Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Tabasco aka Cholula

The team convinces the Mage on the Hill to assist them, though he seems somewhat disgusted by their unique style of banter. However, he swore a pact and must aid when asked, so he will. They also discuss whether to use any other Tarot, and CG pulls out the Queen he was given to summon aid later, if the situation seems desperate enough to pay the currently unknown cost. They take the freshly golem-charged van with 2 Mule drones and the crew all loaded up down to Belle Isle for the ritual/ambush. Unable to reach The Detective, who’s off checking up on contacts, they leave without them.

Upon arriving, they coordinate with the ritualists, who are actively working, and pick spots to set themselves and their allies up for the ambush. They put Myrryr on surveillance on the far eastern point, to watch for what they consider an unlikely approach over the water. The post the Mage on the Hill atop the SE building, CG on the central north building, Creep on the edge of the ritual to the west in hiding, Otters in the smuggling compartment in the van, harwired in, with the Mules within short distance antenna range, and Dig and Cholula atop the central ritual building, the highest point.

They assign the Windsor crew to the north edge of the bridge from mainland Detroit, but tell them to come up behind anyone who comes over it for a pincer. They have Rains and the Skins wait inside the ritual effect area as a reserve to mask their auras, but tell them to keep an eye towards the southern bridge towards Windsor. Then, they wait, with some bird control and flashlight signals planned with comms all fucky as they are.

Shortly thereafter, the Windsor crew reports two buses seemingly running on magic stuffed with Shadow zombies coming from the north bridge, while the Mage on the Hill reports a mass of ghouls with a strange astral signature coming from the south bridge. Creep jumps on the lead Shadow bus and shoots the driver through the windshield, while CG instructs his spirits to use their accident powers on those inside. The Windsor crew engages the second bus in a firefight, pulling it off the attack.

Rains and crew rush out to fight the ghoul swarm, pulling about half of them off, while Otters begins firing between van and Mules into their midst, dropping many but not slowing them at all- they seem to be moving unnaturally, both in terms of their speed and the way they move- it almost looks like the murmurations of a flock of birds. Otters, as an animal enthusiast, makes note to pay attention to this as the fight continues, and incorporates into her targeting solutions as best she can.

Cholula blasts off a fire arrow at the first zombie bus as Creep finishes off the driver and dives off. The bus careens into one of the buildings and a bunch of zombies tumble out, some lighting themselves on fire on the way, though not seeming to particularly care. Otters manages to cut a chunk of them down with auto-fire before the ghoul mob swarms the van, doing a surprising amount of damage. CG activates the Queen card, and flaming sword manifest, with a voice saying that it will protect him.

Creep gets up behind the zombies and flamethrows a few more, before the remaining 5 surround and nearly kill him. Thinking him dead, they carve some strange marks into his skin before rejoining the fight. Meanwhile, the Mage on the Hill has reported that he cannot sense their scout to the east (Myrryr) and fears an attack, and CG heads out to check on her, coming under nearly fatal attack from the FTD vampire leader amidst his customary bat swarm. Dig blasts the bats with a huge spell as a spirit appears and takes control of the flaming swords and starts clearing out the wounded bats.

With the vampire now exposed, Dig and CG’s spirits start targeting it as CG reloads to wood rounds in his shotgun. Unfortunately the Shadow Succubus has used all this chaos to sneak up to the ritual building and gets Cholula to shoot at Dig, narrowly missing due to Dig’s defensive spells. The Mage on the Hill starts levitating over to help and then goes astral to fight the spirit, doing some massive damage before getting one-hit killed and falling to the ground, where his corpse bursts apart. The Succubus then races over and seems to destroy the Tarot spirit, which has badly wounded the vampire.

Dig’s spirit goes astral to defend him and is also quickly torn apart by the returning Succubus. The vampire makes a diving attack directly at CG but misses, clumsily, just as Cholula nails him with an arrow, causing him to crash to the ground, where CG finishes him off with wood rounds, halting his regeneration. As he desicates before him, 3 Tarot cards fall from his pocket- some of the ones the team was missing from the recovery at the Shadow farm! CG pockets them for now and rushes back to defend Otters and the van from the swarming ghouls and zombies, who have almost destroyed while Otters continues chewing through their numbers.

Clinically, Otters is interested to see that the ghouls seem to act more and more feral the less of them that there are, and wonders how this all interacts with the hive mind rumors. But also she is a little concerned about getting peeled out of the smuggling compartment and eaten. With CG distracted, both of his spirits are killed by the Shadow Succubus, who then turns to the ritual building. Luckily their allies seem to be holding to the west, as no further ghouls or zombies have joined the main fight.

The Succubus sinks one it’s shadowy hands into the center of the ritual circle and sends forth a terrible pulse of entropic energy, killing nearly half the ritualists and wounding the rest. Cholula races downstairs and tries to bite it in the astral, just missing, as Dig pummels it with an overcast spell. The Succubus does another negative energy pulse, and seems to be trying to corrupt the ritual itself. This also kills the remaining ritualists besides Jaga and Walker in the Ways, who along with Dig barely survive.

Cholula pulls out all the stops, and calling on his newly enhanced spirit connection manages to land a powerful blow on the spirit, disapparating it back from whence it came. Outside, CG and Otters mop up the last of the ghouls and zombies shortly afterwards, with the van barely surviving. The cloaked Mules proved invaluable though, and Otters is excited about making good use of 3 intersecting fields of fire. They head out to check on allies, and find nearly dead Creep, luckily stabilized by his trauma patch. Cholula manages to save Dig’s life with another trauma patch, though as Jaga and WitW check the other ritualists none of the rest are as lucky- all appear drained of life and unrecoverable.

The Windsor crew, though badly battered, seem to have all survived from good use of tactics and massive expenditure of ammo and spell-power. Luckily none of the ghouls or zombies brought ranged weapons. Rains and the Skins did not fair as well, losing 3/4 of their number, especially since Rains explains that the hive mind has some sort of hypnotic or seductive quality by which they managed to entrance a portion of his crew, who turned on the others. It was a real bloodbath and he had to resort to indiscriminate explosives, but managed to hold back the additional ghoul tide.

They find Myrryr drowned to death in a few inches of water, presumably the work of the Succubus planning to leave a useful host body for another zombie. Those who are survived are grateful to the team for ending this threat and preventing the corruption of the ritual, but the price was high. Patricia Loveland gets back in touch afterwards, recognizing the team’s skill, utility, and sincerity, though still not trusting or communicating with Cholula.

Hearing the night’s report on Radio Free Detroit after they limp back to the safehouse in the damaged van and patch Creep up back to consciousness, they find out that TM’s are waking back up and complaining of headaches, mood swings, and forced Subermersion into the Resonance Realms. This reminds them of the terrifying thing Rains mentioned- those of his crew who were turned by the feral ghoul hivemind started muttering about something “deep… underneath… rising”.

