2003 (WOD)

Events

 * Astraea approaches the constellation of Leo.

January

 * Dr. Marcus Jackson receives a message from the Rogue Council on his classroom's blackboard.

March

 * Douglas Sands' wife Faye Sands is abducted from their home.

July

 * July 4: The New Fremont District Celebration, honoring the work of the Neighborhood Committee and their sponsors towards the Rejuvenation of old North Vegas, is held at the North Vegas Community Center. The event is sponsored by Endron International, Kin Brewery and Dragon Valley Wines, and other Pentex subsidiaries.
 * July 27: Valerie Mason goes missing during church services.
 * July 28: Page two of the London Times "Society" section features a photograph taken at the Taurus Club. Identified as present in the photograph was Mr. Eric Baring-Gould &mdash; a man missing and presumed dead since the winter of 1880.
 * July 29: Mt. Etna, located on the east coast of Sicily, erupted without leaving a trace of residue. Weather satellites and citizens with cameras recorded a plume of ash sprouting from the vent of the volcano throughout the day, however the expected rain of ash did not materialize, and the Italian National Geological Council reported none of the accompanying tremors typical of an eruption.
 * July 30: Six-year-old Valerie Mason has been missing for the last 72 hours, after allegedly being abducted during church services in suburban Boston. "She ran into the vestry during Mass," said 26-year-old single mother Anna Mason, "and I chased after her to stop her." Ms. Mason then related that an "angel" flew in through a stained glass window to "take her little girl to Heaven." Ms. Mason has refused to answer any further questions from police, claiming that Valerie is "with the angels now." Search for the missing child continues. The mother has been admitted to Harborview Psychiatric Facility for psychological evaluation.
 * July 31: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) today issued a press release regarding the appearance of Stellar Object #2001KX76, the tabloid-dubbed "Red Star" that recently became visible to the naked eye. The press release stated that details were still "admittedly inconclusive," but that the object is more likely to be a comet than a self-sustained radiant object.

August

 * August 1: Los Angeles County Board of Health reports that doctors in the area have reported an unusual number of crescent-shaped birthmarks on female children being born in the last two weeks.
 * August 6: Deng Xiao-Min is under arrest for having dug up his father's grave three days after burial, and severing the corpse's head. There has been an increase in this sort of desecration in recent weeks, but Beijing police are at a loss to understand why.
 * August 7: Tensions escalate in the Middle East as Israeli forces seek Palistine resistance fighters in the small town of Tulkarm, going so far as to fire rockets from helicopters at cars believed to hold resistance leaders.
 * August 8: A small Silicon Valley firm, Virtual Solutions, was burned down by an electrical fire. 10 employees were killed. Arsonists are confused how multiple fires could spring up at multiple points throughout the building. The CEO was reportedly attempting to develop virtual chatroom to link the company's servers with an undisclosed server outside the US. The National Security Agency is showing up to consider new angles to the investigation.
 * August 11: WTOJ broadcasts a GWNet intercept. The message is sent from Karin Jarlsdottir to King Jonas Albrecht. Karin confims the findings of the Grand Concolation in the Sept of the Anvil-Klaiven and nearby territories: there have been no viable Garou births for more than a year. All children have been ordinary Kin human babies or wolf pups. Garou pregnant with metis have miscarried.
 * A concert headlined by the LA-based band Winter Solstice ends prematurely tonight when the lead singer, Tyria Winter, stops mid-song, mumbles, "I have nothing to sing," and stumbles offstage.
 * August 13: Miami resident Laetitia Hawkins has retained counsel against alternative-faith ministry the Typhonic Temple of Illumination. According to her lawyer, Hawkins plans to testify that she was being groomed for advancement in the temple’s hierarchy, but once she found that its members indulged in practices of dubious legality (key to the affidavit is an "orgy of blood"), she asked to withdraw from the organization. Shortly thereafter, its members detained her and physically assaulted her.
 * August 14: WTOJ broadcasts a ShreckNet intercept from Samir to Beckett. The message indicates that the two will be performing some sort of thaumaturgical ritual.
 * August 15: Detroit City Councilman Leonard Dates is shot and killed by police after a standoff at a local radio station. Dates had been holding several people hostage, reading passages from the Book of Revelations on-air, claiming that Judgment Day had arrived.
 * August 17: The 15-foot golden statue of the angel Moroni disappears from the Los Angeles Mormon Temple. The statue apparently vanished at the height of a violent thunderstorm that swept the city this night.
 * August 18: A routine LA police patrol discovers that the 15-foot golden statue of the angel Moroni is missing from its lofty perch atop the Los Angeles Mormon Temple. The statue, only recently restored to its place following the disastrous Devil’s Night earthquake, apparently vanished at the height of a violent thunderstorm that swept the city last night.
 * August 19: An intercept from the source "rogue" appears on WTOJ. The Tenth Seat of Horizon has appeared at a meeting of the Rogue Council. The intercept's authors demand the seat so they may defend it against the Technocrats, some of whom attacked the very meeting in which it appeared.
 * August 20: The marine biology research ship Tethys today in the Falkland Islands recorded the passage of what appears to be a southward migration of sharks of at least five separate species. Scientists aboard the Tethys commented that the migration was unexplainable by current studies of shark behavior, and the ship changed course to follow the migration and observe.
 * August 21: An Israeli Defense Force spokesman today named a previously unknown religious sect called "the Amkhat" as the target of recent incursions into Tulkarm and other West Bank towns. An IDF dossier released to the press accuses this cult of a wide variety of outrages, from terrorist activities to ritual cannibalism. Palestinian Authority representatives called the Israeli claims inflammatory, but insiders whisper that the Authority has been trying to root out Amkhat for some time. Meanwhile, Egypt announced that it was withdrawing its support from the current round of peace talks, citing the Tulkarm incursions and "Israeli fabrications."
 * August 22: New York State Troopers investigating the derelict garbage scow May Belle, found floating along the Hudson River last week, discovered the mutilated body of elderly mariner Alluscious Henry, along with the remains of three mongrel wolves. Today, the Albany County Medical Examiner declared Henry’s death a result of an attack by rabid wolves and alerted county and state public health and animal control officials. Investigators also uncovered some evidence linking Henry to a fringe animal-rights group called the "Sept of the Green."
 * August 24: Private security forces repel an attack aimed at sabotaging the completion of the Apophis Pipeline, currently under construction by Endron Oil.
 * August 25: Endron Oil officials confirmed that the Apophis Pipeline &mdash; attacked last night &mdash; will be completed on schedule as planned and that security will be redoubled. The identity of the terror group responsible remains unknown.
 * August 26: An intercept from the Digital Web is broadcast over WTOJ. The citizens of Sleepytown are being drafted and assigned to "enhanced military training."
 * August 27: Bonn police responding to a disturbance in the city’s warehouse district this morning discovered the bodies of 23 immigrant workers slain in a "violent Satanic ritual." All of the victims were arranged according to a complex pattern laid in chalk across the floor of an abandoned storage facility, and according to forensics reports, all of them were killed within moments of one another. Sources within the police department revealed that a ragged hole approximately three meters across appears to have been burnt through the roof of the structure directly over the ritual site, but refused to speculate on the cause. The perpetrators remain at large.
 * August 28: His Holiness John Paul II today issued a papal proclamation condemning the growing trend of violence, militarism, atheism and "pagan idolatry" across the world. Although such declarations from the pontiff are not unprecedented, his especially harsh language has worried several observers. One Vatican insider told journalists, "In the past, His Holiness has been a firm but benevolent advisor. This time he’s speaking of Judgment Day."
 * August 29: A previously unknown terrorist group calling itself the Fifth Age today released a nerve agent in a downtown Osaka office tower, killing over 500 workers there. The leader of the terrorists, a man known only as Mikaboshi, escaped the police dragnet.

