Testimony of an Esoterror Recruit

Excerpt from interview conducted at Debriefing Center Xenon, 9/12/12

Subject: Nathan Cox, age 27

 

Interviewer: So what do you think you did to attract their attention?

Subject: Attract her attention, you mean?

Interviewer: However you want to answer the question, Nathan.

Subject: Don’t call me by my first name like you know me. I don’t like that.

Interviewer: You don’t want me to bring the other guy back in here, do you?

[Inaudible.]

Interviewer: What’s that, Nathan?

Subject: No, no I don’t.

Interviewer: So tell me how your story starts.

Subject: I’m just a normal guy. I work a job, I go to night school, I got this girl I’m kinda seeing.

Interviewer: So why do they approach you, then?

Subject: Well on the side I got this hobby.

Interviewer: Hobby?

Subject: I like to bust up statues. Not like real statues, like valuable art statues. But in the neighborhood l live in, there’s a lot of Italians and Portuguese, right?

Interviewer: You’re part Italian, correct?

Subject: Yeah, on my ma’s side. So they like garden statuary. Plaster stuff. Poured concrete. Sometimes it’s Virgin Marys and saints and whatnot. Sometimes it’s more classical statues.

Interviewer: Like in this photo, here, for example. Of Atlas carrying the world. Except somebody’s smacked off his arms. With what, a hammer?

[Subject nods.]

Interviewer: You did this, Nathan?

Subject: Yeah, yeah, probably. I was drunk a lot of the time. But if a statue got broken in my neighborhood, it was probably me that did it.

Interviewer: And did you vandalize them in any particular way that might have attracted their interest?

Subject: Well there’s the practical to consider. There’s only certain bits of a statue you can break. But within that, I always tried to do the most to ruin what the statue meant. Does that make any sense?

Interviewer: So Atlas isn’t Atlas anymore if he has no arms to carry the Earth.

Subject: Yeah, like that.

Interviewer: Do you know what semiotics is, Nathan?

Subject: No.

Interviewer: Did Odessa ever use that word with you?

Subject: Uh, maybe. But I keep telling you, her name isn’t Odessa. It’s Katherine. Katherine James.

Interviewer: Did she explain what it was about your vandalism that led her to track you down?

Subject: She said I wasn’t just a vandal, I was an artist. Making statements. Destroying meaning. Changing the vibration of my neighborhood.

Interviewer: And you took that seriously.

Subject: The way Katherine talks, you take everything she says seriously. It all makes sense, when she says it.

Interviewer: Including kidnapping?

Subject: Well that was months later. I was in deep by then. She made me think we were changing the world.

Interviewer: Changing it how?

Subject: Taking all the powerful people who didn’t deserve to be lording over the rest of us ordinary people and casting them down. Giving ordinary people like me a chance to rule.

Interviewer: Were you sleeping with her?

Subject: I wish.

Interviewer: But she implied that maybe you might get to, eventually.

Subject: Not in so many words.

Interviewer: Would it be fair to say she led you to infer it?

Subject: Maybe.

Interviewer: Was that on your mind when you smothered the victim for her?

Subject: I need a break. Can we stop talking about this?

Interviewer: Sure, Nathan. Do you want anything?

Subject: I wish I hadn’t done it. I want to die. If you bring the other guy back in, will he kill me?

 

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The Esoterrorists are occult terrorists intent on tearing the fabric of the world – and you play elite investigators out to stop them. This is the game that revolutionized investigative RPGs by ensuring that players are never deprived of the crucial clues they need to move the story forward. Purchase The Esoterrorists in print and PDF at the Pelgrane Shop.