ExMiscellanea

The building that housed the chantry was almost complete, and there were newcomers in the area who wished to become a part of the chantry, with more visiting every day. Such people included Soren Russo, from New York City, along with his mentor Violet Donovan; Willow Bellerose, Susan's flame from Boston and newly-initiated Hermetic; Ashna Gitali, a foreign Cultist on her first trip to the States; and Hayley Flores, a cloistered but precocious Euthanatos. There were others - there always were - and there was a steady period of growth for the young chantry.

The chantry as a whole did not see any overt threats to the chantry at large, though there were some instances of danger, such as an unusual creature that could take the shape of humans of any size, sex, or age, that created abnormal sensations of pain when interacted with. However, near the end of the summer, one of the members, Ashna, was assaulted by a madman who psychically assaulted her, implanting an Alice in Wonderland-themed nightmare that scarred her.

The Bloody Baron
Susan, as Sentinel, was quick to respond to the threat the man represented; he was a rogue individual with supernatural powers he was willing to use against innocents, and he had to be stopped. She brought together a group of the resident mages in order to make plans to investigate the matter further, though it was Soren who had a plan: Merianda Faye and Susan were to approach the mysterious owner of the Bloody Baron, leaning on Merianda's writer fame, to try to get information about a man named Darius, believed to spend time in the upstairs portion of the Bloody Baron and to be a friend of the owner.

But things never go according to plan. Susan was separated from Merianda by the owner, sent instead into the care of bartender and Hollow One Freddie, who had no ties to the chantry at that time. Susan encountered a man she believed to be her mark while Merianda spoke with the owner, but the Euthanatos was asked to leave and escorted part of the way out before she turned and charged back, responding to a call from back-up man Soren: Merianda was under attack.

Susan was the first to respond and to reach Merianda in the owner's office, though Sophie and Willow were close behind with some vulgar teleportation, and the Euthanatos stood off with the man Darius while Willow aided a traumatized Merianda. Soren arrived soon thereafter, and the two of them sorted through filling in the pieces with the help of a mind-dive by Sophie. The former two took him off-premises while Sophie tended to repairing relations with the owner of the Bloody Baron.

The Death of a Soul
Unknown to the majority of the chantry at the time, Willow Bellerose was once a dragon who had given up her immortality two years prior in order to help Susan and the mages of Boston, and in September 2012, she was presented an opportunity to undertake a series of quests in order to reclaim her heritage and return to her home-plane Proterus. There were some complications, however, for Willow had been heavily influenced by her newly-human nature, and she somehow bonded her soul to that of the dragon who was overseeing her quest.

This bond was betrayed, according to the most common version of the story, and the dragon was locked out of her home realm, which led to a forlorn sense of despair in the dragon. This dragon, Kale, sought death, first at the hand of Susan, who denied her, and then from Henry Etlinger, an apprentice to the Hollow Ones. Henry was swayed by the dragon's argument and granted her wish, destroying a being of utter magic and marking his soul.

This death immediately set off a chain of events. Due to their bond, when the dragon died Willow's own soul was torn asunder. The dragons also threatened war over the death of one of their own, for that soul was lost to them, and this was a war the mages of Providence simply could not afford, certainly not against beings that could strip them of what little magic remained in the Realm. Peace talks were initiated, but there was only one thing that would satisfy the dragons: the magic of the mage who had taught their young dragon such a human concept as suicide.

A War Averted
Amid the strain of attempting to find an alternative reparation within the three-day time limit given to them by the dragons, the mages also experienced another, slightly more distant, loss: on November 23, 2012, the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, home of the Catholic diocese of Providence and of Dhaiga Sanctuary, suddenly collapsed, the interior gutted and the mages and Sleepers within it at the time simply . . . Gone.

So grand an event immediately attracted the attention of the Technocracy, furthering the stress upon the members of the Chantry of Thirteen Faiths.

It was merely days following this disappearance that Willow Bellerose decided to give in to the demands of the dragons in order to avert a war. She accompanied Susan to a discussion with the dragon representatives, and Susan adamantly attempted to sway both sides away from the impending course of action, but Willow offered both her magic and her memories to the dragons, and they accepted.

In a feat as of yet unmatched, the dragon representative, Galen, somehow took Willow's magic from her and rewrote her identity within the Tapestry - any mage who had known her still did, but there was no physical evidence that a Willow Bellerose had ever existed outside of the mages' memories. Sleepers instead knew her only as Isolde Bell, barista and college student, and worse still, she was a Sleeper.

But one loss begat another. Henry, the apprentice responsible for the death of Kale the dragon, had been placed under house arrest by his mentor, Soren, in the wake of the death, and at the end of the year, word came that Henry was dead, though the details of the matter were never disclosed to the general public of the chantry.

A Bang, Not a Whimper
At the very beginning of 2013, Hayley Flores encountered stranger Emmy Pensa in the library of Brown, only to be shot upon identifying Pensa as a Technocrat. Pensa fled, not to be heard from for months, while Susan raced to Hayley's aid.

It was an unusual transition, perhaps, a season ending with a very literal bang, but the sudden assault left questions hanging.