Redoubt tho.

So, what’s Redoubt? I work for them, but who (or what) are they?

The truth is, I dunno. I plan to find out. That’s part of why I’ve taken this job.

Redoubt first contacted me on a writing site of all places, weirdly enough. I guess my profile called to them in some way initially, or maybe the stories I’d already posted. I did a small gig for Smirk under her own bizarre false pretenses. She paid me for it. Then, she made it clear she was looking for more than a ghostwriter. I kinda wonder if they did some kind of magic and realized I was the perfect desperate person to do their work for them. Initially I was skeptical. I ghosted her.

After that, Smirk did some weird tracking shit, though. Guess she’s not the type of person who gives up easily. She knew exactly where I worked and who my friends were, etc, apparently from sites like TikTok and Instagram. When she showed up at the Freeze-n-Fry to recruit me, I was shocked, and would’ve been frightened if I hadn’t been so curious.

She got her point across by humming the song I had stuck in my head, and now I work for Redoubt, via her.

I’d be terrified to post about this on most websites. Deleting my social media was, by the way, a total prerequisite for the job. For some reason, though, they seem unable to find or track Neocities. Fuck, even Dwayne could’t seem to find it way back when I tried to tell him that the small web existed.

It’s like it only loads for me? Maybe you’re all an hallucination. Redoubt probably isn’t, but Neocities could be. Ironic.

Stuff we Did?

To begin, I’m going to talk about some of the stuff I’ve already done for Redoubt over the past year. There have been some jackasses on here claiming I am comparable to a cop. I don’t talk to cops or interact with them, and I don’t think I’m much like one myself. I’m mostly just an informant. Smirk does the bulk of the work. She casts the majority of the spells and does the workings, though I’m watching and kinda learning from her. We’re not working with normal “law enforcement” either. In other words, I am not a cop.

So far, Smirk and I have:

It’s not like this was easy. Been hurt, been threatened. I burned my forearm on some kind of apparatus in that stupid magical crypto lab. Smirk had to somehow help knit the skin back together with magic before it turned messy. The guitarist came at me with a pocketknife, but he wasn’t difficult to handle in the end. The worst part was probably the nightmares the tree spirits visited on me while I was still hunting for the mage controlling them, but even that was manageable. There are way worse jobs.

Why trust ‘em?

Anyways, when I started this site, I started a poll of visitors. Should I trust Redoubt. A lot of people think I shouldn’t. And guess what? No, I don’t trust Redoubt, exactly. At least not any further than the ding of the Cashpipe app when I get paid. It would be hard not to trust that at this point, considering the benefit I get from it. Let me lay it out bluntly for you.

I began working for Redoubt for three reasons:

So far, they definitely made good on the first of those. I’m swimming in cash a lot of the time. If I can just hold myself back from buying stupid shit, things will be good. Sometimes, there are lean times, but I get over those with my cover job as a line cook anyways. Redoubt was insistent I have a cover job of some sort. So, just kept the job I had before. Asides, I do need some kind of health insurances, and these eldritch clowns don’t provide it.

For the record, I don’t trust Smirk either. There’s something just off hiding beneath that blue shimmer and I can never read her right. Is she happy with me? Is she pissed? I can never tell. Seeing into people’s minds is part of my magic, but Smirk’s not going to let me into her head. Most mages won’t, and it’s a conscious thing for the majority. Most people are easier to read in the normal way, though. Smirk also has this habit of rarely blinking that makes me seriously concerned for her eyesight.

A conspiracy?

Technically? Redoubt might count as conspiracy, depending on how you define shit. I just googled the definition of conspiracy. According to the Oxford whatever, it’s “a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.” I’ve done a couple of “unlawful” things while working for Redoubt so far that might make the cut, and also? I dunno if what they are doing counts as “harmful.” I guess it depends on how you see things? So, I guess by a strict definition given by Oxford people in the UK, I’m totally in a conspiracy.

Despite that Redoubt doesn’t seem to be anything like the kind of stuff people rant about at the high counter at the Freeze-n-Fry during election season. I don’t like those people and I don’t think they know what they’re talking about. Redoubt is not that. There’s clearly not aliens or like anything involving politicians, at least that I saw. The people training me that I met or talked to online seemed normal asides being enchanted and able to do magic. Redoubt definitely has a fuckton of money, so I got to take that into account. I have no idea. Maybe they turn lead into gold?? Lmao.

But this is not the Illuminati or something like that, I’m sure. I know a lot of those conspiracy theories originate with people just making things up from the get-go. Those are bullshit. And, well - Redoubt already proved to me that they’re not making shit up.

Also, Redoubt seems really lowkey considering all the stuff they’ve taught me to do and how powerful it could be in the wrong hands. Very bizarre. I get that part of my job is to keep this magic outta the wrong hands by looking for sorcerers and other people who might be abusing their power or doing weird shit with magic.

But still, it’s surprising that Redoubt itself isn’t doing some kind of weird worldwide manipulation beyond that. Are they?

Super-powerful?

Kind of. They seem to have some influence, but they can’t be that powerful or they wouldn’t have hired me, right? Pretty sure of that. Still, if they weren’t powerful enough, they wouldn’t be able to keep this all a secret, and they are.

Before, I was a line cook. I’m still a line cook when I don’t have a gig with Redoubt. Maybe they’re trying to keep a low profile by using people who already have a low profile as their operatives? That’s the only thing I can think of that might even come close to explaining some of this.

Like I said, they just seem to really really really want to stop magic from becoming “ubiquitous” (lol Smirk loves to hate that word!) and from being misused by people who are powerful, though. I guess that in and of itself counts as a conspiracy of sorts, to keep magic secret and out of most people’s hands. Isn’t that in and of itself sort of sketchy? I guess it makes sense in some ways, but not in others. I’m going with it for now, for the reasons I listed above, but that doesn’t mean I’ve completely made up my mind.

Anyways, my suspicion is that Redoubt is just really decentralized for security reasons. I guess it could just be some kinda Masquerade, like from a edgy goffic 1990s TTRPG? I guess that’s one possibility and frankly it’s probably the best, most likely one. I’d like to believe that’s all it is, anyways. I hope I didn’t accidentally sign up to work for the reaallllly bad guys or some bullshit like that. If they have some kind of hidden agenda, though, I will find out.

I’ve gotten, ahem mixed information on what would happen if I broke the rules. There were people online talking about how some operatives tend to go missing when they go too far and make too many mistakes. That could really mean anything, though. And someone else said that problematic people working for Redoubt often get “kicked upstairs,” whatever that means.

I was unable to talk to anyone with first or even second-hand information though. It was all stupid internet rumors people passed around during the training seminars when higher-ups weren’t in the same chat. At the IRL seminars and stuff, people would never talk about it and got super-uncomfortable, just said “Well don’t break the rules, and you won’t have to find out, okay?”