Working Group Narnia Meeting - Thu, Oct 24, 2019

• The team previously asked Picky Eater a direct question and it answered.
• Justin searched for Sarah Donovan and initially saw normal digital traces (public records, social media), but the results continued into sealed/state records suggesting early trauma, state custody, developmental issues, and adoption—details that mirrored McKay’s background in a way that felt deliberate rather than coincidental.
• Frank contacted FBI Cybercrimes and learned Picky Eater had surfaced before:
  • In 2017 it appeared during a child pornography investigation tied to Charles Bauer.
  • Cybercrimes could not trace it, escalated to NSA, and the trail went dead.
  • Bauer died by suicide in 2018.
  • The underlying concern remained focused on the software itself, not just the crime.
• The team interviewed Wilhelmina Duff (the officer who shot McKay). Her account largely held together, but one detail stood out as strange: McKay broke into a nearby house and smashed a bedroom window to get a phone charger.
• The team viewed McKay’s body and reviewed the autopsy; nothing unusual was found.
• At the medical examiner’s office, Justin used a microscope to examine the “hardware” Wallace had sent:
  • The circuitry wasn’t just crude; it seemed fundamentally “wrong.”
  • A shifting, blurred sigil appeared to float above the silicon and would not come into focus.
  • Philomena recognized the clearer portion as a scrying mark associated with the Book of Thoth.
  • Another surrounding/adjacent symbol remained present but refused to resolve into a readable shape, no matter how it was viewed.

Back at the microscope, the group discusses the symbol that won’t focus and attempts to identify or capture it:

• McCarter asks Philomena whether she recognizes the unclear symbol; she does not.

• The team reiterates that photographs and direct focus attempts do not work:

  • The symbol is not merely “moving”; it remains blurry specifically where focus should resolve it, as if the point of attention becomes the point of maximum distortion.

• Philomena proposes using occult knowledge and technique rather than mechanical capture:

  • She states her goal clearly: bring the second symbol into focus (or otherwise obtain a usable representation of it).
  • The Handler allows an Occult roll to see whether she recalls a practice or method that could help.
  • Philomena succeeds on her Occult roll.
  • McCarter also rolls Occult and critically fails (99), concluding the approach is “bullshit” and asserting that if it were “magic,” it would smell—implying he senses occult phenomena via smell but does not detect it here.
  • McCarter attempts to argue Philomena out of it (Persuade roll 82, failure), contested against Philomena’s successful Occult; she tunes him out and proceeds.

Philomena performs a meditative practice to heighten environmental/detail absorption and mental recall:

• The Handler describes it as an obscure Tibetan monastic practice intended to improve one’s ability to absorb details and later recall them with precision.

• Philomena confirms she has tried it before and believed it helped with recall, but it is difficult and time-consuming.

• She makes a POW check to execute the technique and succeeds (she notes her POW is very high “by design”).

• The meditation takes an extended period (approximately 30–45 minutes):

  • The medical examiner briefly checks the room, sees Philomena humming/chanting while staring at the microscope monitor, and leaves without interfering.
  • Philomena explicitly tells the others to stop talking and leave her to it.

The meditation yields a recoverable image of the previously unreadable symbol, which Philomena reproduces:

• Philomena cannot “see” the symbol cleanly in the normal sense during the process, but when finished she has a clear mental image and sketches it on paper.

• The Handler describes what she reproduces:

  • A five-pointed star-like shape with an eye-like form in the center (described at the table as resembling an “Elder Sign,” though the characters do not identify it as such in-world).

• Philomena suffers a SAN cost for forcing the result:

  • She loses 2 SAN from the experience.
  • She uses Projection to cancel the SAN loss, spending 2 Willpower and taking 2 points of damage to a Bond (she references “Verity” as the Bond impacted).

