A.Journal

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Challenging

A forgotten beast, hibernating in your hippocampus stirs, raises its head and snorts.

Easy

A.k.a. 'The Freezer'. The Opera's labyrinthine archival complex. Where the old, useless, and discredited are consigned until they're dismissed or die of despair.

Easy

Five years, three months, ten days. That's how long it's been since her voice was in your ear.

Medium

El Dolor de Viudas. Extremely popular at pelota matches and the main cause of Portofiro's looming epidemic of atherosclerosis.

Medium

El signo del Vega. Angel of ancestors and bringer of the new year.

Formidable

Fig. 1452: a linocut of an early diving suit, so primitive that the explorer had to be sewn into it before he went under — and cut free after surfacing.

Easy

It's the metal stripper. The one who urged you to come down here.

Trivial

Most GMs don't carry guns.

Easy

If what you're looking for is still down here, it must be on the other side.

Easy

'He's no one. Just a seedy little oddity'.

Easy

For the last time, there were no such days.

Medium

An old-school, derogatory term for spies.

Medium

Know them? You introduced her to them.

Medium

An infamous image, from Nestor's 64 campaign -- the dictator, holding a baby with his own face superimposed over the infant's, moustache and all -- 'Soy Nestor'.

Easy

Nestor had already been forced from power the last time you were here. The toppled regime was old news.

Medium

In truth, it was Portofiro that got 'fucked' when the local economy collapsed and EMTERR swept in with another round of 'stabilisation' packages that only tightened its clamp on the city's collective throat.

Medium

KINDRED. You played down the cryptonym when she asked you about it half-drunk one night. Nothing to it, you shrugged. First name that came to mind. Which wasn't a lie -- it was the first. You just also happened to mean it.

Challenging

You once heard an old hand say that the tortured walk their own province.

Medium

He was born within one. Knows little else.

Medium

There hasn't been a movie shown in this theatre in years. It was already closed when you were in Portofiro last, vacant and waiting.

Easy

Musicians. Electronic artists.

Trivial

Weeks, he said. The Weeping Eye had Karolina for weeks.

Trivial

Supreme Leader Nestor, more often referred to as 'Sweet Nestor' (once earnest, now ironic) was the political leader of Portofiro from 28 to 80, when he was finally exiled for good.

Challenging

Day 523, row unknown: sighting of a senior operant dusting the spines of cloth-bound logbooks. Hands: trembling, liver-spotted. You kept moving.

Legendary

Said operant then asserted she could 'set up a top-tier surveillance op while crawling through my own puke' and downed another schnapps.

Formidable

'Machine Gun King', if your limited Tsunese serves you well.

Easy

A desert city known to be the centre of Luz' film and music industry.

Trivial

That Mr. Metamoto guy comes to mind.

Trivial

There is no such thing as a high priest of capital. There are, however, EMTERR representatives.

Easy

Discrepancy found.

Easy

Approximately 25 items are missing from the count of Operant CASCADE's possessions following her extradition from Portofiro in 91. Due to failure to keep up with requests for a formal inventory, the exact number of CASCADE's lost / forsaken belongings remains officially unknown.

Easy

Didn't Ultra Violeta herself mention a missing recording engineer?

Medium

Felix Kaido... the name knocks loose some rubble of memory. Revolutionary. Aeroplane. Tragic end.

Easy

The Militia Ruban Rouge, or M.R.R., an extreme communist fringe group who have slipped further and further into darkness over their ten year 'campaign'.

Medium

By night, the Dreameater Chrisom drinks the tears of sleeping birds. By day, its brilliant ventral display wards off its natural predators.

Medium

Simple: the strike of a metal pin ignites the bullet's firing cartridge. Having nowhere else to go, the energy from that contained explosion pushes the bullet out of the gun's muzzle.

Medium

The first tram ride into Portofiro, HOLOCENE at your side, face turned to the window, giving a twenty minute answer to one of the world's most common questions.

Medium

Looking at the two girls, you are reminded that all your close relationships have ended in either tragedy or miscommunication, usually both.

Medium

Trivial

Magnitude of setback: Enormous. Failure rating: Spectacular. Morale damage: Catastrophic, yet Not Unfamiliar.

Easy

A stack of gleaming hi-fi equipment, speakers resting on cinder blocks, the only thing arranged with care in the apartment. Your asset presses play with a large finger:

Medium

Your mother's standard load out was also a callomanic.

Challenging

Solar Point: a small coastal area of Lágundi, a Luzian colony famous for luxury tourist resorts.

Challenging

Melita's voice in your ear: 'The Bank will always deal'.

Trivial

The intern from the literary magazine.

Medium

A classic and storied CASCADE tactic. See also: the time you had six months to get your parent or guardian to fill out a permission slip for a class trip to the Hothica Lighthouse.

Medium

Based on the reports from Constanz and Melita, he certainly wasn't like this before.

Easy

You remember the feeling of inert PSEUDODPOD -- at once mundane and disturbing, like some piece of surrealist human furniture.

Medium

It's exactly the way those kids learn the lore from their wolf show -- fiction imbibed with a seriousness that outstrips anything in real life.

Formidable

Leatherback turtles often emerge from unknown battles in the abyssal depths.