Mountaineers. Marty used Whistler’s security badge to enter the sublevel, where Teddy Fallon revealed that Whistler had not, in fact, awoken from Kemetic Solutions’ brainwashing, but had instead been part of a plot to help them acquire Marty, who Fallon claimed was a kind of magical adept known as a Well. However, Marty and Aether had anticipated a trap, and when Marty entered the sublevel, Aether had shut down Kemetic’s firewalls from Marty’s Bluetooth and begun to send their files to a secure server.
When the Storm arrived to attack Kemetic Solutions, Portencia asked to be taken to the chair where they had experimented on her and succeeded in opening the door to allow herself and Climber, a Mountaineer known as AlisonB on the Forum, to escape while Marty ran back to save Aether. The audio of Marty cut out, as the storm sent a backward message to the Mountaineers, and the Book of Briars was destroyed. However, when the Mountaineers reviewed, frame-by-frame, the broadcast that Aether had streamed, they discovered the word ‘Aorthora.’ Although it had been burned by the Storm and all previously discovered pages had been lost, the Book of Briars reacted to this word, revealing the last constellation of Phase 3 and indicating that the twelfth fragment had been found.