September

 * September 1: Researchers today in Alexandria reported strange tremors emanating from the Egyptian desert. The quakes, not measuring more than 2.1 on the Richter scale, seem to originate in two spots barely a mile apart, and as the aftershocks from a quake in one location abate, a new one begins in the other.
 * Pentex Holdings has a meeting of the Board of Directors in the Sacramento Marriott. While the entire board enters the executive suite the meeting is held in, only Franklin Rubin, subdivision director of finances for Pentex, is seen leaving. When hotel staff enter the suite later this evening, they find none of the other executives present.
 * September 2: Independent auditors hired to review the ledgers of investment company Moribund & Smirch discover that more than 100 of the company's shareholders &mdash; who, according to the banks, have all been cashing in their checks &mdash; are recorded as being legally dead. Some for as many as a hundred years.
 * September 4: Doctor Reiki Ozawa, noted expert on the Asian art of feng shui, has disappeared from his $4 million home in the Santa Monica Hills. Friends say that the scholar had spent the past 20 years "aligning" and "adjusting" the furnishings in his home to compensate for "flaws" in the surrounding landscape. He left a recorded phone message in which he declared he had finally finished his 20-year project. Since then, no further evidence of the missing scholar has been found, and police have no further leads.
 * September 5: In the third case of graveyard vandalism in as many nights, the tomb of Chicago socialite Annabelle Sforza was dug up last night by parties unknown. Ms. Sforza’s skeletal remains are found scattered around the Forest Lawns graveyard and her tombstone smashed by what appear to be hammer blows.
 * September 7: Multiple witnesses reported seeing ethereal text floating through the Khan al-Khalili in Cairo last night. The text, reported by some to be in Arabic, others in Hebrew and still others in Aramaic and Greek, seemed to be a passage from the Book of Exodus: "Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt."
 * September 9: Baltimore 911 switchboard operators today confided that UFO reports have recently skyrocketed in and around the nation’s capital. Over 1,000 people in the Tri-State area claim to have seen lights in the sky or "alien creatures" roaming their neighborhoods.
 * The Bayview Killer's latest victim is discovered.
 * September 10: Ministry of Health official Ming Xian today reported the unfortunate death, from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), of Li Po Tze, investigator for the People’s Armed Police. Inspector Li, who came to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to investigate reports of sedition among the local bureaucracy, is the first victim of SARS in the region and is thought to have been infected in Beijing before his departure. If that is true, this case will be the first reported since the World Health Organization lifted the travel advisory against the Chinese capital. Dr. Ming has ordered a quarantine to prevent a new outbreak of the disease.
 * September 11: Surrounded by crowds of horrified sightseers and papal novitiates, Cardinal Giancarlo Salvatore this morning immolated himself in the center of St. Peter’s Square after an impassioned speech proclaiming that the end of the world was at hand. Declaring that "the gates of Hell are breaking" and that "the Holy Church has fallen into the clutches of demons," Salvatore handed a document to a British tourist that he claimed would reveal "the truth that [his] fellow Cardinals have been keeping from the world." The Holy See has made no public comment regarding the Cardinal’s death, though the gates of the city have been closed to sightseers until further notice. The whereabouts of the British tourist who supposedly received Cardinal Salvatore’s testament are unknown.
 * September 12: More than a dozen members of a Chicago area “blood cult” were arrested last night on suspicion of numerous charges including kidnapping. The “blood cult” maintains that it existed to satisfy the whims of its “dark mistress,” whom its members insist is a vampire.
 * September 15: Seven brutal murders have occurred within a 15-block radius in the Bayview area of San Francisco over the past two months. The most recent victim was discovered Tuesday. All the victims were killed in what police describe as a "ritual" manner, their bodies drained of a considerable amount of blood, which was not found at the scene of any of the crimes. The San Francisco Police Department informed fearful citizens that it is following "all possible leads" in the case of the so-called "Bayview Killer," but admits that it hasn’t made much progress.
 * September 16: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from proj-odyssey.com, regarding Fomori Development and Training Facility #87-001, and how it has been destroyed. Satellite footage reveals that the fomori rebelled and seized control of the arms depot, then proceeded to ignite the facility’s chemical banks, releasing a cloud of poisonous fumes. Approximately 50 fomori have escaped to the nearby town of Burnt Gallows, Texas, and are preventing the local population from fleeing.
