What drew you to NYC:In 2010, Nastas began receiving visions, drawing down the moon so white over his eyes. He painted words, pictures, things that should not be. "Many voices call. They sing of the ways they lived, bound by hands from the great ocean. They have eyes of predators, of bat, of wolf, demanding old legends of their living days. These predators have sharp faces, pale and drawn, mouths full of death yet they live."
"Our brothers and sisters walk back many paths to the far lands. The crows call, Yiska."
They packed and left in an old truck, driving cross country to New York. The entire journey there, they stopped and spoke to the old spirits, Nastas binding them in old ways. What more he left behind, Yiska is not sure of. That fall they drove into New York City, falling in with a woman called Peony Moon. Nastas and Peony seemed to have known each other a very long time, despite the youth of her appearance.
She told them about the issues of Sapokanikan, an old Indian village that became Washington Park. The grounds are an ancient burial ground, thousands upon thousands. They were sleeping well and deep until their oldest ghost was stolen from them. The people of this place were a tribe of Mohawk, journeying to the far ocean to protect that place from the ghost faced men destined to come. So much of the world of New York City is still bound in the sacred names of the Mohawk, mistakenly called Lenape. Many spirits lay asleep, waiting, in the earth and air of this place,
Manna hatta, the "half moon."
After careful seeking and dream journeys, they learned some of the spirits that were taken and some just missing. By mid 2012, they listen to many tales and piece together histories leading back to a spirit that seemed to "live in the eyes" of many children to old age. They always lived much longer than humanity should allow. But who or what lived in the eyes was unknown.
At the summer solstice, they performed an old ritual to call upon this spirit. Great lights and swift winds came, but nothing seemed to truly happen. Taking up many of the old talismans and bones not belonging to the Mohawk but members of other tribes. Of those, Nastas marked and bound in burlap those of the Navajo. To put them to rest, he entrusted those bones to Yiska with firm instructions on their preservation and burial. He would remain seeking this old spirit.
In the fall of 2012, Yiska arrived in Arizona, following a spirit shadow. A dark shadow of a large bird would cover the ground, but nothing ever flew above to cast it. He followed this bird until arriving in Jerome, Arizona. Adhering to the rituals with the bodies to bury, the shadow continues to circle and follow Yiska until he begins having odd dreams, equally haunted by the shadow.
In the turning of the year, Nastas finally determined the name of the spirit. Performing a deep ceremony of dream and sacrifice, he invoked the ancestor and sought his location. That night, drums filled Yiska's mind. Shadows and men dancing around a fire that reached to the skies. The dancing shadows left and roamed the forests, hunting down their adversaries and gutting them on rock blades. The voice of an ancient sent them into the dark, kept the dancing spinning, bringing them back to rejoin their bodies. Above him, a giant eagle watched, head shrouded and hidden, eyes like tiny flames.
Yiska woke, sweating, mind screaming with the dance and chanting. Around him, the entire city of Jerome rose. The ghosts moving like spirits, killing the few people that lived their, ignoring him completely. As morning rose bright over the mesas, they disappeared into houses, hovered over rocks, barely seen by the eye.
The spirit invoked was Akohsera:ke tsikenithe:sera (winter moth, symbol of the spirit of slow endings), a very old mystic of the tribes that first found the lands of teeming life in the New York area. He marked himself in symbols of an eagle with a death's head.
Yiska rushed back to New York, telling Nastas of what happened. Between them, they began piecing together the rising in Arizona and invocation ritual in New York. In their searching, Yiska found symbols of a companion of the mystic: an eyeless old eagle, blind to the world of the living, yet seeing always the dead. Soon after speaking with spirits, his dreams of the bird shadow became this image, fully coming to him. The creature was frightening of an eagle with a skull head and fires flickering in the eyes, so large it blotted out the sky. And under its wings, shadows fell, letting the dead things walk without burning.
Immediately after, Nastas woke him by rubbing soot over his eyes and whispering in odd tongues of the Mohawk tribe. "You have been marked. You must go." They met a blonde haired man smoking like a chimney with harsh eyes and an eternal frown. Speaking quickly and low, they ushered Yiska into a van with many others, including a Russian named Mikhail. (This will be the beginning of game.)