They report Myrryr’s death into Smoach, who seems to retreat into his Bug City survivor PTSD-protective space, and vows never to let anyone get close to him again, while he plans to dedicate himself to hunting FTD and other nefarious forces in her memory. The next morning, the Tarot sword, whose ephemeral flame had gone out when the Succubus slew the spirit wiedling it, starts flaming again, and CG hears the voice say that he is once again under it’s protection, still unsure of what the cost will be….

Creep tries again to convince everyone to stop doing jobs to help people and try to get paid, so they start looking over their jobs list for good opportunities of what to do next.

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Tabasco aka Cholula

After ensuring there are no more attackers at the Platinum Zone, Otters figures out how to hook up one of the mule’s partially charged batteries to the dead van and get it running long enough to get back to the safehouse, where Dig immediately goes to sleep to heal up from damage from the fight. The rest of the crew frantically tries to contact people via radio, succeeding in eventually getting ahold of most of the people they had previously built HAM sets for.

They then check on Zennia at the bar, and find that it’s shot to shit and there some bloodstains around. Creep finds that all the messenger birds on the roof have been burned by an area spell also. They track some drag marks through Hamtramck and find a wounded Sikh Burn guarding the People of the Book burial society- he reports that Zennia didn’t make it but that he and some Children of Loxley managed to fell the attackers.

The team heads inside and examines the body- the ritualists there have stabilized them to prevent further possession, and the team sees that three more shadow zombie assailants have been cut apart by Sikh Burn’s flaming sword. As well as Zennia, the bartender and some patrons were also killed, though it seems like she was the target, as ChewGum uses a creepy spell to review the last thing she saw- muzzle flash in a dark room.

After the team gets ahold of the WIndsor crew, they also hear that some shadow zombies made an attempt on Howell, but his biodrones and the timely arrival of some assistance from said crew held the attackers off. The team puts together that there was a coordinated hit on a bunch of different fixers. After hearing Julia “Deadline” Pesina return to broadcasting on radio with the matrix down, they also hear that some other fixers, community organizers, and street docs who they didn’t know were also attacked or killed, including the entire civilian government of the city (with potentially one missing survivor). Technomancers seem to mostly be comatose or non-communicative, and lots of e-life forms are missing.

So it seems like the shadows either knew what was coming, or took quick advantage of the opportunity. The team spends the next day hiring out some remote research on alternate power generation schemes, and Otters manages to rig up CG’s scooter as a pedal-power generator, with instruction passed along from Run and Sollars archive via the Windsor crew. She calls into Pesina to share this info also. Dig spends the day crafting a golem to pedal the bike, and start charging the van, though first they power up all the drones and the team’s tech. Creep, and the the others, are very disturbed when he looks outside and see that not only is it still dark when it should be daytime, but that the stars are wrong. The Detective heads out to check in on the Keepers and other contacts.

Dig turns into a horse and Otters crafts a quick saddle + bag, and Cholula hops on. They head out to Grosse Pointe to see if Leanna Octave survived. Creep uses his magnet hand to cling to the top of the VTOL, while Otters hot rigs it from inside to run aerial surveillance and backup. Creep has done some quick and dirty antenna repairs so they have LOS comms and about 100m signal otherwise. They reach the Metal Maniacs clinic and find the usual bunch of cybered-up weirdos out front, though there are less than usual.

Heading in, Cholula finds Octave examining and disassembling some corpses for parts- she explains that whatever the pulse was was super damaging to Monads and anyone else running a lot of nanites, so their numbers are bit depleted. It doesn’t seem like they were hit otherwise though. She bemoans the loss of their SIN business income, and says they’ll need supplies for upkeep before long. Cholula tries to pry for more info on the SIN stuff but doesn’t get much, and decides to continue not telling her that he is part bug.

As the gangers outside are starting to eye Dig a little hungrily, Cholula makes his exit and hops back on, and rides Dig over to Vendor’s Row to check on Grandmother Biyu. Creep and Otters split off to check on Ellis. Biyu and the Triad seem pretty dug in, and are bolstering their defenses further. She explains that they were attacked but that the attackers were “dealt with” and doesn’t provide further info, though she confirms they were more shadow zombies when asked.

She tells the team to start looking into food security as her people are doing, as that will likely be an issue soon. She also tips them off to a few mysterious rumors- someone has one or more working vans in town, and they’re using them to snatch up technomancers. Biyu also wants the team to extend an offer of safety and employment to any TM’s they come across on her behalf, saying she wants to start a local “sector”, whatever that means.

They head back to the safehouse, though Dig insists on stopping to steal some food on the way- Cholula guides him past a guard with a shotgun and Dig uses magic fingers to fill his saddle bag up. They raid the Tin Can food supplies when they get back too, and find other regulars there doing a sort of wake for the recent dead, and drinking all the booze. Meanwhile, Creep spots a bunch of scattered individuals standing slackly throughout the Scar zone, with no discernible pattern, as they fly by. They land in the skyway level of ARES former HQ tower, the lower levels being fortified, and find a slightly tense Praxis waiting for them with some other Deso Angels.

Praxis asks if they’ve seen any bugs around, and they report they haven’t, realizing that the Deso Angels here, being Mantids, need to eat bugs at least occasionally- uh-oh! One of the other members mutters something about how they should’ve left when they could, but the DA’s guide them further into the building where they find Ellis and some other Betas. They discuss the attacks, and Ellis reports that they came under attack from a bunch of seemingly feral ghouls here, except that they also seemed to have some kind of hivemind- she suggests checking in with Pretty out of the farm to see if she knows more.

Ellis also speculates that the shadow spirits, or some other entity, may have made use of the lasting effect of the Scar to somehow twist astral space, explaining the permanent twilight and strange stars. She is also not sure where the stars are from, but confirms with Creep that they appear fixed in place- there having been no visible relative movement. She also tips them off that they found the corpses of a huge amount of the new Alphas, drained and desiccated underground, and wonders if Vogel used them in some kind of massive sacrifice- but also wants to know where the original Alphas that she had put Vogel in touch with wound up.

They speculate a bit that possibly they secured transit to Vhortas/Colony, which could explain why Otters was able to see empty insect plane corridors when she briefly got a drone into the rift. Regardless, without further evidence they’ll have to leave it a mystery for now. They decide to push the battery range on the VTOL and zip over to the farm, finding Rains and Pretty holding it down with other ghouls and some Bee cult Betas, but with a massive burning corpse pile on the lawn.

They were also attacked by shadow zombies, and wonder if the shadow spirits left something behind- the team immediately gets stressed about the Coin of Woe in their possession. They suffered some casualties but managed to fend them off. They were also attacked by some Infected-phobic rednecks using old bio-diesel farm trucks, but managed to fight them off too. They also seem worried about food security, and are trying to organize with their friendlier neighbors- they say the militia types seem to have come from further out near Ann Arbor.

They fly back to the safehouse and the team debriefs on all the info. They also hear on Deadline’s nightly broadcast that more militia tried to demand tribute from the Platinum Zone but that Marv blew up one of their trucks with a rocket launcher and they fled. She shares Otters’ pedal-power generator plan as best she can over the radio, and also reports that a lot of sprites, AI’s and other e-life forms are likely trapped in offline hosts and devices, so that if anyone is out there hard-wiring and encounters any, to please free them or deliver a device with them on it to the Plat Zone for protection.

