Protagonists#

• Short, Lance - Agent Myra - Foreign Service Officer (John)
• Tucker, Jamal - Agent Sentinel - U.S. Secret Service - Personal Protective Detail Division (Panagiotis)
• Veronica Mare - Agent Artemis - Professor of Anthropology (Tasos)
• Bennet, Wendy - Agent Locke - Criminal Intelligence Analyst / Assistant Professor of Criminology (Konstantina)
• Coniglio, Heath - Agent Blacktail - FBI Intelligence Case Officer (Istvan)

New Teeth#

Agent Cod

• Real name: Emmy LaBarbara
• Profession: Physician (Freelancer)
• Player: Giannis

Agent Taramis

• Real name: Dustin A. Roth
• Profession: CDC Assistant Program Manager
• Player: Tasos

Getting Back on Their Feet (Personal Pursuits)#

• Agent Cod - Goes to Therapy
  • Reveals the horrific experiences she endured at Devils Tower, but the burden is too much to let go.
• Agent Jocko - Goes to Therapy
  • Does not come forward with the truth to his therapist. He still manages to get the most out of the help offered.
• Agent Locke – Fulfills Responsibilities
  • Devotes time to her nephew, her sister’s Cindy’s son, in an attempt to re-establish family bonds. She partially manages it.
• Agent Taramis - Improves skills and stats
  • Takes yoga lessons to strengthen his will and mental strength and delves into the study of occult books.

Special Vignettes#

The special vignettes take place sometime during the Covid-19 pandemic, between January and July of 2020. The pandemic is still new.

Empty Streets#

Agent Locke, on her way to Tinder Date, walks in a quiet, empty street filled with nocturnal animals, a sudden, unexplained event instantly kills all nearby wildlife. The sounds of life cease at once, leaving total silence. No humans witness it, no clear pattern is visible afterward, and only she experiences the moment. She thinks of everyone who died around her. Bast might want to tell her that everyone else is dead.

The Protest Escalates#

Agent Locke participates in a protest. People demand higher wages. Law enforcement pays people to start a riot. Amid a chaotic protest dispersed by tear gas, panic erupts as flames and police lights obscure visibility. A spooked police horse bolts into the smoke, collides violently with a burning parked car, and is catastrophically injured. Witnessing the aftermath, Locke turns away and leaves the scene.

Nature Is Healing#

Agent Cod learns from Dr. David Palmer about a baffling incident in which an enormous wasp nest inexplicably forms inside Palmer’s car in an impossibly short time. The nest is still wet and intensely hot, defying known biology and puzzling even professional exterminators. Later, news reports a fatal truck accident at the exact place and time Palmer would have been driving had the infestation not stopped them. Agent Cod dismisses the connection as coincidence.

Later, Agent Cod notices a painful wasp sting, likely received during the day’s earlier events, marking her as one of the Teeth.

Feral Hogs#

Agent Cod responds to Enzo Vizinni’s plea for help when feral hogs besiege his home, trapping his wife inside. Cod secures the house and calms her while authorities arrive slowly. Law enforcement treats the violent cleanup casually, joking, taking photos, and dismissing the hogs’ coordinated, aggressive behavior as mere animal stupidity. The incident is politicized, spun into propaganda for armed self-defense, and Cod’s denial is ignored, branding them a conspiracy scapegoat. Unauthorized crowdfunding follows, yielding unintended financial benefits. Cod is left disturbed by the realization that an unnatural force dispenses “gifts” through chaos and exploitation.

Essential Worker#

Agent Taramis continues working daily at the CDC and remains personally stable but encounters a disturbing anomaly in an old break room: a television broadcast glitches whenever he enters, looping a distorted message praising workers as “heroes.” The phenomenon stops when he leaves and resumes if he returns. After investigating for three weeks, his instinctive understanding of the Unnatural grows. When he reports this to the Program, they respond by silencing him, placing him under a fabricated 72-hour psychiatric hold and threatening him into compliance. Warned to forget the incident, Taramis meets Agent Jocko during his confinement.

While on psychiatric hold, Agent Taramis is marked by the Hidden God when Agent Jocko forces a dead bat into his hands, and Taramis is cut by the bat’s teeth.

Social Distance: The Musical#

Agent Jocko retrieves the corpse of his dog Xen, underscoring his isolation during the pandemic. Later, he walks through a crowded park, maskless, where people, vendors, and street performers bustle normally. He perceives the scene as a coordinated trap.

