From the Journals of Sgt Isabel Luna
SPOILERS for the scenario SENTINELS OF TWILIGHT now collected in the book Operation FULMINATE
These notes were recovered on August 13, 2024, in a 5 year old thumb drive.
Dramatis Personae
- Cooper – Dan
- Palmer – Doug
- Luna – Hisham
Note: Originally, the scenario Sentinels of Twilight is part of the Operation FULMINATE campaign but we will consider this a part of our A Night at the Opera campaign.
The road to Yosemite
From Isabel Luna’s journal:
After the mission in Billings, Montana, I return to my US Army base. I ain’t telling you where. I believe I need better SIGINT skills. So I train to improve my SIGINT skills.
A call brings me to Modesto, CA on July 2, 2017. I am reunited with Agents Cooper & Palmer. It has been months since we all last met. Cooper, still feeling crushed for losing Caleb Sale in Seattle, has been investigating further leads on Ancile Inc & Potentia Holdings. He mentioned something about brick walls in his investigation.
A Zoom call begins: FBI Agent Sands informs them of a six year-old boy Brandon McGill who was found by Yosemite Park Rangers wandering alone in the wilderness.
The catch: The McGill boy was reported missing at the park in 1980 — seventeen years ago.
The mission: We are to get the kid, find out what happened to him & neutralize any peculiarities if present. Also, we are working against time as we have to talk to the McGill boy before his parents arrive. We set up our cover. Cooper & I will play FBI agents (not so difficult for Cooper) while Palmer, a consulting child psychologist.
After acquiring outdoors gear, we requisitioned and drive a black Cadillac Escalade to the Hetch Hetchy Backpackers’ area in Yosemite. An enormous thunderhead is forming at the site as we approach it. It’s supposed to be a warm & dry Summer. There are hundreds of vacationers here for the 4th of July weekend.
As we pull up at the Hetch Hetchy ranger station, it begins to rain.
Missing person poster
The McGill boy
Dark clouds gather. As the wind and rain escalate, Ranger Gallegos greets us. She takes us upstairs in the spacious living area. There we meet Brandon McGill the formerly missing child. He seems fine physically but upon questioning he claims to have been in a blue cave with two other children. Palmer looks up the names given by Brandon. “Evelyn” & “Thomas” were children who had disappeared in 1918.
We immediately went out hiking with Rangers Gallegos & Nicholson to where they found Brandon, near the Devil’s Chair. I noticed that something was coming towards us in the brush.
A young boy – apparently Brandon McGill burst out of the bushes. How? We left him back at the ranger station! Then I set up a survival tent to get the boy out of the freezing rain.
With Palmer, Gallegos and Nicholson looking after this Brandon, Cooper and I moved out into the rain to check out where the boy had emerged from.
Not far out, feral, pale undead toddlers jump us from the bushes. These ghastly creatures are small, fast & bites with sharp teeth. Their bites are painful and many. I lose a lot of blood.
Our attacks mostly miss despite my fair skills with firearms. Soon the Yosemite Rangers, followed by Palmer, come running to help. Then I aim & shoot the two off me. But aiming gives them time to inflict more wounds on me. Suddenly, they disappeared back into the bushes. WHAT WERE THESE THINGS?
Cooper fixes me up before I bleed to death. We decide to return to the ranger station but how will we explain the second Brandon?
The map of the nearby area in Yosemite
The tall man from the woods
Agents Cooper, Palmer and our Ranger escorts head back to the ranger station in the storm. We hear from afar smashing sounds in the car park. I scout ahead & see a dozen cars wrecked and overturned. What did this? A bear? How big is this bear? 30 feet tall? I scan the scene with my eyes and see nothing out of the ordinary. Except for the wrecked cars. Luckily, I spot our Escalade untouched where we parked it.
I bring Brandon 2 down to the car, try to snap him out of his fugue unsuccessfully, belt him up in the back seat & drive to the station.
Meanwhile, Cooper & the Rangers try to get calm down the park visitors trapped by the storm. I later learn that at the second floor of the ranger station, Palmer finds Brandon 1 has the same strange markings on his body as the Brandon 2.
Outside, I park the car across the street from the station. Suddenly lightning flashes. The flash illuminates a gigantic human-shaped creature standing outside the station against the dark clouds.
I alert Cooper and Palmer via radio. Cooper & Gallegos rush upstairs, telling Palmer to take Brandon 1 down to the car. Wrapped in blankets, Palmer places Brandon 1 in the front seat beside me, out of Brandon 2’s sight. We speed away.
Upstairs, Gallegos suddenly goes rigid, speaks in a voice of another. A spine-chilling voice, Cooper would tell me later. Gallegos mouthed, “Give me the child.” Then she shoots herself in the head.
Elsewhere, I am driving the Escalade in the heavy rain away from the ranger station. A tree falls. We crash off-road, but no one is hurt.
But now the Brandons see each other. Brandon 1 let out an ear-splitting screech and Brandon 2 is thrown out the window by the scream. Dazed by the sound, I quickly pull Brandon 1 out of the car while Palmer rushes for the fallen Brandon 2 some distance away.
Then, an impossibly tall human-shaped giant appears again, in strange vestment and with a pickax-like weapon. It strides towards Brandon 2 like a shadow in the rain. I see Palmer firing with her pistol to defend the boy. The creature strikes at Palmer. She is thrown some distance away and falls motionless.
The giant-thing marches to me, raising its pickax. My bullets keep chipping at it, tearing away at flesh and blood, but it keeps coming. Then metal, sharp and ancient, tears into my jacket, armor & flesh.
Everything goes dark.
Sgt Isabel Luna
The aftermath
When I come to, the rainstorm is now a drizzle. I hurt. I look down at my torn kevlar vest. The rain washes away my blood.
Cooper arrives from the ranger station & applies first aid on me. Palmer is still down. I don’t know what Cooper did or who he called, but a medevac MH-60 helicopter appears out of nowhere. It was like an angel floating under the rain cloud. A medic from the helicopter tended to me with better equipment. I hardly feel the pain any more. Everyone on the MH-60 wears a patch marked CORAL NOMAD. As an Army lifer, I have no idea what they are.
I inform Cooper of the giant attack before CORAL NOMAD takes Palmer & I.
Later I heard Cooper took photos of large partial footprints in the mud. There was something there. Not a ghost. What was it? Where did they come from? Where did they go? Where did they take the Brandons?
He also helped to clear the road & hitched a ride with a harried vacationer’s car back to Modesto.
After CORAL NOMAD fixes Palmer & I we spend some weeks in physical rehab before being returned to our lives.
My squad asks no questions. Meanwhile I see a therapist Dr. Patricia De Luca. I unload the Mill Creek and Yosemite horrors unto her. I feel better. I suspect Dr. De Luca will sleep badly that night.
I head back to El Paso. Instead of meeting my mom Lupe, I camp out alone. I can’t see her. Not yet. But then I get drunk one night, break in and get caught stealing her food. There is a lot of yelling & I don’t feel well returning to base.
Later, I learned that Agent Cooper spent his time playing paintball during downtime. He is also being looked into by the FBI’s Internal Affairs Department for running an unauthorized investigation in Mill Creek. Agent Palmer spent her down time mostly drunk, but returned to school to study. I’m… I’m not sure if she regained her sanity depleted by the Yosemite mission.
What next?
