The Persoff Building

It started, like many things do, with a deceptively simple question.

“So what exactly does “Negative Chi” mean?”

It was said snidely by one of those Invictus vampire dudes.  It had to do with some question of zoning and re-districting. The Ordo Dracul were all upset about a particular change that was going to jack up the ley lines. If it doesn’t appear on a ledger, it isn’t real to those dudes.  Naturally, there was a lot of agita over that particular piece of real estate and a lot of bad noise in Elysium over it for months.

But the question remained. Is there some way to quantify the effect of negative chi on a place? Something that you can put in front of a bunch of Invictus dickheads that is statistical and hard to ignore.

When you have a question like that, An experiment is called for.

So, a study group was assembled. Assets and resources were marshaled. Some thinking was done about experimental controls. And a plan was put in place.

And that was about 50 years ago. Give the Ordo credit. They know how to think long term.

Two building were built. Decisions were made at the beginning to find a place in the city where the ley lines were very auspicious for the placement of both buildings. Feng Shui experts from within the covenant were consulted on the most efficacious architectural choices to enhance each of the experiments. Each building was bought and paid for through a dizzying array of holding companies and omnibus stock accounts that would make it impossible to trace back to the Ordo.  The Ordo even went to the lengths of consulting the local mages and in exchange for leaving the experiment alone, there was a promise to share data.  The Consilium at the time thought about it and shrugged and said, “Ok. Sure.”

The other building is the Neimoller building. Over across town. It’s that one in the nice neighborhood. The main business in that building is a software company that makes predictive psychological modeling software. They’re doing really well. Defense department contracts, stock prices are up and everyone who works there loves the place.  I may talk about the Neimoller building another time.

But the Persoff building is the one I’m talking about today. And the Persoff Building is not a nice place to work.

It’s 16 floors of pure brutalist angularity on the outside.  Not only that, but there are large specifically machined iron ingots that have been placed in the foundation of the building. The shape of building, those iron deposits, and the actual topography of land that the building sits on combine to make for a truly spectacular flow of negative chi.  The ingots actually help to localize the effect of the negative chi within the building and a 2-3 block radius. Negative chi is DRAWN here.

The Ordo wanted Statistics and they got them.  They set their study group to gather intel on the Neimoller building and a number of other corporate concerns they had their hooks into, in order to have a control group. they discovered the following:

*36% more sick days taken than the average.

*14% more instances of employee having “Episodes” or mental breakdowns.

*8% more suicides.

*13 recorded instance of people in the building going completely missing. including at least one member of the original Ordo Dracul study group.  After this took place, the decision was made to move the group off-site and do the research remotely.

*11 Recorded instances of employees at various companies becoming supernatural in some way. Most of them deeply unpleasant.  (As opposed to the Neimoller building which has recorded a whopping 26 people that have become supernatural, most of them full magi.)

*3 recorded incidents involving dimensional breaches of some sort. Usually during high cyclical activity. The Avernian Gate however is persistent, stable, and resists being removed.

* The entire building is a strong geomantic nexus (3+) and the energies it most closely allies itself with is the skill Intimidation. (No mental skills appear to be enhanced.)  This seems to show itself in a great tendency to overbearing managerial styles in the various companies that do business here.

* The sorts of businesses that tend to have offices in the Persoff building tend to be businesses that either thrive on stress or have high turnover.  Call centers, divorce lawyers, the Burgerhoid District managers office. At least one boiler room stock operation (they ended up burning some Invictus dudes, and while there was chuckling around the Chapterhouse, they ended up serving them up, and now those guys are all doing time on securities and exchange fraud.)  At no point in the life of the building has the occupancy of the building been over 77%

* While ghostly activity seems to be completely unaffected, Other spiritual entities actively avoid the place. even the sort of baneful entities that would ordinarily bask in that sort of energy. Spirits that have been interviewed about this indicate that while the energy is pleasant, there is a spiritual “undertow”. Smaller and weaker spirits are probably swallowed whole by it. Even the more powerful spirits, say that they feel the tugging.  This has the pleasant side effect, of making the building unimportant to the local Uratha.

* There appear to be at least 14 distinct and separate hauntings. None of them are particularly benign, but none of them appear to be particularly powerful either. (Although, there is a suspicion that at least one of the hauntings is more powerful than she lets on.)

* Vermin and insect infestations tend to be cyclical and intense. There is also a creeping mold problem which contributes to the sick days.

* A Corporate law firm that was moved from the Persoff to the Neimoller building (as part of a controlled experiment) reported an uptick in business of over 40%

* Employees in the various firms report feeling enervated, that the Fluorescent lights in the hallways seems to trigger migraines, and feeling symptoms of clinical depression. (This intel gathered under the cover of a health-care professional firm during an investigation into “Sick Building Syndrome”.)

This generated a fat file. A fat file that’s been copied and sent to other chapter houses so that when some Invictus says that there’s no evidence that bad chi will harm business, they can whack them pretty hard with it.

Connections:

* Tim Deacon and Charlie both avoid the Persoff building and the surrounding neighborhood. It makes both of them itchy.

*Before she came to work at Holmes, Gillis, Baker, Savage, North, and Dean Victoria North used to work in a little firm in the Persoff building.  Whenever she's under stress, she dreams she's lost in the corridors and all the doors are locked.

* Lewis Flowers used to work in the building as a claims adjuster before he became something of a hermit.

* John Patmos has an office in the building. He's rarely there of course. He's probably the only person who smiles in the elevator.

* The Paraphysical Research Society has been to the building a number of times to investigate numerous stories. They never stay long. Miss Virgie Hawkins has a bad reaction to the place each time and usually an upset stomach to go with it.

* Christine Horowitz worked at a defense firm right out of school that was in the Persoff building. She was acutely miserable and the stress gave her a case of hives.

* Selma Collins attempted to burn out a business on the 12th floor for an insurance scam, the fire refused to catch completely. It was the only time she was never able to cash out.

* Rosalie Prescott had a gig as a commercial artist for a little tiny firm in the building. The guy who ran it was an erratic genius she knew from school. Unfortunately, the place made him more erratic and the company folded.

* Bartholomew Reines's school is about a block from the building. This shouldn't surprise anyone.

* The Insurance company that screwed over William Lee Travis was headquartered here.