• The Handler clarifies:

  • Because Philomena failed prior Unnatural checks, she still does not recognize the symbol’s meaning, even with an accurate depiction.
  • The meditative-recall precision will fade after a few hours; without a reference, she would not be able to reproduce it with the same accuracy later.

• Philomena takes a photo of her drawing to preserve an exact copy.

Philomena considers information-sharing, but chooses secrecy:

• She talks about posting the image to her occult contacts (Discord/“occult Twitter”), asking if anyone recognizes it.
• She indicates she will do so privately rather than in front of the team, acknowledging that secrecy is common in how they operate.
• She also explains she is keeping a digital copy so the team does not lose the only accurate version.

The group reviews remaining leads and decides on next steps:

• The Handler notes the time has advanced into late afternoon after a full day of running leads.

• The team confirms certain earlier work has already been done:

  • They already spoke to Wilhelmina Duff (the officer involved in McKay’s death).
  • They already examined McKay’s body/autopsy.
  • They already searched relevant online communities/boards and found no direct references to Bradley McKay by name; his activity appeared to have dropped off around late 2018.

• The Handler identifies unresolved investigative paths:

  • Additional interviews with individuals from the photos on McKay’s device (beyond Emily Galperin).
  • The lead to Robert Wallace (connected to Picky Eater material) and to Bangor, Maine.

• The team discusses Wallace’s apparent profile:

  • Tax records indicate Wallace is roughly the same age as McKay.
  • The group notes this is surprising; they expected a much older “groomer” figure, but Wallace appears more like a peer/middleman rather than an older manipulator.
  • The Handler states Wallace and McKay knew each other online from extremist/incel forums, and Wallace had messaged/possibly sent Picky Eater materials to McKay.

• The team also revisits McKay’s parents:

  • They previously spoke to Annabelle and Mitchell McKay.
  • Their memory of when and how they interacted with their son became notably hazy around the time he went to college.
  • McKay likely received the device during his freshman year, before Christmas (around November), though he had been messaging his online contact(s) for a year or two before that.

Pitzarelli calls Frank with a proposed escalation: direct NSA contact

• Pitzarelli asks what the team learned from the FBI Cybercrimes contact:

  • Frank reports the agent believed NSA stonewalled deliberately, claiming they were “too busy,” and the agent remained personally concerned about Picky Eater.

• Pitzarelli says she has contacts at NSA and can likely get the team in front of an analyst with the clearance to discuss what they know.

• Frank expresses suspicion that the obstruction might not be “NSA” as an institution but someone connected to Pitzarelli’s world; she acknowledges that suspicion off the record.

• Pitzarelli admits she tried to see whether “their group” was already working on it, but was told she should not dig—interpreting that as “yes, but they don’t think we need to know.”

• She frames a strategy: step on enough toes that it becomes easier to brief the team than to keep dodging them.

• The plan becomes a trip to Fort Meade, Maryland (NSA HQ area), with a meeting scheduled mid-morning the next day.

Pitzarelli separately calls McCarter and pushes him toward deeper “abilities”

• While packing, McCarter receives a call from Pitzarelli.
• She tells him this is not just a check-in on the Maryland plan; she wants to discuss his “place” in the agency.
• Pitzarelli praises McCarter’s value and says leadership views him and his capabilities as “the future of field operations,” suggesting they can find threats earlier by leveraging what he can do.
• She explicitly authorizes McCarter to cultivate these abilities in other team members if he believes he can.
• McCarter responds cautiously but agrees to explore the option and “see what he can do.”
• The implication lands for the group (as discussed at the table) that Pitzarelli intends to operationalize McCarter’s anomalous perceptions.

The team travels to Fort Meade and meets NSA analyst Ann Gibbs

• The group goes through multiple security checkpoints; NSA takes electronics and processes them through heavy security protocols.

• In a secure internal meeting room, the analyst introduces herself as Ann Gibbs:

  • Described as around 40, pale, with brown hair, “mousy-looking,” hunched posture, and someone who rarely sees the sun.
  • She appears earnest and somewhat socially awkward but focused.