They make a few more radio calls, having also left parts and schematics where needed on all their visits throughout the day, and confirm with their assorted allies that they’re on for the big trap tomorrow, and ChewGum visits Penelope Bean, who is really excited about embracing the Hawala system with the nuyen exchange not running. She also agrees to pass along a request for aid to the Mage on the Hill, if she can find him. She otherwise seems her usual chipper (/appropriative) self.

They rest, and on awakening the next day decide to use a couple Tarot cards in hopes of some additional aid before they head to Belle Isle for the ambush. Creep activates the “Higher Power” card, and gets a non-transferable one-person ticket to Zurich Orbital, which will bypass SIN scans (though not weapon scans). Initially a bit annoyed, he realizes eventually this could lead to a big payday for him, so ends up a little happier. Everyone takes turns messing around with the Threshold card, until Otters accidentally activates while walking though the door to try it outside.

The door becomes black void, and Otters steps through. She finds herself confronting a sort of mirror version of herself who says “REMEMBER” and Otters begins to remember what happened in Florida, and then just “nopes” back out the door. Seeing that the void remains, Dig jumps through, and confronts a mangy, toxic dog- a real lone wolf, who tries to force him into a paradigm shift. He resists, proving his loyalty to Dog and the pack, and initiates. He also realizes this was likely a confrontation with the Dweller on the Threshold, and the he should know be able to project to other metaplanes.

As the door remains, Cholula jumps though, with Creep attempting to follow, though Creep bounces off the suddenly solid surface. Cholula sees all his parent there: a Beetle Queen and 2 humans- they seem about to tear each other apart but he manages to do an incredible leadership maneuver and get between them and talk them down. He emerges feeling better integrated with his bug self, and finding that he is no longer Blighted. Creep tries again to go through but the void dissipates and he stumbles out into the street.

They become suddenly aware that they just activated multiple Tarot cards in their safehouse and partially outside and get a little stressed about who might have noticed. But they are interrupted before they can spiral too much by the arrival of a bald grizzled man, dressed in rags, carrying a single duffel bag, who says “I heard you requested my aid” – this seems to be the Mage on the Hill- but can they convince him to assist them?

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective
Tabasco aka Cholula

The team freaks out after acquiring all the data as both Creep and Cholula start to enter anaphylactic shock from the spore exposure. Luckily the rest of the group’s full seals hold, and they manage to get them out via some quick-thinking and a near grenade disaster from Otters. They navigate back out via the train tunnels but have the feeling that something might be following them. Once back aboveground, they contact Dig, who recommends quarantine until they can make sure the spores aren’t contagious.

Jaga helps set up a sealed treatment area at the safehouse, and monitors them with Dig for a day while drones work on patching them up, but luckily they seem to be improving and non-contagious. They heal up for another day while Dig fills them in on happenings aboveground, and they all decide where to sell their score from the last mission. They end up selling all the experimental tech to Zennia, who pays well and seems eager to sell it on, and all the data to Ellis, who is eager to receive it and requests first look at anything additional they find.

The team then decides to start looking into how to take down the local Fear The Dark chapter for good. Dig researches the Higher Power Tarot card, and with some help from Fargus Sol determines that it doesn’t do what they likely need it to for these purposes- i.e. beam sunlight directly in a focused point. They think about planning some kind of ambush at the upcoming “Bye, ARES!” block party that the Plat Zone is hosting, but that’s coming up too soon.

After consulting with Walker in Ways, they settle on a different plan- WIW and their shamanic group will plan out a massive cleansing ritual to expand the magical cleanup they’ve been doing on the river outwards into the rest of the city, slowly expanding over time as they cleanse new areas. Dig, CG, and Jaga will assist with this. The rest of the team, and a bunch of other hired assistants, will provide recon and security around the site, and watch for FTD/fight them when they arrive.

The team uses favors owed by Julia Pesina to report on a piece about this upcoming ritual and spread it around, to make sure that FTD hears about it. With a few days to wait until that happens, they stock up on gear (wood pulp bullets and the like) and finish healing and patching armor. They all head over to the Plat Zone party in their street gear, with Otters bringing her new array of drones, freshly out of their boxes, in the van. CG, The Detective and Creep take up surveillance positions just in case anything kicks off after grabbing food from CastIron.

Cholula dances while assensing, vibing on the energy of the room. Otters monitors comms to watch from suspicious traffic while Dig keeps an eye on the matrix, and both of them notice a lot of posts pouring in, seemingly notifications of the death of various East Coast deckers and TM’s. Ringmaster calls them back to the situation room, where they monitor a disturbing thread on Jackpoint right up until there is a disturbing inaudible rumble, and bright flash, and all the lights go out.

Checking things further, it seems like the power is fully down, and a lot of batteries are fully or partially drained. Before they can determine anything else, gunfire breaks out outside. The team outside engages with a group of 6 gunmen, which they quickly realize are shadow spirits inhabiting disguised corpses, who are firing indiscriminately into the crowd. They manage to take them out though Creep and CG are both near killed, with Cholula also joining the fray.

Inside, Dig just barely manages to get in front of the swing of a monofil whip that an invisible assassin had intended for Ringmaster, getting badly injured in the process and splashing Ringmaster with his blood. The assassin chops Otters’ gun in half after she ineffectually fires before Dig manages to fell them with a massive lightning bolt- Dig approves of this show of pack loyalty. Unfortunately, Dig is a carrier for HMHVV so warns Ringmaster of his new lycanthropy risk- certainly much better than dead.

Otters, frantic about the lack of matrix connection and drone feeds, races outside to the van, weaving through the frantic crowd and finds the locks engaged and powered off, so has to hardware her way in. The drones are all powered off but seem to have some varying level of charge left, though no way to recharge if drained at the moment, and the van seem drained but otherwise fine, aside from antennas which seem universally fried. Otters is having to find all the clunky manual controls since usually all of this done via ARO.

Dig and Ringmaster, using magic and charisma, manage to start organizing and calming the crowd, and the weary Latvian Gambit vets present get back to work trying to figure out what happened and what it means. The team all eventually joins up and speculates a bit too, as they hear gunfire, screams, and breaking glass all around the city, and are able to see the stars for the first time in a while (or for some, probably the first time ever). Otherwise the night is only light by muzzle flashes and bonfires…..

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective
Tabasco aka Cholula

The team heads into the DDB to begin their multi-phase series of jobs down there. They spend most a day navigating a long series of deadly traps after reaching the site of their showdown with Otto Hendricks, and attempting to explore deeper into his area. Luckily with careful drone recon, good sensor use, and some quick-thinking, they take minimal damage and clear/mark a mostly safe passage to a back entrance to the lab, which they manage to access.

