Runners
Carol Turpentine
Avocado
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia, the Street Witch

The team continues hanging with Aradia, and discussing Tarot after the successful run for Maggie Goldberg. Avocado joins them and they dig deep into the Avatars. They get a somewhat frantic call from Goober, who wants to hire them on spec for a job investigating some friends of his who seem to have just gone missing. Quantum Princess is providing some hacking support already, and Goober has gotten Tate to agree to have mobile trauma unit ready to treat any rescues from the vanished community. They agree, and head to the spot, on the Northside.

After doing some quality CSI-ing, they find that the local community was knocked out with gas and kidnapped by ghouls posing as Long Pig Farms delivery driver, the real versions of which seem also to have been attacked and kidnapped. The team calls it into LPF, and Slim gives them a tracker for the truck, though he says they’ll need to get close if it already crossed into the Zone, which some Horde contacts confirm that it did.

Luckily Carol is able to track the truck via some leaking oil, and QP and Kit manage to home in on a creepy abandoned school using the tracker. There’s a large group of feral ghouls outside, who Kit makes short work of with the team van and ram plate, after Carol catches them all in a lube grenade. Carol, Aradia, TT and Creature drop down into the school from the roof, finishing off a batch of seemingly sentient ghouls who are feasting on one of the missing community members, and free 2 other captives also in the cafeteria. Avocado enters from outside and takes care of the 2 fake LPF drivers, while Carol and TT take out 2 more ghouls trying to sneak up on them by triangulating with the TacNET and Aradia’s assensing.

Kit gets the captives plus the 2 inured, real, LPF drivers stabilized and safely in the van, and also jury rigs the damaged LPF truck to work if needed before heading in as well. The team breaks down a hefty ward in the library, and finds a wide tunnel leading underground. They find some mutated ant-ghouls, but luckily just workers, who ignore them and continue tunneling. They send the drones down the other tunnel, which spot a massive ritual seemingly trying to infest a captured dragon with a bug spirit, and are then quickly destroyed. Having seen only a few guards the team decides to bum rush it.

They race in and get in a brutal fight, but manage to take out the soldier spirit merges, as well as the vampiric shaman performing the ritual. Some of the team starts freeing captives from the cocoons that worker spirits are placing them in, and TT rushes outside to call Tate to get some help. Creature and Kit and Aradia try to help the dragon, but her wounds seem serious and beyond their capacity to heal. Kit doses her with nanites are she consents (and then passes out) to try to keep her stable until Tate gets there.

They find that they only lost the one community member who was eaten, and also locate many other missing people (Leyline Walkers and others) who they hadn’t previously found, though those who have been here more than a few days are too far gone and have to be put down. Goober calls in Becky 99 to assense the survivors and make sure they’re clean before they are returned home, and Goober, Tate, and Long Pig Farms all give the team various rewards. LPF also asks for help drafting a public statement to do some damage control, since these ghouls seem to have been grabbing folks for a while and LPF doesn’t want to be associated with them, but understand that they likely will be if they don’t get on top of it.

The team also finds another upsetting artifact similar to the one at the Foul One’s lair- this one seemingly a rotting piece of food covered in writhing ants, carved in stone.