• Gibbs confirms the request and states the agency has been tracking Picky Eater under an umbrella effort called Operation Diving Bell:

  • Diving Bell is described as a broad deep web intelligence program cataloging trends and producing shareable intelligence.
  • She notes the FBI Cybercrimes request is still pending internal approvals, but the team’s request was approved overnight, implying high-level influence.

• Gibbs summarizes NSA’s historical Picky Eater assessment:

  • NSA reviewed the software a couple of years ago, but the exact date is missing due to a suspected erroneous edit in logs; she says she needs to track down what happened.

  • Picky Eater masquerades as a search aggregator grouping sites by topic, and includes VPN/“security” type framing.

  • She characterizes it as “malware through and through,” creating substantial harm on host machines:

    • Rewrites firmware.
    • Consumes drive space, memory, and power.
    • Degrades performance and can destroy hardware over weeks or months.

  • NSA rated it low priority because it requires custom hardware (a chip) to run:

    • Few people would obtain the hardware, limiting spread.
    • No clear state-actor linkage.
    • It was deemed non-actionable and the investigation was terminated as not worth resources.

• The team asks about the chip and provenance:

  • Gibbs says NSA never obtained a chip and never ran it; they only acquired the software and saw limited deep-web chatter.
  • She estimates origins back to at least 2016 (possibly earlier) but cannot find direct first-mention evidence.
  • They never identified the author/operator.

• Gibbs asks whether the team is affiliated with “Working Group Narnia”:

  • She says a similar request came in from them a few weeks ago, prior to McKay’s murders.
  • She describes it as some kind of CIA-connected operation.
  • She seems genuinely motivated to avoid duplicated effort and “trim government waste.”
  • She states Narnia’s request and discussion were covered under Diving Bell clearance; they received the same briefing.
  • She recommends the team request contact through their supervisor and sync with Narnia since they’re actively pursuing it.

Gibbs provides technical detail on how Picky Eater processes input/output (as she understands it without the chip)

• Gibbs explains she has not seen a mobile version and asks questions about Android/iOS variants; the team answers generally without disclosing their most sensitive assets.

• The team deliberately avoids revealing that they possess a working chip and have run the system; Frank explicitly does not want NSA to take the chip.

• Gibbs describes a confusing internal component she calls a “language transformer”:

  • She explains it as taking raw text/keystrokes and funneling them into a tokenizer/transformer-like process.
  • She compares it loosely to early large language model work, though she doesn’t claim deep expertise in that domain.
  • She describes the process as doing “nonsense math” over token-like byte chunks, producing a stream of near-random bytes.
  • Those bytes are then sent into the chip, and the return bytes are formatted into output.

• Gibbs confirms output includes images (and text):

  • Image generation appears to occur almost entirely on the chip, with the host software doing basic formatting into an image file format.

• Gibbs’s interpretation of purpose:

  • The overall purpose looks like aggressive malware disguised as security/search tooling.
  • However, she cannot reconcile why a custom chip is required if the only goal is to destroy machines.
  • She strongly wants access to a chip to run a full analysis because parts of the software appear elegant while other parts look nonsensical without whatever the chip provides.

Frank presses Gibbs on recency of chatter; she implies something is happening now

• Frank asks if NSA is still seeing deep-web discussion of Picky Eater.
• Gibbs says she hasn’t checked recently since resources were pulled; the most recent she personally saw might have been about a year ago.
• She mentions the log-date anomaly again (an edit removing date information), speculates someone may be working on it now, then catches herself and stops before saying more.

The team exits NSA and conducts basic counter-surveillance checks

• Leaving through security, the team regains their checked belongings.
• Frank instructs Justin to review anything they brought near NSA systems to ensure it wasn’t tampered with or tagged.
• Justin conducts a SIGINT check to detect unusual transmissions/tampering and fails the roll; he does not detect anything overtly wrong.
• Operationally, the group clarifies they avoided bringing key operational electronics into the building, and Justin would have handed over an intentionally low-value device if required.