Unfortunately, they then to blind a gun turret by throwing a sleeping bag over it and it fires, detonating some C4 strapped to an adjacent wall and triggering a cave-in. They spend another good portion of a day excavating their way back into the lab to find it in a state of disarray, but they do manage to salvage some useful info, while also potentially exposing themselves to deadly toxins.

It seems that Hendricks (whether initially on ARES’ behalf or on his own initiative) had been manufacturing some experimental weaponry based on spores, toxins, and modified acids, and providing it to GreenWAR cells, possibly for false flag operations, possibly to make Vogel look bad, given his past ties to eco-activist groups. The bio-containment on the experimental weapons lab failed due to the explosion/partial collapse the team triggered, luckily all of them except Cholula and Creep have full seals on their armor, and Creep is running an internal air tank…..

They continue digging around and find a few former SCIF chambers, now rendered non-secure by the structural damage, where people were doing old-school offline paper-based research, data collation, and investigation, into two primary areas of interest: what’s up at the new ARES HQ site in Atlanta (they seem to have semi-secretly bored a huge shaft underneath it) and what is up with ARES’ metaplanar activities. It seems likely based on all this that ARES has/will have a new portal to Vhortas and their fortified base “Colony” there, in the shaft underneath their new HQ, as the construction of that began shortly after their space station portal was shut down.

ARES also is using a lot of materials to build the HQ that have no clear sourcing- could be standard corp shell games, or could be a metaplanar origin there too. The team also finds a disassembled portal closer, with some notes about it. The magical part of the payload is missing (either removed or expended) but the notes suggest that even Hendricks and crew didn’t fully understand how/why these worked. There is also a suggestion that ARES was attempting to find a way to use bugs as magical batteries, and an explanation of how Firewatch members were chosen for service at Colony (awakened members) or for turning into ALPHAs (mundanes).

This is all good paydata for some various Johnsons, so the team decides to return to the surface, collect Dig from whatever animalistic magic quest he went off of, get paid, and patch up themselves and their armor before heading back underground for the next stages of their missions.

Runners
Creep
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Tabasco aka Cholula
ChewGum
and guest appearance from: Erika “Scully Beyonce” Knowles

The team briefly rests at the missing runner’s basecamp, and then makes a plan to head back in to try to hack the military base using Dig’s planted data tap. Using the radar sensor, biodrone surveillance, and electronic warfare scanning they manage to avoid getting spotted while Dig gets a hack going. Miraculously, Dig manages to grab some data before getting spotted by the active security, and they pull his plug just in time as some alarms go off. Otters speeds away from pursuing vehicles with sensor guidance, and then sneaks through the fog.

They successfully evade their followers, and Dig uses an illusion to distract most of the surveillance and comms blimps outside the fog while Otters sneaks them through farm fields back onto the highway. They return to Detroit, and review the data on the way. It seems like the attack they witnessed was carried out by a cadre of vampires with no insignia, many of whom died in the attack. But the target seems to have been a structure housing an “anomaly” a bit below ground level that was adjacent to the comms HQ. They don’t find any more data on that, but do discover that 2 of the runner crew were captured by the military and are being interrogated to see if they had any advance knowledge of the attack.

They package everything up and send it on to Ringmaster, who pays them well. Cholula also finds the Hermit 6WT card stuck in his armor, presumably from the body pile he was pulled into, and after briefly examining it, Dig activates it. It pulls the team to a cabin that seems to exist on some other plane, with a bed for each of them, some crystal lights on the walls, a single door, and some ominous blood stains. They find an hourglass carved into the floor under one of the beds, and looking outside get the feeling that large predators are fighting other large predators in the dense woods and other environs surrounding the cabin.

Dig almost runs off into the wilderness before Dog reminds him that it is dangerous to go alone, and they close up the cabin after getting worried the light might attract attention. The beds are all quite comfortable, though Otters is worried since neither her drones nor the van transitioned with them. They go to sleep and as soon as Dig loses consciousness, they all find themselves back in their van, feeling well-rested. They get back to Detroit and head to their safehouse after dropping off Erika Knowles to report into Ringmaster.

They check in with some contacts and pick up some potential work, and catch up on the news from around town. ChewGum has been busy in their absence, tracking down leads on work and being gifted a tarot card of his own, from the People of the Book, who tell him it will summon a powerful defensive spirit, but that there will be a cost to the summoner. They add it to Creep’s stash, and decide that next up they will head underground to pursue a few jobs at once- the Betas are looking for lost ARES research, Zennia wants experimental tech, they need to break up Fear the Dark’s local chapter, and they need to chase down those Shadow bats.

They get an updated map from Rains and Pretty, who are busy setting up and fortifying Long Pig Farms’ new operation in town, with the help of the Bee cult, some of who are also transitioning to Betas currently. They also check in with Fargus Sol about Arleesh’s feeling towards Betas (cautiously optimistic) and their new Tarot info. He also sends them some money and suggests that they may have found themselves in the Hunter’s Realm, a super-predator breeding and hunting ground that is also used as a metaplanar survivalist prison- the meaning of the hourglass they found being a magical tattoo depicting the time a prisoner there has left to serve.

They gear up, and prepare to head underground!

Runners
Creep
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective
Tabasco aka Cholula
and guest appearance from: Erika “Scully Beyonce” Knowles

The team continues their investigation at the missing runners’ basecamp. The limited autopsy capacities reveal horrifying and unknown genetic fusion techniques that leave no surgical scars. Knowles takes some samples for later, as the rest of the crew reviews the runner’s logs she was able to retrieve using a provided crypto-key from their erstwhile employer. They decide to continue further in, using the runners’ data on military security ops as a baseline.

They find a huge corpse pile ahead while scouting with the biodrone, and Cholula investigates on foot, and is almost pulled in by another chimera with huge gorilla arms and empty voids where it looks like some cyber-eyes might once have been. They get in a disturbing fight with two of the “gorilla” chimeras, two more “flying squirrel” chimeras, and a hidden sniper, who Otters manages to take out with the van-mounted HMG. Luckily the team mostly avoids damage, though one of the squirrels escapes.

When checking the corpses after, they seem to mesh with what they’d previously see on the autopsies performed at the base camp. The mods are all extreme and seamless, in an unexplainable way. Then they find the sniper’s body, who has been given some large lens eyes, and is wearing what seems to be a WWII-era Russian winter camo uniform, and using era appropriate gear as well. Knowles confirms that the Nazi’s certainly had an interest in the arcane, and there was a major Kaer beneath modern Chernobyl, so it’s possible someone could have stumbled in and been preserved to the modern day, but that doesn’t explain the changes.

They examine the body pile, and find that it is a mix of runner corpses and National Guardsmen, mostly PA with some OH mixed in. There are also a lot of unassigned limbs and other body parts, most of which have some amount of cyberware, badly damaged in the crude and violent removal. Some of these parts could be III Corps but there isn’t enough to be sure. They take more samples for later analysis. The bodies also show signs of predation, as if the various chimeras have been feasting on them, and seem to be rotting at a much decelerated rate- about 1/10 what would be expected, which lines up with the reduced rate of aging Knowles had noticed on the shark-lion corpse, as well as how an elderly Russian sniper could still be alive.