 * September 17: Doctors at the Richmond's Medical College of Virginia are reportedly baffled by the dramatic increase in cases of extreme bipolar depression over the last month. Theorizing a heretofore unsuspected epidemiological cause, local authorities called in the Center for Disease Control, who have uncovered that all patients had visited a common location. The Poe Museum, near the popular nightlife district of Shockoe Slip, had appeared in the dreams of each patient, prompting them to visit the museum. The CDC yesterday closed the museum until it can be fully investigated.
 * September 18: Spokespeople for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) today vigorously denied allegations released recently on several fringe websites and other alternative media outlets, which state that many of the satellites recently launched to observe Stellar Object #2001KX76 (the so-called "Red Star") are actually designed to monitor the global population and tied to a massive crowd-control project dubbed "Ragnarok." They deny that William Albacastle, named in several of the reports, has ever worked for NASA or JPL.
 * September 19: A mysterious group of individuals known as "The Ventrue" has been the cause of much consternation in the global finance community recently. Although members of this hidden cabal are unknown, a rival bloc of anonymous financiers believed to be centered in Venice recently issued a communiqué to numerous national trade and securities commissions that outlined a list of actions these "Ventrue" might take. Many of these tips turned out to be true, and projected benefits to the "Ventrue" (using hypothesized numbers) have been significant.
 * September 22: Chicago Police question members of the prominent Ballard family on suspicion of association with the "blood cult," members of which were detained previously. The patriarch of the Ballard family has proven elusive, however, and is still sought for questioning.
 * September 23: St. Louis' famed Gateway Arch was seriously damaged by what some theorize was an act of terrorism. At precisely midnight last night, a detonation echoed across Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Park accompanied by an impressive pyrotechnic display. Bright lights and subsequent explosions continued for several minutes, causing serious structural damage to the arch. As of this morning, police had the area cordoned off and were refusing to comment on reports of upward of two dozen bodies found at the site. Clearly visible on the arch itself were scorch marks, strange sigils and the word "Vodantu."
 * September 24: A Nigerian Bishop visiting Baltimore, Jude Bankole Kuti, collapsed today in the middle of a speech to local faith groups. Kuti died minutes after paramedics discovered multiple lacerations on his skin, carvings of Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew phrases. Six members of the audience reportedly suffered similar but non-lethal wounds. Four fled the scene. Linguists summoned by the city's medical examiners have translated the phrases into fragments of Gnostic scripture dating from the 1st to 5th centuries AD. The most common injury reads: "What binds me has been slain/and what turns me about has been overcome/and my desire has been ended/and ignorance has died."
 * September 25: WTOJ today broadcasts an intercept from GWNet, in a message from Amy Hundred-Voices. She's met a Mokolé once before, so was considered the "resident expert" at the Sept of the Green. "Even Mother Larissa wasn't too shy to ask my opinion after the messenger had come and gone under flag of truce." Unforuntately, she wasn't much help, and could only confirm that the visitor was fresh from his First Change. He carried a single message: "What must be remembered?"
 * September 26: Civil engineers recently unearthed what seemed to be a squatter colony in a sewer junction beneath the streets of Atlanta. The subterranean structure turned out to be some type of crypt, as bodies were found in extreme stages of decay and disfigurement. Doctors suggest the makeshift tomb might have been a yellow fever (or other epidemic) mass grave not unlike the ones found in nearby Savannah. Others remain dubious, as the bodies seemed too fresh to have been buried at the time of the yellow fever threat.
 * September 29: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from an unknown source, a message from someone to Her Majesty Penangallan Queen Laiami Kai: The symptom Laiami Kai reports is widespread among the Kuei-jin. Although none would report directly, several mandarins and ancients have called for the arrival of a number of mortals from whom they can draw Chi. They, like Kai, appear to have lost their ability to draw Chi from the air. Their sudden need for living blood "bodes ill for the Great Wheel."
 * September 30: Residents of Los Lunas, New Mexico reportedly witnessed a fiery light show in the skies over their city shortly after midnight. Umberto Reyes, a local resident, claims to have seen three angelic figures fighting "a winged monster" amid the clouds, using "swords and spears of pure lightning." Reyes claims the battle raged directly over his small farm, lasting from midnight until nearly 3:00 AM, until one of the angels "split the monster open and pulled out its heart" with a resounding thunderclap that shook local houses to the foundations. Authorities and emergency services as far away as Albuquerque confirm that a sonic boom shattered windows and knocked items from their shelves at three o'clock that morning, but believe the shockwave was generated by a low-flying military supersonic aircraft. Less easily explained are the cataracts that have stolen Reyes' eyesight and the sudden hair loss that local health officials say closely resembles severe radiation poisoning.