A street performer blows a piercing trumpet note, and the entire crowd, humans, animals, performers, freezes and forms a choreographed, hypnotic chorus line singing “HELLO AND WELCOME BACK!” in a Disney-like, overlapping drone. Hidden cameras capture the event.

The reveal escalates as technical crew for an ABC production, Social Distance: The Musical, emerges from hiding, launching confetti and orchestrating an impromptu flash-mob dance party. The production was a pandemic-era reality show designed for behind-the-scenes and staged reactions, with the flash mob as a pre-planned surprise for first arrivals.

Jocko is approached by interviewer Chad Easley-Saffron (a.k.a. TeflonBoy), a controversial viral-content creator, to provide feedback. He punches him in the face and instantly kills him but faces no consequences for violent or extreme reactions.

Jocko chooses to gain an unexpected insight into the Unnatural. He reflects on being chosen by a godlike entity, which orchestrates all events across time and space, presenting them as a personal omen. Though the entity itself does not understand humanity, it shapes his perception and guides him along a predetermined path. Jocko recognizes his helplessness and inevitability, likening himself to prey and a fang in the jaws of God.

The Tip#

Pitzerelli assembles Working Group MASTICATE at Kerber Wilson and Associates, posing as a New York law firm occupying the top floor of a six-story office building.

Agent Jocko finds only one familiar face: Agent Locke. Agents Cod and Taramis have joined them before Pitzerelli arrives. None of them can “smell” each other.

“URGENT (CODE: OPERATIC) 1/7/20 0121 CST (-6 GMT) 66% Keymatch <Conradin (morph)><Children (con/sym)>”

Long ago, Pitzerelli loaded the NSA’s MAGENTA GAMBLER system with keywords related to the Cornucopia incident and the fallout from the 2016 operation. This is the highest coincidence of related terms in years. The alert originates from an anonymous FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) submission.

The tip appears bogus. Entries for the victim’s ZIP code and phone number match U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in Washington, D.C. But the risks are too great to ignore.

His superiors approved to activate MASTICATE. The Agents are ordered to determine what else the informant knows.

Despite the anonymous tipster’s claims, he’s not exactly a hacker. The Program easily traced the complaint through metadata. The tip came from Lee Jarnigan, a professional gambler living in St. Louis. Pitzerelli has plane tickets to St. Louis and a warrant for Jarnigan’s house for the Agents.

Before he exits the briefing room, Agent Locke makes him promise to end this if she dies.

Jarnigan’s Background#

• Background: Grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. BA in creative writing from UMSL (2003). Briefly attended MFA program at Washington University, dropped out in 2004 after his parents died in a car accident. Lives in inherited home in Ballwin, Missouri.
• Income: Since 2006, reported income comes from riverboat and Arkansas casinos.
• Education History: Known as a privileged, over-read student. Attendance declined after his parents’ death. Rumored to have started a plagiarism-for-profit “essay mill” using cryptocurrency.
• Social Media: Late-30s, shabby appearance, posts party photos and frequent political rants. Appears to have no formal job.
• Criminal/Technical Activity: Runs an international plagiarism enterprise under the alias ScribeLife420. Provides custom-written academic assignments, including style imitation and grade targeting. Sole operator since 2006, responsible for thousands of academic fraud cases. Exposure of these operations could threaten university accreditation and generate international attention.

The Applicants’ Backgrounds#

Screenshots attached to the Tip show two job applications for ICE’s Detention Management Division: Alan Rapp (maintenance professional) and Terry Smedley (juvenile officer). Facility unspecified. Background checks possible prior to contact with Jarnigan.

• Alan Rapp – Maintenance Professional
  • White Texas native, born 2000. Austin HS graduate 2018.
  • No work history or higher education. Contact info current.
  • Application content suggests severe instability or violent tendencies.
  • Despite obvious red flags, he is being considered for hire by Conradin.

• Terry Smedley – Juvenile Officer
  • White, age 49. Experienced juvenile corrections officer. Holds associate’s degree in criminal justice.
  • Formerly at El Paso County Juvenile Detention Center.
  • In 2019, recorded abusing minors with anti-Latinx remarks. Video publicized.
  • El Paso County did not press charges. His contract was not renewed. Smedley is legally able to seek similar positions elsewhere.