They head further in and the signal degradation is getting bad enough that Otters has to pull the biodrone back in. They spot some mil patrols with the onboard radar and via electronic warfare, using stealth tags the runner team planted to supplement their perception. They manage to sneak within 1/2 km of the fortified base walls and get some looks, and Creep and Dig (in mole form) sneak closer. Creep gets up to the walls, and reports that the security construction the runners had reported on seems to be basically finished- razorwire perimeter, sensor strewn killing ground, then fortified high wall with guard towers and klieg lights.

Dig digs his way down, and finds that the further down he goes the better the mana feels. He rests a bit low down before tunneling back up inside the base, and spots a construction drone. Unfortunately a mole with a data tap in it’s mouth is a strange sight and a guard spots him and starts to give chase. The van is having to constantly maneuver to avoid patrols and is occasionally losing comms with Creep, who is acting as a relay to Dig on the inside, though Dig can’t respond due to his device being too weak to punch through the jammers the base is using.

The van and Creep detect 7 hypersonic, baffled aircraft zip by overhead towards the base, and Creep warns Dig. Dig manages to use the distraction of some ensuing gunfire to escape the guard pursuing him and slip the data tap onto one of the construction drones before fleeing back underground. The van picks up Creep since they lost comms to Dig, and does a circuit around the base, dodging patrols, as they try to figure out what is happening. Otters sends out all the fly-spys on autopilot, hoping some will return with some info. Only one makes it back, but it does gather some useful intel.

The team (except Cholula and The Detective, who remained at the body pile due to Cholula being badly effected as a dual-natured being) all feel a massive explosion that seemingly occurred somewhere underground. The lone surviving drone confirms that a non-descript building next to what looks like the main HQ/comms center has collapsed on itself, so it seems like the explosion took place under there. Creep hears about half as many hypersonic aircraft leave as arrived as gunfire continues. The whole thing took about 11 minutes in total- real pro, whoever it was.

Dig emerges aboveground after waiting a while, somewhere outside the perimeter but not sure where he is. Scared and feeling a bit hopeless he waits a little more until Creep luckily picks him up on sensors again, and Otters scoops him up in the van. They head back to the body pile and manage to track down The Detective and Cholula, who have retreated after Cholula lost it a bit from the spookiness and his reduced abilities, though TD managed to keep him from totally running off. They all return to the runners’ base camp to think about next moves, with Dig pushing for further investigation via data tap and most of the team leaning towards exfiltrating.

Runners
Creep
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective
Tabasco aka Cholula

The team preps to head out to Site 000 to start their investigation for Ringmaster, and spends some time massively upgrading the stealth, sensor and mobility capabilities of the van to try to be ready for whatever they find there. Chew Gum, having heard in Ringmaster’s briefing that the area seems bad for spirits, decides to sit this one out and spends some time harvesting plants, tracking toxic magic (finding some power areas), seeking Li Wei (finding some blood magic traces but no hard evidence), seeking out bat swarm sightings (they seem to be flying in and out of the Detroit Down Below), and taking care of some personal business.

The rest of Ringmaster’s briefing consists of recovered logs from a PA National Guard unit that was first on the scene and seems to have also gone missing. He also has some reports from Asgard Data Haven of a runner crew hired to go in a bit after that, who reported in a few times before vanishing. And last, he has an agent on the ground he wants the team to make contact with if they can- codename: Scully. She was following up on the runner team’s reports but has also been out of contact for around a week. The other big news is that Ellis took the team’s advice and posted on Jackpoint, introducing the concept of Betas to the runner world, at least. Also Long Pig Farms is relocating to Detroit, fleeing persecution, and The Betas are working with some ghouls to make better clonal stock, as they need the same quality of body to inhabit that the Infected due to eat.

The team pays Grandmother Biyu for some SIN upgrades to make sure they can travel, and she hires them to look into who else is making high quality SINs in town, when they’re back from their trip. Otters smuggles Cholula out past MET2000 hovercraft in the sub, and drops him at the rendezvous point, and the van gets out past more MET2000 border guards doing magic scans (seemingly checking for bugs) with the rest of the team aboard. They pick up Cholula and head to the Bravo Company training complex in central Ohio to brush up on some squad tactics before the mission.

They all learn a new tactic to help with moving under fire. They decide to sleep there as Otters and others are worried about highjackers on the highway amidst the auto-haulers, though Dig mocks them all for giving in to fear. They eat some bland nutritious mush in the morning (explaining why all the mercs were so excited about Castiron’s cooking perhaps), and head out. Driving past the exits towards Dutchville (a relatively newly incorporated town built around a Wuxing shipping subsidiary), they find all the exits closed and guarded by UCAS MP’s- small groups but still.

They also notice that Dutchville has been scrubbed from digital maps and GridGuide- as if it never existed. So they navigate using geotags, and Otters slickly takes the van off-road in a blind turn between two auto-haulers. They activate their active camo, signature masking, and vehicle radar, and cut across farm fields, bypassing fences and army surveillance/comms blimps as they travel. Cholula and Dig start to notice a bad magical feeling once they hit about 12km out from their destination, and start to really feel the effects at 10k.

Creep, keeping a close eye on the radar while Dig monitors army comms traffic, manages to help Otters steer them around the limited patrols on the way in. Right at the 12km mark, all the fences and everything suddenly cuts, along what seems to be a lengthy curve. The level of the ground drops about a foot, cleanly, and Otters eases the van down onto it’s tracks onto the seemingly freshly exposed dirt- there are some other vehicle tracks and a few footprints, and a dense fog ahead starting at the 10k mark. The fog seems to dome upwards, and it looks like the army is using aerials/blimps to keep a comms line open- as the team watches, they see some light flashing in the upper area of the fog dome near the center, which The Detective things is some kind of IF/F sequence, presumably to verify that comms coming from within the obscuring fog haven’t been compromised.

The team prepares to head in, and begins. Otters keep her new biodrone aloft as a spotter, while everyone else carefully peers around with various modes of perception. Spotting some kind of shape in the dense fog, they head towards it, and find a lone desiccated stump. Searching it, they find a hardened data chip, which after Dig breaks the encryption, contains more comms logs from the missing National Guard unit. They report on bad astral feelings, and something following them. The team, spooked, continues. They find another irregularity another few km in, as well as spotting sensor shadows of their own, and getting worried something may be following them as well. The fog is giving back a lot of weird readings, and something is playing havoc with their navigational systems, so Cholula is mostly dead reckoning.

They are also losing comms access to the outside, which also should obscure them further from army blimps, so good and bad. They send an initial report to Ringmaster to report they are going dark, and he wishes them luck. Approaching the next object, they find a small clearing in the fog, where a strange grid of pairs of combat boots it set up, 13 columns by 7 rows, standing in perfect parade formation as Cholula spots. Creep and the mule start knocking them over, which achieves no effect, but they do notice that all the boots appear like unique pairs- similar make/brand, but a variety of year of manufacture, level of wear, etc. The Detective tries one on and finds it damp from the fog but nothing else of note.

