Crime Scene 3 Templar Findings

San Francisco, En Route to USF, Late Morning, Day After Kramer’s Passing

Lumina appreciated that Corinth was behind the wheel for the trip to the university. She had never much cared for city driving. It was nice to be able to take a turn at an intersection without having to watch out for pedestrians. By some miracle, Corinth was able to find an open spot in a lot first try, and soon the Templar Team was on their way to the student dorms.

Corinth’s smoking quickly drew the ire of a young student, who proclaimed that the USF Campus was a no smoking campus, a claim that Lumina was rather skeptical about. One did not tell a college student not to smoke tobacco or weed with the expectation that this would prevent them from getting their fix. The student’s complaints certainly didn’t affect Corinth’s behavior much, at least until he persisted, at which point Corinth flicked the cigarette he had been smoking in the direction of the belligerent undergrad.

“Way to make a scene,” Lumina moaned.

“I can’t stand teenagers,” Corinth groused quietly. “Glad I never was one.”

This was even more perplexing to her than the no smoking policy, but the comment was meant for her, so she didn’t say anything.

Arriving at one of the dorm buildings Corinth tried a door, which unsurprisingly did not open. Lumina struggled to suppress a smile as her partner then went Captain of Koepenick on some hapless student to gain them entry into the building.

“You should get one of these,” Corinth advised as he pocketed his fake badge. “They come in handy sometimes.”

“It’s unfortunate that I forgot to dress the part,” Lumina murmured. She was pretty sure that impersonating an officer of the law was illegal, but then again, so was trespassing, so in this case discretion would have to be the better part of law abidingness.

Lumina wasn’t sure that trick would work to get them into the room itself, but it turned out her fretting was unnecessary, as the door was wide open. Her own unease was mirrored by Corinth, whose hand she saw drifting towards his holster. She let him take point. Once Corinth looked the place over, she followed him in and watched his shoulders droop.

“We’re not the first ones here and whatever as here is gone now. See if there is anything you can do with your magic. I’ll stand outside and make sure no lookie-loo’s get too close.”

Lumina had to agree with his assessment, they were most likely not the first agents of the Secret World to visit this room. Considering their late start, this had probably been inevitable. Now to see if she could find anything mundane eyes might have missed…

Lumina cast Detect Magic and began looking around. No magic anomalies made themselves readily apparent, however, after having a look about the dorm room, she spotted a faint shimmer coming from somewhere in Turner’s closet. Tucked into a corner on a high shelf under some linens were some books. Not being particularly tall, Lumina struggled to move the linens off the books and then pull the books off the shelf. Needless to say, this was a highly unusual place to store books, and when she saw the covers on the books, she could see why Turner had been keen to keep these volumes hidden. Tomes on fringe physics, unconventional theories on the origins of mankind, and alien geometries were not quite the stuff one wanted in casual display before polite company. The shimmer was coming from the fringe physics textbook, and pawing through it, Lumina finally spotted the source of the shimmer, a page with a bunch of latin characters that did not form any obvious words. It didn’t take her long to realize that this was some kind of code, probably a substitution cipher if she had to guess. As much respect as Lumina had for writers like Edgar Allen Poe who had very much been into this kind of stuff, cryptography had never been something Lumina had much of a knack for. She could perhaps figure this one out eventually, but perhaps Corinth had a better head for this.

Unintentionally dropping concentration on her spell as she thought about all of that, Lumina grabbed the Fringe Physics book and brought it toward the room exit. “Hey Corinth, I found something. What do you make of this?”

(OOC: I have been told that this code is the same as the one in the notebook Eun-Ji absconded with)