Frank reports back to Pitzarelli and requests information on Working Group Narnia

• Frank calls Pitzarelli immediately after leaving NSA.

• He reports:

  • Narnia contacted the same NSA analyst a few weeks prior (roughly early October), before McKay’s shooting.
  • Gibbs brought up Narnia without prompting.
  • NSA’s position: found Picky Eater via broad surveillance, assessed it as low priority due to custom hardware requirement, and stopped investigation.
  • Gibbs mentioned recent log tampering/editing.

• Pitzarelli says she can request information on the keyword “Working Group Narnia,” but expects it will raise eyebrows.

• She instructs the team to pause and get lunch while she makes calls.

Pitzarelli escalates the team into direct contact with the CIA-linked Narnia effort

• Around early afternoon (about 1 p.m.), Pitzarelli calls back:

  • She says the inquiry produced expected backlash—she would have preferred not to ask—but the pressure created movement.
  • The result: the team is given directions to a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

• At Langley, the team has a brief meeting with a senior CIA official, Winston Shepard:

  • He states the team’s investigation intersects an ongoing joint CIA–FBI task force codenamed Narnia.
  • Because the team may “trip over” Narnia’s operation, the team is granted clearance to meet the Narnia group and coordinate.
  • Narnia is led by Audra Powell.
  • The team is based out of New York City.
  • Their front business is a law firm: Kerber, Wilson and Associates (top floor of a six-story building).
  • Shepard indicates the matter is not an immediate emergency, and Narnia will meet the team the next morning.

The team travels from the D.C. area to New York City for the Narnia meeting

• The group debates travel options (drive vs. train vs. flight), ultimately deciding to drive.
• They consider counter-surveillance measures (changing rental cars to avoid tracking) while heading north.
• They arrive late evening and prepare for a 9 a.m. meeting at the law office in Manhattan.

The meeting at Kerber, Wilson and Associates begins—but the team’s composition fractures

• As the team heads up, the narrative splits:

  • Justin experiences a sudden, intense disorientation upon entering an elevator:

    • A sense that “something wrong has just happened.”
    • When the doors open, he is alone; the others are gone.
    • He finds himself in a different hallway than expected: lush red carpet, navy blue walls, strong lighting, pamphlet stand across from the elevator.
    • His phone indicates the year is 2054.
    • He attempts to call Frank and the others; none answer.
    • When he calls Philomena’s burner number, a man answers, says it’s the wrong number, and hangs up.

• Justin investigates his surroundings:

  • He observes pamphlets labeled “National Clandestine Services Museum, New York Collection.”

  • He searches online (Wikipedia/Maps) and finds that his world context has shifted:

    • He encounters a Wikipedia entry where Delta Green is public and tied to a “war against the enemy from the deep.”
    • Clicking through, he sees imagery and history consistent with a public conflict (including references to fish-like entities and battles occurring around 2036 in New Jersey).
    • The Delta Green entry describes it as founded in the 1920s, operating in secrecy for decades, then becoming public when the threat became public, leading the United States to “victory.”
    • The entry implies an ongoing threat: Deep One infiltration via seeded genetics in coastal communities and extensive monitoring/genetic screening by Delta Green.
    • He finds references to a headquarters in Washington, D.C., and a “genetic screening hub” in New York.

  • Justin begins exploring the museum hallway:

    • The hallway appears to be curated like a historical exhibit, with portraits and doors removed to reveal office-like rooms staged as period dioramas.
    • Each exhibit/room has a bronze plaque.
    • He finds a plaque for “Fallon Montgomery Taylor,” listed as a veteran of Working Group Narnia, with a death date in 2038.
    • He hears a woman’s voice faintly around the corner, suggesting other people are present nearby.