While knocking over boots, Creep eventually finds another comms chip from the Natl Guard, which Dig cracks. They get more reports of feeling hunted and haunted, and manaspace growing worse- which Cholula and The Detective confirm. Signal is getting worse too as they get closer to the epicenter, both seemingly at a steady rate, so Otters pulls the biodrone in much closer. They are all getting pretty worried at this point, as the sensor shadows are also showing up in the astral, and the Natl Guard reports having some of their people MIA.

They press on, and Cholula steers them towards a feeling of water ahead, where Creep detects a slight dip in the landscape. They find what looks like the bottom portion of a dried up stream bed, but as with everything else it seems like about the top 12 inches is gone. Creep spots a hardened milspec case carefully place in the center, and opens it, finding a 3rd chip. Dig cracks it, and they get what seems likely to be the final log from the Natl Guard- they report firing on shadows as more and more of them vanish into the fog. They also found what seemed like a local landmark but turned out to be some sort of astral effect or illusion as the stream was gone in realspace. They also report having travelled much further than they should have to reach it.

While the team is stressing about this, a horrifying sound comes from out of the fog, and Otters is paralyzed, while the others are variously effected. Luckily, Otters was already jumped in hot to the van and drone, so still has some capacity. Creep peers around and then jumps back just in time as what looks like some sort of terrible hybird seemingly swims through the air at him, biting with the head of the shark, while it’s lion’s paws pull it along at alarming speed. All of this attached to the torso of a troll, wearing a shredded military uniform. Cholula misses with a fire arrow, Dig misses with a machine pistol, and Otters opens up with the van machine gun.

A hit! Unfortunately, this thing seems to have some kind of hardened exterior- the gun does a lot of damage but it seems to soak quite a bit of it, though not like a spirit would…. Also unfortunately it seems to recognize the danger from the van and pummels it badly, nearly wrecking it in one hit. Dig pulls out all the stops and blasts it with a lightning bolt as it start to shove itself into the van through the open side door- the mana here is weird and sludgy and irregular, but Dig manages to control it well enough to do some more major damage.

Otters, desperate, turns the machine gun on the van itself, shooting through the roof to hit the beast inside, and manages to fell it before it can kill anyone in the van, though the van takes more damage and is on it’s last legs. Everyone’s paralysis gradually wears off as Dig shoots the thing over and over with his machine pistol, to make sure it stays dead. While collecting themselves, they hear a voice call out, and after exchanging some confirmational chatter, find out that this is “Scully”, aka Erika Knowles, who Creep explains they know of through a convoluted link of runners in the team file, from her Boston days.

She seems happy to see them, and suggests they get back to her base camp with the body to talk further and do some analysis. They manage to navigate there, though doing so in the fog is quite confusing, and Otters is glad she’s been leaving a breadcrumb trail on an offline map to try to follow back out later. They find that Knowles has set up in the somewhat shredded basecamp of the missing runner team, and has another partially dissected hybrid on one of the cots. They haul out the one in the van (massively heavy), and she cuts it open, showing the team how the strange head and limbs seems perfectly grafted the host body, seemingly a troll torso, with some kind of advanced tech- this is beyond 6th World bio-surgeons, as far as she knows, as there is no surgical scarring, or sign of exposure to known mutagens.

She also fishes out some dog tags from the creature’s stomach, and everyone else things he must have eaten a soldier, but she explains that swallowing one’s own dog tags is often a soldier’s last desperate act in the face of certain death, hoping that their body can later be ID’ed and perhaps returned to their family. Disturbingly, the tags are neither from the National Guard nor III Corps, but from the Aztlan national army from about 8-10 years ago. Knowles says all of this lines up with her analysis of the other hybrid, though she didn’t retrieve ID from that one. She plays the team a helmet-cam video that the runner team recovered on one of their recon missions, which seems to show III Corp finding themselves enveloped in fog as comms go down, and they come under attack from unknown forces.

She says she also recovered more logs from the runner crew, which she offers to share with the team, but first they brief her on the updates from Detroit- the Scar, the Betas, etc. She is a bit overwhelmed but luckily they confirm that she herself isn’t magical, so she won’t spot Cholula out, while she takes in the info. She seems very serious and driven, but thrown off by her time in the fog- neither of her hardened chronometers are in agreement, and neither align with the team’s estimate of what day/time it is. They decide to rest and patch up the van before heading further in, or bugging out to report what they’ve found so far…..

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective
Tabasco aka Cholula

Creep catches up with the team after one of his occasional “wander around and get the lay of the land” multi-day solo adventures. There seem to be no ALPHAs left anywhere that Creep has seen- which is disturbing to say the least, as the bug-killing manatech device didn’t have infinite range, as proven by the Bee cult’s survival by the Blight. That said- less ALPHAs and no bugs seen, so that’s good in it’s own ways. The team speculates a bit as to what this all might mean. Cholula gets a call back from Jaliyah Angel in Seattle that the ASPS is sending a Shedim specialist, Patricia Loveland, from DeeCee, to look into the Shadow spirit corpe possession issue, at the team’s request.

Chew Gum also follows up with Cass Wandering Horse, the contact he was given by The Walker In Ways, who are both also looking into local magical weirdness post-bug. Cass has a lot of tips and rumors, but not alot of hard info, as he explains he is also fresh in from DC. He seems to be a NAN political operative who left when things started heating up along the borders, though he may be interested in some political realignments in Detroit now. However, he gives some good tips for a promise of future info or services rendered, and the team starts digging.

They look up 3 of the spirits/ancient gods Cass had mentioned, and do some info trading around town to find out more where they can. They get some good leads but no hard evidence, and check in with Ringmaster, who confirms that he will pay for further investigations into any/all magical threats in the city. He also confirms that the job to investigate the missing III Corps at Site 000 is still a go, so the team plans to leave for that once they get the sub back (as they will need to smuggle Cholula safely out of town, as he is detectable as a bug, which surely someone will be looking out for).

They call Loveland, and share a lot of info re: Shadow spirits, possession vs inhabitation, gateways vs portals vs rifts, belief powering magical potency, and the like. This all seems promising until Cholula outs himself as a Beta, without much of an explanatory lead-in, and Loveland cuts the call, texting the rest of the team that they’ve been compromised. They hope she’ll come around after further digging on her own, as she is also connected with Old Crow, Jackpoint etc amongst other runners resources.

Otters manages to get a Fly Spy into The Scar above downtown, and before the drone fails from acid and other elemental damage, she manages to get faint footage transmitted of what looks like barren insect tunnels, which both Ellis and Cholula verify look like Vhortas, minus the biomatter. Ellis hints at strange overgrown ruins in Vhortas that are the only locations the teeming masses of bugs won’t occupy, but neither Ellis no Cholula are able to comprehend why from their limited memories.