October

 * October 1: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from hunter-net.org: "The sun is gone. But I have a light. The fire is coming for us all.— God45"
 * October 2: Three people were killed, dozens injured and traffic was snarled in Midtown Manhattan when a half-block of 43rd Street near Times Square collapsed this morning. Several yards of the blacktop fell in, overturning vehicles and releasing foul-smelling gasses. City engineers theorize the destruction resulted from the collapse of the so-called "dragon's graveyard," the underground facilities for the New York Times' decommissioned printing presses. Witnesses also report that thousands of sewer rats swarmed out of the fissures caused by the collapse.
 * October 3: One of the holiest sites in the world became a site of religious and political violence today as Jews and Muslims clashed outside the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The Muslim mosque is built on the site of the ancient Hebrew Temple and overlooks the so-called Wailing Wall, the last remains of the Temple and holiest site in Judaism. Riots broke out today after local airwaves were suddenly (and thus far, inexplicably) flooded with a recorded message stating in both Hebrew and Arabic that, "The temple will be rebuilt." Authorities say that Muslims at the Mount tried to eject Jews from the area around the Wall, while Jews tried to enter the Dome of the Rock itself. Thirty-one people were dead before the time authorities arrived to quell the riot.
 * October 4: Yale researched Yves Darra is found murdered in his office. Darra was working on a new translation of the apocalyptic Dies Ignis, believed to be the inspiration for many images found in the Book of Revelations.
 * October 6: WTOJ broadcasts a ShreckNET intercept from "FaF": FaF arrived in Damascus following the traces of that which she will not yet name. She was led to the lair of Bistakh, the Kurdish daughter of Alamut who has lived there since the Crusades. "I found only ashes upon her sleeping bier, and the smells of blood and desert sand lingering in the air. I continue my search."
 * October 7: Police were flooded with over a dozen calls last night relating to unexplained sightings in the city of Faro, WA, 50 miles from Walla Walla. Officials traced the cause to a large quantity of a hallucinogenic drug in the town’s drinking water supply. WWPD have not as yet identified the substance. A review of recorded phone calls contained similar testimony relating to "lights" and "disembodied sounds" in the homes of Faro residents. The wide sampling of similar reports suggests the same chemical affected all 15 witnesses. Scientific experts will arrive in town this weekend to conduct further inquiries.
 * October 8: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from GWNet from Son-of-Moonlight: Moonlight accepts the title Ard Righ in memory of Bron Mac Fionn, who died in battle with Banes of the Wyrm. Moonlight intends "to pledge myself to the grand alliance Margrave Konietzko has established for this very purpose. This is the time to be counted!"
 * The FBI's Special Affairs Division captures Nathaniel Bordruff.
 * October 9: A man identified as Eneas Zoetope stumbled into an Upstate New York town today, completely covered in blood and gore. He surrendered to the authorities, saying only "Revenge is done. Now my sister can rest." Police continue to question him as to who the blood belongs to and where the bodies are, but all he has said so far is "Nunnehi."
 * October 10: Federal agents of the hush-hush Special Affairs Department refused to comment on the escape from their custody of Nathaniel Bordruff, whom they apprehended two days ago. Agents refused even to confirm Bordruff’s identity, although local law enforcement officials were more forthcoming. Bordruff himself claimed to be "fighting vampires," though members of the recently exposed "blood cult" insisted that Bordruff himself was a vampire.
 * October 12: The famed annual Ash Man counterculture event draws thousands of devotees and tourists to a desert location outside Gerlach, Nevada. The Bright Foundation, a religious organization based in Las Vegas, had been using the event to recruit followers. Several regular attendees of the festival left their homes and jobs to commit themselves to a "Family Compound" in the Nevada desert. Spokespersons for the Bright Foundation deny that their organization was involved in the attempt of several cult members to burn several attendees alive.
 * October 13: Calcutta authorities were helpless as mobs gathered along the shores of the Ganges River, claiming to be there to witness “the ascension of the demon avatars.” The gathering turned violent when an explosion rocked the scene. The crowd rioted, resulting in the deaths of well over 100 people and nearly five times that number injured. Witnesses claimed to have seen burning figures walking on the surface of the river and four-armed avatars (described as manifestations of Hindu gods) attacking people and drinking their blood. Indian authorities have declared a state of emergency and imposed martial law in an effort to restore order.
 * A police raid on the Church of Abaddon Ascendant's newly built Washington D.C. temple leaves 12 churchgoers and four police officers dead. This evening, an anonymous caller reportedly phoned the office of the mayor demanding that he and his officials "bow before the Ebon King who waits." Immediately thereafter the city is plunged into inexplicable darkness, touching off bloody riots that continued despite the declaration of martial law and the deployment of National Guard troops, tanks and helicopters.