In the primary timeline, Frank, Philomena, and McCarter enter the law firm office and meet a Narnia representative

• The three agents reach the Kerber, Wilson and Associates entry and buzz the intercom.

• They are visually checked via camera and admitted.

• They are greeted by a man in dark slacks and a rolled-sleeve white shirt who introduces himself as Special Agent Fallon Taylor.

• Taylor confirms they are “Working Group MASTICATE” and notes he believed there were supposed to be four of them:

  • Frank explains their fourth teammate is running down another lead and will be contacted later.

• Taylor explains Narnia’s scope and why Picky Eater matters to them:

  • It is not “just” Picky Eater; the software is tied to a prior mass shooting event that occurred roughly a week before McKay’s shooting.

  • The news called it the “Friday Night Massacre”:

    • Two men opened fire into a crowd at a high school football game in Oleander, Pennsylvania.
    • They used automatic weapons.
    • They killed 23 people and wounded 12.
    • Taylor states both shooters were Muslim and notes the social/political aftermath (“the cherry on that particular Sunday”).
    • The shooters were killed by police in the immediate aftermath after firing back.

• Taylor presents evidence indicating the shooters did not come from any normal identity pipeline:

  • Narnia could not find their names or biometric information in any government database, which is “odd but explainable” until combined with other anomalies.

  • He produces two identity cards written in Arabic; Frank and McCarter can read Arabic.

  • The cards appear to be citizenship IDs for “the Global Caliphate of the Peace of God.”

  • The IDs list validity dates that do not make sense in the current era:

    • They are stated as valid from 2199 to 2121 AD (future dates, and internally inconsistent as presented).

  • The group makes SAN checks in response to the implications; McCarter fails and loses 1 SAN (the others react to the future-dated anomaly as highly disturbing even if “misprint” is briefly raised as a possibility).

Taylor details additional anomalies about the Oleander shooters and how Picky Eater connects

• Weapons and ammunition:

  • The rifles resemble suppressed Kalashnikov-derived designs but are chambered for an unusual 5.4×40mm cartridge.
  • Narnia can trace no known manufacturer for the rifles or ammunition.

• Electronics:

  • The shooters had phones made by no known manufacturer.

  • Narnia recovered cached phone data showing the shooters engaged in extensive online discussion and ideological debate:

    • They argued for ongoing jihad to maintain purity of faith.
    • Replies told them jihad was no longer necessary because the “Crusaders are gone and dead.”

• Software linkage:

  • Both phones had Picky Eater installed.
  • Narnia traced the name “Picky Eater” through investigative threads that intersected the older FBI Cybercrimes case involving Charles Bauer, and then into Operation Diving Bell-related material.
  • Taylor states that once they realized the software had spread (or could spread), “program assets” were tasked with trying to delete and control as much of it as possible.

Taylor attempts to access further material but hits a technical block

• Taylor expresses frustration with a VPN client he can’t connect to and admits he doesn’t even know what “VPN” stands for.

• He prompts the team to make End Times checks (the three present agents roll and succeed).

• Immediately after, the Handler calls for SAN checks:

  • All three present agents fail.
  • They each lose 1 SAN as the same realization hits them simultaneously: they are in the middle of a critical briefing and Justin is missing, despite their earlier assumption he was with them.
  • The group exchanges looks indicating the shared recognition that “something’s wrong” with their reality/state.

The session ends on a dual cliffhanger

• In the main timeline, Frank, Philomena, and McCarter sit in Taylor’s office with the Oleander evidence and the Picky Eater linkage, newly rattled by the realization that their fourth member is missing in a way that feels abnormal.
• In Justin’s split-off experience, he is alone in a hallway that appears to be a museum exhibit in a 2054 world where Delta Green is public history, Working Group Narnia veterans are memorialized, and a nearby unseen woman’s voice suggests the situation is about to escalate further.