Ellis also shares info about the other end of the Daedelus space station portal that ARES was maintaining until the team shut it down. ARES was able to establish a stable fortress, called Colony (Damien Knight was never one for clever names it seems) using some very advanced magic, this is where the original Beta’s live- though these are all Firewatch members sent to the insect plane on the principle that if bugs can inhabit humans here, maybe humans can inhabit bugs there? Which seems to have had some limited success.

However, given the endless nature of the plane, Ellis doesn’t think they’d ever be able to “defeat” the bugs- so she isn’t sure what these empty tunnels signify, though it could be an area of Colony- perhaps the magitech device from Vogel linked up with something on the other side. Apparently, according to notes Ellis was able to recover, ARES had managed to stabilize Colony enough that non-merges could safely live there for some time, though she is not sure if they have survived since the space portal was closed (or if another has been opened….). Based on the Manus Ruinae containment lab that recent former team members raided in Seattle, this all certainly seems possible.

Ellis is also worried about what happened to the ALPHAs, and reveals that what Vogel asked her to do was broker contact- she isn’t sure that it occurred, or what was discussed, but she had enabled Vogel to access the ALPHAs secure comms network. She had been hoping to discover some means of saving or stabilizing them, but no luck so far. She still hopes to find a way to allow the original Betas from Colony to return, which they currently can’t do due to evanescence issues. Regardless, she wants more data and suggests to the team that a lot of ARES offices, black sites, and also the HQ could make good targets for raids if they want that kind of work, there’re plenty of other at it currently.

They also discuss the situation undergound, and get worried about what threats still lurk in the Detroit Down Below now that the bugs are gone, since Ellis reports that some ghoul allies have recently gone missing. They discuss a variety of different hypotheses and theories about it all, before finally getting the sub, fully repaired, back from Goober, and getting ready to get underway out to Dutchville.

Runners
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective
Tabasco aka Cholula

The team recuperates from the Shadow spirit raid, and gets some investigation updates from Smoach and Myrryr, who also accept a Tarot card as payment. They’ve ID’ed the Wendigo, and got some more info about what occurred- it looks like the strange orb was a portal to the Shadow plane (or at least one of it’s moons), and the one of the two spirits likely escaped through or was on the other side when the team attacked and closed it. It’s unclear if this spirit took some of the Tarot cards with or if they were expended in opening the portal. Castiron brings in a bat that he managed to bring down from the swarm, while he was fleeing in fear of the Wraith. He also returns half of his pay, since he feels like he didn’t help much.

S&M pass along a strange artifact, known as a “Coin of Woe”, which can be created by Shadow spirits by draining the essence of a living being- this coin is gold, showing that it was drained from a metahuman, and has Iva Linus Hathaway’s face on one side. Cholula holds onto it, and dedicates himself to finding a way to free her or return her to some form of life, though his initial research doesn’t seem promising. S&M also warn that although those coins can sometimes be used as metaplanar currency, their possession is also a serious crime in many planes.

CG examines the bat, and finds that it seems to have been possessed by a shadow spirit at some point, similar to the “zombie” corpses they encountered at the farm- disturbing! However, he prepares it and he, Dig, and Jaga cleanse their safehouse of magical taint, and rebuild their magical lodges. CG also resummons two of his Necro spirits, one into the bat. The team decides they need Jackpoint access to further their research abilities, so they put together an info file on the truth of Latvian Gambit with a lot of combined knowledge from themselves and the team file, and get Old Crow to agree to upload it as a membership application once he is clear of the city.

ARES and the UCAS are engaged in escalating back and forth over the disaster, and Vogel gives a major and provocative speech, ending with the revelation that ARES will relocate their corp HQ to Atlanta in response to the UCAS provoking them, and tries to place the blame for the “terrorists” behind Latvian Gambit at the feet of the UCAS for not reporting their activities and breaking up their cells. The team plans to possibly further refute much of this info when they themselves aren’t in ARES’ backyard, though the boards are already going wild.

Otters finally finishes building her first biodrone with Moreau, and The Detective does some bliss in their tub while catching up with the Keepers. The mafia bug infiltration con seems to have had some major effects- lots of infighting at the port, and a lot of dead bodies turning up nearby/in the river. Also- someone seems to be surveilling The Detective’s apartment- wearing a high end camo suit, so the Keepers haven’t gotten a good look. The Detective forgets to report this for a while, as they are high.

The next day, when they think to mention it, Cholula is finally back to full health, which required eating a lot more meat than usual (and having some interesting new thoughts and memories), he and CG head up to The Detectives zone with biodrone support, while Dig as a dolphin and Otters in the VTOL head down to try to retrieve the sub. Otters is able to spot the camo suit man with the biodrone and provide a targeting solution to Cholula, who KO’s him with a Gamma-Scopolamine arrow.

They zip tie him, and haul him into The Detective’s apartment, after taking his external comm and a bunch of kidnap supplies he has on him. They wait an hour and then question him once the truth serum kicks in. He caves pretty quickly and reveals that he is the recent ex-husband of Lindsay Turpentine, and that the family knows that The Detective is responsible for Michael and Carol’s deaths. The Detective tries to dodge blame for this, not fully inaccurately, but the man doesn’t believe them. He thought he could get back in Lindsay’s good graces by kidnapping The Detective and delivering them.

They debate about what to do, before questioning him some more and finding out that he’s been live-streaming the whole encounter. Dig, from afar, panics and tells them to get out of there, which they ignore while Cholula debates the ethics of killing him, since via his code he doesn’t really deserve to die. He fills up the tub they have him in, jic. They keep talking for a bit while an increasingly stressed Dig tries to convince them to leave every time his dolphin form surfaces and gets comms back.

Eventually Cholula agrees, and flips the still paralyzed man over, face down, in the full tub, and leaps out the window. CG and The Detective leave the normal way, with The Detective trying to gather up essentials on the way. They just get clear as a missile flies down and obliterates the building. Yikes! They all regroup at the Hamtramck safehouse while The Detective mourns the loss of their disguise collection. Meanwhile, Dig and Otters have a relatively easy time retrieving the sub, and buy some supplies to do a quick patch up job on it. They load Old Crow aboard to smuggle him outta town, and send it to Chicago to get more fully repaired by Goober, with Otters piloting the first leg of the trip past the ARES cordon which is still nominally being enforced.

The team all get a call from Kong up in the Blight, who wants them to look into a kind of culty group of farmers whose area has recently been added to his turf (he seems to be expanding). The team does some research and doesn’t find much, so does some recon and finds that it seems to be a group of Bee spirits, mostly good merges, that are distributing non-magical food to the surrounding area. Still- creepy and worth checking out. They call Ellis, who confirms that Bees often try to live in harmony with the surrounding area but are suicidally defensive. She says they could be good candidates to join the Betas since they already prioritize some of the same principles and communal attitudes.

The team calls up Kong to see if a peaceful solution is good with him too, and he says he’d prefer bugs get killed but that so long as the team gets them off his turn he doesn’t care much. They approach the church/farm lot, and The Detective has a lengthy convo with the Pastor, who turns out to be a Bee Shaman. They eventually bring in Cholula as proof of what the Beta option could look like, and the hive discusses, eventually agreeing to go along with the plan.