 * October 14: Before being cut off during today's broadcast of the Charlie Krongold Show, live on NPR stations nationwide, a caller identifying himself only as "Bookworm" launched into the following tirade: "They say the end is coming &mdash; and it is &mdash; but what if we can stop it from really being the final, game-over end? We can fortify ourselves. We can be good people. Lead by example. Monsters flourish like germs. If we keep a good, clean environment, the beasts can't get a foothold. We've let them go too long, and now the conspiracy is entrenched. But we can stop it! Society can still heal. These don't need to be our last days. The tunnel is going to be long and dark, but we can make it through to the other side. We can find our virtue to stop the monst—"
 * October 15: The nation's capital returned to calm &mdash; and daylight &mdash; this morning, shortly after the mayor retracted his earlier comments that an alternative religion calling itself the Church of Abaddon Ascendant was a "degenerate cult," and further promised to protect the organization from "persecution" by law enforcement agencies.
 * October 16: Gerlach police have yet to announce arrests of the religious cult members who attempted to burn victims alive at last weekend’s Ash Man festival. Federal officials have convened an investigation of the Bright Foundation.
 * October 17: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from an unknown source, from Three Whispers: "An army, I say. An army of bakemono is on the march through Mongolia with an ancient dead creature at its head. Dorbul the Brave, they call him, and they have already overthrown the Tiger’s Throat dragon nest. Only I escaped."
 * October 19: The newly installed American administrator in Iraq today called his agenda in the region "advancing the plan laid out for us in Scripture." Despite a stream of communiqués from Washington arguing that the ambassador was referring to Christian charity, sources inside the interim authority in Baghdad claim that many top officials are now "reading Revelations for policy choices."
 * October 20: One day after the US' Ambassador to Iraq called his agenda "advancing the plan laid out for us in Scripture," massive protests took place in Syria and much of the rest of the Arab World today over fanatic US rhetoric. Syrian government officials, speaking to protesters, decried the "Christian fanaticism being spouted by America."
 * October 21: The Scottish town of Achnasheen was the center of an unexpected burst in seismic activity last night, registering 4.3 on the Richter scale. Residents report sulfurous odors rising from the ground in nearby fields, and several people claim to have seen greenish lights, like flames, on the hilltops at night.
 * October 22: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from the Digital Web. "Twelve of us have come from far, three of us dying on the scarred ground of Bangladesh. We have but one message. Prepare, for Voormas has taken the Realm of Entropy."
 * October 23: Jerusalem residents and religious leaders were horrified last night by a shower of sulfurous rock that left blazing trails across the sky and caused untold damage among the city's holiest shrines. The rain of fire and brimstone began at midnight and lasted until just before dawn, causing fires and spawning clouds of noxious fumes that left close to 450 people dead and thousands injured.
 * October 24: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from an unknown poster on hunter-net.org. The post regards a massive shape, like a Gothic cathedral, appearing on the LA skyline. "I think it was at least a mile wide, more than a hundred stories high." The poster originally thought that it was a vision from the Messengers, except the waitress at the café also saw it.
 * October 26: Mr. Jonathan Cross and his wife Alexandra appear tonight on LA television channels pleading for the return of their daughter Jenna, said to have been abducted by one of the many blood cults now making the news. They describe her abductor as a bearded New Age guru calling himself "Smiling Jack."
 * October 27: Ohio State University becomes a battleground in the afternoon as two groups of assailants engage in a running gun battle, lasting a full eight hours. Witnesses also report a variety of sights, including such fanciful beings as dragons and elves. No sign of such beasts are uncovered after the battle ends, but authorities are reportedly at a loss as to the motives or identities of the combatants. Those arrested at the scene are seemingly suffering from acute amnesia and deny any memory of a battle, much less any fairy tale monsters. Sixteen people die during the violence.
 * October 28: A man staggers into a Detroit emergency room tonight, covered in blood and claiming to have been attacked in the night. Doctors find no vital signs when they conduct tests. His heart rate is zero, and he does not appear to be breathing. When doctors attempt to place the man in a secured facility for further study, the man grows enraged and fights his way out of the hospital, vanishing into the night.
 * October 30: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from an unknown source on GWNet: "Do not come to the Wheel of Ptah caern in Morocco. The Garou there have contracted the Red Death, a plague that resists their healing abilities. The Red Death already spreads to your lands &mdash; do not seek it out."
 * October 31: The UN Security Council today granted extraterritorial law-enforcement powers to the World Advisory Council. Staffed by members of the international intelligence, military and scientific communities, the Council’s expertise will be used to dismantle the infrastructure of The Nine, a terrorist organization credited with attacks worldwide. Advisors will assist global military and law enforcement as well as manage member nations' detention camps. The demand for outside assistance comes in the wake of the deaths of 54 FBI agents who attempted to apprehend members of the so-called "Akashic Brotherhood." The cult is one of many fringe cells that US State Department officials accuse of using psychotropic chemicals and biological weapons to fulfill The Nine’s anarchist, apocalyptic agenda.

