The Appomattox
Court House Anomaly Zone (Unknown)
The symbolic nature of the meeting between Generals
Grant and Lee to have the former receive the latter's surrender (and, with it,
the effective end of the American Civil War) was patently obvious to all observers,
both mundane and supernatural. Four
years of military, ideological and, indeed, semantic conflict (bear in mind
that 'semantic' has a completely different meaning to entities who literally
are Words Made Flesh) had refined both generals into virtual icons of their
respective sides; that there would be some sort of Tether formed from the
encounter seemed a safe enough bet to set up a nonintervention perimeter. Not that there was any guarantee of whether
the Tether would be reaching Up or Down, either; but both Heaven and Hell had
their hopes. It was, in short, an only
moderately interesting situation.
Until something went wrong.
The exact circumstances are spotty, primarily
because every celestial within ten miles of the site was instantly soul-killed
and every celestial within a hundred was sent into Trauma from the metaphysical
shockwave. At least six Tethers
themselves imploded from the blast (although four of them reestablished their
links almost immediately and the other two did so within a year). The effect that it might have had on any
random ethereals is more speculative, but it should be noted that there was an
abrupt regional drop in reported encounters with ethereals that year. The one ethereal willing to discuss the
matter with both sides (the idealized abstraction of the American President)
reported conditions that sound much a catastrophic equalization of the
local energy levels between the corporeal plane and the 'echo' of the celestial
plane that allows metaphysical creatures to take 'celestial form' on
Earth. It was almost as if the Tether
attempted to link into that echo rather than the actual celestial plane... but
not only is this speculation, it is very bad speculation. The ongoing political situation is such that
neither Heaven nor Hell's best researchers are primary investigators on this
one.
Why Vaputech is not involved is very simple: the
whatever-it-was is still there, centered on the spot where Lee wrote out his
surrender. Corporeally, it's not even
remotely noticeable; celestials can enter and exit the site with no
problem. In celestial form, however, the
site looks like - well, it's the blind spot of all blind spots. It's obvious that there's something there,
but the only detail that be taken away is that whatever's there is hungry. Although that may just be because anyone in
celestial form who gets within twenty yards of the center point doesn't come
back, period; still, nobody on either side wants this phenomenon investigated
by either Vapula or his Servitors; the idea is to make the problem go
away, not kick it a few times and see what happens.
Which is why, in large part, Revelations and
Development is not there, either - because Baal is sponsoring Hell's permanent
research team, primarily because Lucifer knows that aside from Lilith Baal's
the only Prince that has anything remotely resembling a 'word of honor', and
the Prince of the War gave his to Michael that he would not permit Hell to use
this site for weapons research. Lucifer
and Baal want to win, not get sucked up in a giant ball of Nothing that ate the universe; this is one time where the
risks aren't worth it. Heaven does their
research, Hell does the same and no ambushes - and if the balloon goes up,
don't waste time looking at the kind of wings worn by the guy who wants to help
you salvage the situation. That's what
Baal offered and that's what Michael accepted - and then persuaded Laurence to
sign off on. The Archangel of War is
actually somewhat surprised that the Commander gave in as quickly as he did,
actually; it was almost as if Laurence had an ulterior motive... which would be
great, of course...
Nonetheless, there is no possible way that Jean
would countenance an Infernal team working alongside one of his own - it skirts
if not outright violates his dissonance conditions about letting demonically
inspired technological innovations go unchallenged - and even if he were
inclined to make an exception it remains True that about the only major reason
that Vapula isn't fighting his own banning more is because Lightning isn't
actively involved at the site. More
efficient to let Revelation act as primary; the research can be directed at one
remove and while Litheroy may be far too trusting, he is good at data
mining. And so the project goes on.
Fortunately, it's not a very spectacular anomaly; it
settled down to a current state of dormancy within five minutes of the first
shockwave and hasn't initiated anything since.
This may be due to the draconian nature of the operating
procedures. The rules can be summed up
as "Don't do anything supernatural within five miles of the site, don't
spend Essence within five miles, treat this site as if it were off all the maps
of the War - and Don't Get Caught is not the implicit caveat for
any of the above". There's a list
of acceptable activities and a slightly longer one of not actually forbidden
ones - but, generally, when in doubt: unless somebody's already done it, don't
do it.
The site itself has all of its interesting stuff
going on in celestial form; both sides have gone to considerable time and
trouble to create celestial artifacts designed to track the anomaly, and
there's always at least a dozen sensor arrays that are measuring, analyzing and
very, very gingerly probing conditions.
The cease-fire rules do not permit one side to use the items of the
other; when all is said and done angels and demons simply don't trust each
other that much. Results may be shared -
may - but both teams have large 'security detachments to ward off
unaligned ethereals', in a region dream spirits now avoid like a literal
plague. After all, Baal gave his word to
God, too.