The team gets a bus from Kong to transport them all out to the now-empty shadow farm, and arrange for some of Ellis’ people to meet them there. They then also call up Pretty and try to set up a ghoul/bug farm coop, or at least get that started, since it sounds like Long Pig Farms may be looking to vacate Chicago in the increasingly hostile to the Infected environment there. They also report in on the info they learned about Fear the Dark, and Pretty pushes them to go after the vamp that escaped and hopefully finish off the local chapter’s leadership.

The big news when the team wakes the next day is that ARES didn’t just move their HQ- they fully left. They abandoned tens of thousands of local low-level employees and bailed basically overnight on the whole city. Horizon PR is desperately trying to spin the move in a positive way, but it seems ARES’ internal turmoil isn’t fully resolved- this does not seem like the plan Vogel presented, although it could also be a response to the info the team leaked on Jackpoint, especially with the UCAS announcement that they are rescinding the Business Recognition Accords in order to investigate just what happened in Detroit, and to III Corps.

CG, worried about a repeat of Chicago, checks in with Ringmaster, who says he has a lot of work for the team if they’re looking- a lot of the mercs have left, and he needs people looking into all sorts of local issues, as well as what happened to III Corps, if they want a trip out of town. The team also calls up The Walker in Ways, and gets contact info for someone named Cass Wandering Horse, with WiW telling them that they are also concerned about the spiritual future of Detroit, and that Cass has been doing some investigations along these lines, though he also has his own agenda….

Plenty to do! Back to work.

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective
and reintroducing: Tabasco aka Cholula

The team keeps partying for a bit at the Platinum Zone, though they announce that the party will have to end in the next day or so as stocks are running low and Marv needs to resupply. The team decides it’s time to raid the Shadow spirit farm, get revenge for Iva, and get their Tarot cards back. First though, Chew Gum needs to start setting up a new lodge and prepping a fresh corpse vessel. So they decide to figure out what to do with their safehouses. Since they’ll soon be fighting the Shadow spirits that are the ones who know the locations, they decide to enhance the security (and comforts) of the Hamtramck safehouse and ditch the bolthole in Windsor. Creep flirts a bit with the AI landlord, Rutledge, who seems potentially interested.

Dig inquires again about hiring others to assist with the mission, and this time Ringmaster has some suggestions- he also wants intel on what the Shadow spirits are up to beyond Tarot, if anything. The team winnows down the potentials list and sends out job offers to those who look promising. They call in their favors with Ellis to get some assistance from the Betas/Deso Angels, and hire Old Crow and Sikh Burn with the promise of Tarot card payment, and also SINder and the bounty hunter duo Charlie Foxtrot and Moondog for cash. Walker and her dog Tofu turn them down, not interested in payment and trying to help their community area, and Smoach and Myrryr offer recon/investigative assistance but are not combatants.

Jaga comes along for healing support, and Ringmaster manages to scrounge up a decent van that the team buys to replace their busted one. Cast Iron also hires on for cash, though he seems worried about the dark spirits and says he hasn’t been in the field in a while. The team makes a plan, with Old Crow’s tactical input proving quite useful, and they plan to start the attack late the next day. First, Tabasco decides to take Ellis and Praxis up on their offer of change, and against many on the team’s advice, merges with a Goliath Beetle spirit who they were able to save while it was injured, and who accepted their offer of sanctuary.

Tabasco upon returning, finds that though he still has his own, human, memories, he also has memories of his time amongst a teeming mass in Vhortas, before being pulled through by a shaman to fight in this battle, being injured and separated from the horde, and being approached by an inquiring mind of a type it was previously unfamiliar with. As Tabasco’s new insect half wakes to full sapience for the first time, he finds that he feels he needs a new name, and requests that everyone now call him Cholula. Responses on the team to this development are mixed, but everyone adheres to the name request.

They meet up with their hired support near the farmhouse by Ypsilanti, and see a bat swarm flying back towards town as they approach. Foxtrot and Moondog get creeped out by Cholula and bail on the mission, saying that they know the team is good with the Plat Zone so they won’t make trouble, but they don’t want any part of whatever “this” is, though Cholula tries to explain. Otters opens up with the van HMG on the barn on the property as everyone else approaches, though Cholula and CG both get mind-controlled and fire at each other, luckily missing.

A Wendigo and a mass of what looks like trid zombies pour out of the barn, all badly injured, and Creep hits them with the rocket launcher, along side more fire from Otters in mule drone and van. They cut down the mass quickly, with Sikh Burn and Cast Iron going around and making sure they all stay dead. Dig start watching for mental manipulation while preparing to cut off TacNET access/shut down weapons as needed if so, and intervenes a few times. As they breech into the house, the spirit retreats into the astral, where it comes under attack from dual-natured Cholula and the Betas, Deso Angels, SINder and Old Crow.

The team all manages to shake off the fear that the spirit tries to emanate out, except Castiron, whose bad past experiences with dark spirits sends him fleeing for a time before he regains his composure. The Shadow spirit starts taking damage and is forced to defend itself, as other team members start sneaking inside and reclaiming some of the Tarot they’ve seen scattered around in what appears to be a ritual circle. Otters also manages to shoot and destroy a disturbing obsidian orb that is at the center. This seems to weaken or distract the Shadow spirit momentarily, and also forces a vision of one of the Shadow moons into the mind of CG and Cholula.

They press the attack in the astral, with one of the Deso Angels and one of the Betas killed and the other 2 badly injured, and both SINder and Old Crow flatlined with Jaga desperately trying to keep them alive. Cholula is the last down, not quite able to finish the spirit off, at which point it manifests and Otters one-shots it with the HMG. Jaga asks The Detective to choose healing priority, and they split it up as follows: Dig tries to save Cholula, but it’s dicey and unclear if it will take. Otters loads Old Crow into the VTOL and zips him back to the Plat Zone, which saves his life but harms his magic. And Jaga manages to stabilize SINder, who seems physically ok but mentally scarred by the experience.

Sikh Burn, meanwhile, wildly slashes at wispy shadows in the main house, fearing spirit regeneration (correctly), and Foxtrot and Moondog finally roll back up, Dig having called them back for extra money in a moment of desperation. They help confirm the place is clear, and the team calls in Smoach and Myrryr for investigative help, with CG and others assisting. It seems like the spirit they fought was a Wraith, the Shadow warrior class, and very deadly- S&M are impressed they survived. They got most of the Tarot back, but all the cards with bloody handprints, along with a few others, are missing.

Checking the “zombies” they find that they were seemingly possessed by low-force Shadow spirits, and were being cursorily patched back up/reassembled- so this is where at least some of the bodies have gone. Checking the Wendigo, they find a scarified “Fear the Dark” across her chest, and worry about who might have escaped in that bat swarm. S&M confirm that the second Shadow spirit, likely a Succubus, was recently at the house, but is not currently around/detectable, so seems to have retreated, fled, or just been out. But, for now, victory! They pay everyone out, and head back to the safehouse for the first time in a while to rest.