November

 * November 1: Wendell Delburton is murdered in a field outside Wichita by Lucifer.
 * November 3: Authorities are baffled by what they can only call an “unexplained phenomenon” involving a total solar eclipse seen in the Middle East. No eclipse was expected. The event obscured the face of the sun as visible in Cairo, Alexandria and parts of Palestine, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The “eclipse” lasts for just over 20 minutes, and is filmed by numerous media outlets in the region, as well as by members of the Ashuki Corporation. Though explanations have been offered, ranging from orbiting space debris to a close pass by a "rogue" asteroid, experts have dismissed these theories as "highly unlikely."
 * November 4: Atlanta citizens woke this morning to find billboards across their city bearing the message, “The end of the world is nigh.” All these billboards were leased by a man who simply goes by the name “Violin,” but sources say that the checks paying for their rental were signed by a William Hannon.
 * Los Angeles suffers its first night of violence as two rival gangs start an all-out war in the streets.
 * November 5: WTOJ broadcasts an intercerpt from "Tara" on ShreckNet, sent to "Cal." Tara relates how "the weakness" returned last night, worse than ever before and at the worst possible time. Tara was forced into a meeting with one of the MacNeils, and he obviously sensed that something was going on. Instead of leaving her be, he pressed the advantage he thought he had, trying to get her to agree to his terms. She woke up from a frenzy with his blood down her throat and his corpse falling to ash between her fingers. "It’ll be hard to explain, but at least the weakness has passed for now."
 * South Central Los Angeles suffers through a second night of violence and looting tonight as several gangs engage in an all-out battle for territory. Fires rage through many areas, the governor has not yet declared a state of emergency or called in the National Guard, despite repeated calls from the mayor’s office. Matters take a strange turn when a local "shock-jock" radio host interviewed a supposed member of one of the warring gangs. "We fight for Manishtusu, and all the fallen will bow before him in a pool of blood!" Occult experts claim that "Manishtusu" is the name of a demon in biblical lore, one that has been linked to no less than eight violent cults in Los Angeles since the early 1930s.
 * November 7: Weekend concert-goers at a music festival report seeing an itinerant prophet who promises "salvation for the children of Seth and Cain" for those who accept the "path of Golconda." According to witnesses, the prophet had a third eye in the center of her forehead, as well as hands that wept blood from stigmata that appeared as she extolled onlookers to "accept the path."
 * November 10: An intercept is broadcast over WTOJ, from Mandarin Ch'eng Hao via an unknown source. Ch'eng has faced great difficulty in recent times crossing the Wall and has meditated for three lunar cycles on the nature of Yin. "Tonight, I enter the Yin World to discover what lies behind these troubles."
 * November 11: An intercept is broadcast over WTOJ, from Mephi via GWNet. The Walking Thunder Caern in Kenya is gone. Mephi found the bones of all the Ahadi who lived there picked clean, and some of the locals said there had been a swarm of locusts, though locusts who eat Fera flesh is something new. There was a single spirit messenger there, and all it said was, "It is free."
 * November 12: Twenty-three NASA staff members vanish from Cape Canaveral in the wake of the firebombing of their offices and laboratories. This is the latest instance of missing aerospace research personnel, joining reports of similar disappearances in Kazakhstan, Ecuador and the offices of 12 aerospace industry corporations.
 * November 13: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from Bishop Andrew Emory to his Archibishop over an unknown source. Emory is quite sure the attackers were Black Hand. The one he cornered called the Archbishop a traitor. Conrad was wounded in the attack and so was Emory. "I reclaimed my sire’s blood. Judge me as you would."
 * November 14: New York police dispatchers last night responded to over 300 calls reporting a "monster" by the Manhattan side of the East River. Various reports describe the "monster" as having tentacles and being of indiscernible size.
 * It rains hundreds of frogs in Alexandria. It begins when an unexpected storm comes in off the sea, battering the coast and the immortal Pharos harbor with torrential rains and high winds. But after the rains die down, frogs cover the streets.
 * November 17: Previous reports of the "monster" seen in New York's East River might not have been out of line. CDC agents report that biological detritus left in the monster’s wake consisted of a never-before-seen amalgam of necrotic flesh and fungus, in addition to an amount of as-yet-unspecified biomatter.
 * An African-American man calling himself Dante appears in the live broadcasts of the Monday-night football game between the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions, and the final episode of the live reality show Who Wants to Marry a Movie Star? The man, appearing simultaneously to witnesses on both the Movie Star set in Los Angeles and at Detroit’s Ford Stadium, issues an enigmatic warning to "everyone who knows the truth."
 * November 18: WTOJ intercepts a broadcast from Alina Chan via an unknown source, to unspecified "Honored Queens": Chan was ordered by her father, the Golden Lion Emperor Chan Jianglu, to travel to the Queens' courts under flag of truce. She was to request aid against the unknown demon-hunters who have suddenly appeared in their midst, and to tell them of the siege they have lain on the court in Singapore, of the burning of the Lexicon Club and other worrisome developments. "I will not do so, for it is now too late. The Kuei-jin of Singapore have been sent to Yomi by these madmen, so I send only a warning that you could be next."
 * Throughout North Africa, snakes begin to slither up through the sand, even through cement and tile flooring. There are reports of over 20 snake and poison-related deaths.
 * November 19: Executives at both Disney/ABC and General Electric/NBC deny involvement in the strange simultaneous appearance of an African-American man in the live broadcasts of the Monday-night football game and of the final episode of the live reality show Who Wants to Marry a Movie Star?.
 * November 20: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from GWNet. The Zmei Goluko has awoken from his slumber on the Taimyr Peninsula. He has consumed the Black Spiral Dancers who awaited him and has emerged from the earth. He heads south.
 * November 21: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from a more mundane source, alt.conspiracies. The poster writes how it rained hundreds of frogs last week in Alexandria; snakes slithered up through the ground in North Africa three days ago, and earlier today reports of swarms of locusts began to drift into various news organizations in Egypt. The poster wonders why the news isn't making it to North America.
 * November 24: Scientists at Puerto Rico's world-famous Arecibo Radio Observatory are unable to explain the strange electromagnetic interference that is causing strange displays in the night sky and blanketing airwaves with waves of sound that one official describes as "a chorus of bestial growls and moans." At a recent conference, scientists concurred that, whatever the source of the strange noises is, the strength of the interference is steadily increasing. One unnamed official insisted that he had been able to discern distinct voices and patterns of speech among the noise.
 * A fire sweeps through Manhattan's Barnard College tonight, destroying the library and rare-books collection. The fire also exposes an extensive underground complex records call the "Chantry of Five Boroughs." Ashy remains are all that are left of the inhabitants.
 * November 26: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from Dictatrix11 on hunter-net.org, possibly referring to the fire of the 24th: "Those who wish to assist me, stay out of the blood camps. There is nothing you can do from inside. Stay on the outside to protect those who remain free. Weaken the power of the blood drinkers. And wait for the fire to start."

December

 * December 1: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from an unknown individual over the Panopticon intranet. The communiqué advises that Tradition-aligned deviants have successfully freed recently Awakened detainees from a penitentiary in Woomera, Australia. Initial reports suggest the prison guards surrendered rather than follow through with orders to execute the prisoners. Panopticon ops have attempted to retake Woomera only to be repelled by lightning strikes that damaged equipment but left agents unharmed. Communications suggest that 52% of captured operatives chose suicide over surrender to the deviants.
 * Panic breaks out throughout the city of Calcutta tonight when the rat population is seemingly driven mad from fear or illness and began attacking humans. Hundreds die in the initial chaos, and thousands more are expected to die from infection in the days and weeks to come. Reports of "Rat Kings" are widespread among those who have endured the attacks.
 * Judge Donna Brandenburg sentences "vampire-hunter" Ernesto Gutierrez to life in prison after a jury unanimously finds him guilty. Gutierrez murdered eight individuals between the years of 1997 and 2003, though none of their bodies have been found. Gutierrez was arrested after an attempted murder during which his victim escaped and contacted authorities. The victim testified at night, as she suffered from acute hepatic porphyria (a.k.a. "Schere's Disease"), an allergy to direct sunlight—likely the source of Gutierrez’s belief that she was a vampire.
 * December 3: Eyewitnesses and photographs both report that the buildings of Tokyo are apparently growing and changing on their own, through unknown means. Crowds have gathered in awe to watch enormous skyscrapers grow taller and more angular. The phenomenon might also be linked to a sudden tenfold increase in the rate of violent crime throughout Tokyo.
 * December 4: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from an unknown source. The message indicates that the freehold of Queen Karolinda is no more, and the queen herself is dead, victim of a massive ghille dhu, nearly twelve feet in height, which came to the author's lands sowing death and destruction in its wake. Green Man's Fever grips the citizenry, and many more have died. Before it left, the ghille dhu roared a message: "The last Gold Oath is broken, and the world is theirs at last!"
 * December 7: The Iron Rapids Manufacturing plant in Iron Rapids, Michigan undergoes a series of explosions tonight.
 * December 8: Local and national media today descend on the wreckage of the ruins of the Iron Rapids Manufacturing plant. Rows bodies, all with wooden stakes driven through their hearts, were found in a variety of windowless rooms. Law enforcement sealed off the area after one Detroit-area station broadcast footage of several of these corpses coming to life when the stakes were removed. Local resident Douglas Sands, arrested at the scene, screams, "I got them, Faye!" to the cameras before being dragged away, apparently referring to his wife, abducted from their home last March and never found.
 * December 9: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from a radio broadcast at 2.4 MHz. The poster notes that his or her companions don’t have any electricity, except when Doctor Cole’s generator works. There’s no running water, but we’ve got the river and a good filtration system going. There’s food, grown from vegetables on the rooftops. "And we keep getting bigger. Bit by bit, block by block." They keep gaining ground, which is attributed to "Lupe." Lupe and her soldiers never stop finding ways to keep out the monsters and kill them in their dens.
 * December 10: Lynchburg, Virginia's police station has been inundated by reports from terrified motorists who report that the nearby town of Roanoke has vanished from the face of the earth. Travelers on Highway 220 report that a strange, low-lying fog blankets the area. Cell phones will not function in the region, and radios emit an eerie sound that witnesses describe as the "howls of the damned." Several reports also included sighting vehicles stopped at various points along the highway with their lights on, doors open and engines running, but no sign of their owners.
 * December 11: Groups of villagers from parts of the famed Black Forest have banded together to serve in a vigilante group calling itself the "Army of the Wise God." Claiming to take leadership from a mysterious man named "General Geoffrey," this group has ejected all national authorities and held a series of lynchings of those they proclaim enemies. The bloodiest lynching was of the entire population of a neo-pagan commune that had lived peacefully in the Forest since right after the Second World War. The Army of the Wise God branded the commune’s members as "unwitting slaves of Samael and Moloch" and executed them all, sending photographs and other grizzly evidence to national media outlets.
 * December 12: According to the few residents who managed to escape, the small town of Temple Corner, Maine has been invaded by a religious extremists. This nameless group reportedly serves a woman named "Zhyzhak, Chosen of Green Dragon" and uses a wild dogs and wolves in its rites. One escapee reported that many villagers had been fed to these apparently rabid animals. He also said he was given a message from the enigmatic Zhyzhak, one destined for a certain "Albrecht."
 * December 15: An unknown man gets dumped unceremoniously in a Midtown park a few minutes before sunrise this morning. The man is bound and gagged. When onlookers come closer to help the man, he screams incoherently. As the sun rises, the man bursts into flame. The flames consume him quickly, reportedly leaving only a pile of ash no more than a minute afterward.
 * December 16: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from Exalted-of-Gaia via GWNet: The Maeljin Incarna Hellbringer rode out above Jerusalem in broad daylight. It is heading northwest, toward the Margrave.
 * December 17: In a pronouncement made from the Tower of London to address the fears resulting from a series of recent purported "hauntings," the Prince of Wales last night called on the population to take to the streets to defend their nation. "Britannia will always protect us," he said, "but she hungers." In the aftermath, dozens of vigilante gangs built wicker men all over the city. Hundreds of looters and vandals were captured and imprisoned inside the effigies and burned to death. Sources inside Buckingham Palace say that the strange pronouncement was written in consultation with a previously unknown society called the Harbingers of Avalon, who some claim are tied to the Knights Templar.
 * December 18: "The graveyards have given up their dead!" is the cry repeated over and over for the last three days, by a hysterical voice speaking on Mexico City's Radio Joya, station XEJP. Phone service to the city is out, and over-flights by the Mexican Army report that parts of the city are in flames, but the streets appear deserted.
 * December 19: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from a ham radio at 10.5 Mhz: "I think all of us fought to keep things as they were, to save civilization from the monsters and the darkness. But maybe that wasn’t the point, because civilization was where the monsters and the darkness came from—the things that controlled us and kept us ignorant. What we fought to protect was the same thing the creatures wanted to control.

Now it’s gone. The monsters have been dragged into the light, and they have to play on the same field as the rest of us. This isn’t just our reckoning, it’s theirs as well. We’re going from a corrupt and damaged world into something new, and it doesn’t have to be worse than this. It can’t be worse than this. Not if we’re there, on the ground, helping it take shape.

I drove past a broken-down truck on the way up this hill, a man and a woman walking away from it. I’m going to drive back down right now and find them.

Help them inherit the earth.

Soldier out.
 * December 22: WTOJ broadcasts an intercept from "Pascek" via SchreckNET: "H: Yes, I’ve put Bell on the matter as a condition of his reinstatement. Beckett is as good as ash."
 * December 23: A mysterious and massive outbreak of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, has sparked panic and fears of an epidemic or worse in Egypt and throughout parts of the Middle East. Over the past week, over 600 newborns between the ages of six weeks and less than 24 hours have died of unexplained causes in hospitals throughout Egypt. Physicians and medical experts say that while sudden and unexplained deaths do occur with some infants, the breadth of this outbreak is completely unprecedented and may represent an unknown infection of some kind. “SIDS is not a contagious disease,” says Dr. Mariq Hanoush of Cairo. “This epidemic clearly involves something beyond simply random chance. Frankly, we’re at a loss.” Egyptian authorities have declared a state of emergency and called upon the assistance of the World Health Organization. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have also volunteered experts and resources to aid in both isolating and containing the cause of the fatalities.
 * December 24: Members of a self-professed vampire gang known as the Sabbat demonstrated the supernatural powers at their command last night. Before an assembled crowd at a political rally, the Sabbat vampires proclaimed their superiority over the "kine," and chaos ensued as the vampires attempted to feed on human blood. Those present reported manifest "tentacles of darkness," the vampires moving at superhuman speed and exhibitions of superhuman strength, such as tearing a fire hydrant from its moorings and flipping a police cruiser. Whether this was an elaborate prank or not remains to be seen.
 * December 28: A powerful earthquake, measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale, shakes the polar plateau of Antarctica, opening a crevasse some 30 miles long and half a mile wide. A Russian scientific team crossing the plateau at the time is reported lost. In related news, stories are trickling in from across the Southern Hemisphere of people experiencing strange dreams the night of the quake, dreams of a shadowy figure emerging from frozen ground.
 * December 30: A massive metal zeppelin appears above Paris this morning, transmitting messages to every radio, television and computer screen in the region from a man calling himself "Czar Vargo, Master of the World." In what he claimed was his "final message," Vargo offered emigration to a new world of technological wonders for those who accepted his terms. "You denied my overtures for peace at the beginning of the last century. Now is your last chance. Accept universal brotherhood and join our hidden Utopia. Reject it, and you reap the ruin of your own unreason."
 * December 31: Satellite imagery, airplane over-flights and eye witnesses all agree that the Bermuda Triangle has been visibly glowing for the last week. This portion of the North Atlantic, defined by the southern tip of the state of Florida, the Bahamas and the Greater Antilles, has long been a region of strange phenomena, and oceanographers are at a loss to explain the yellow light now bathing the area. Reports of ships being pulled under the waves by huge tentacles, and of mythical mermaids swimming through the phosphorescent water, are only adding to the mania surrounding the phenomenon.