Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
The Detective
Otters aka Roadkill
Pepper Jack
and introducing: Heat

The team spends some time debating where to sell all the Black Lodge intel they decoded, and ends up passing the sheaf of papers (explanation of the “how to” of their ritual plus Ordo Maxiums stuff with key) along to Ringmaster and Kendra de Santos, and the journal (Black Lodge internal politics and plans with key) to Cehualli at AZT. Cehualli promises them a large bump in their exit pay to gear up for Denver, and KdS offers them magical foci, “safe” artifacts from Arleesh’s vault, or a future favor. Dig, CG, and PPJ all take the foci, Creep requests a specific Tarot card (wanting to see if he can make another Cornerstone chunk), and Otters and TD take future favors.

A relief VTOL from Denver drops off some useful supplies, along with a new to town runner named Heat, who was sent by Jonny Silver (amongst others) to accomplish a few tasks. He quickly tracks down PPJ at the Plat Zone, and makes contact on Jonny’s behalf, and they gossip for a bit and update each other on Denver/Detroit. Heat tells them about a few of his jobs, and Dig and TD are easily able to connect him with Marjo-Lin, who is supposed to make sure flies to Denver to start recording with Glock .50. Creep gets him a clean copy of the Damien Knight snuff BTL as Heat explains that ARES has flooded the market with “ripjacks”, toxic code BTL’s that harm or kill their users, to try to suppress the real BTL of Knight’s death.

Otters is fascinated to get the latest BTL news and chats with Heat for a while. PPJ assenses him, having learned from recent experience, and insists on checking the color of his blood as well. Luckily, it all checks out- Heat is a human technomancer in good health, with no Possession or Inhabitation going on. However, there is something a little weird- his cyber implants seem unusually well-integrated into his essence. PPJ reports this back to the team, which Heat finds rude until PPJ explains “Motor City etiquette” after which the precautions make more sense. Heat has some other work in town too which he needs a team for so he proposes they work together.

Then, with Otters’ data mapping the Blackout’s effect zone, and Brunwyn’s data from interrogating the rogue Brackhaus, and Ringmaster’s data from his teams have been cutting old hardwires in the DDB, the team is finally able to trace the Blackout back to it’s origins, an old pre-Crash 2.0 wired matrix hub and power station, on Zug Island, in the river just SW of Downtown. SK offers to do recon and plan the assault, or let the team do their own recon and participate in the planning. However, the team will once again be the tip of the spear as SK is tied down holding Windsor against sporadic True Canadian terror attacks, and their forces in town are more brute force than infiltration specialists. Frau Brackhaus provides the team with hotsim rigs (for those who don’t have them) and gives Dig a copy of the “Hitchhiker” program, explaining they will likely have to dive in at some point.

Otters flies over in the VTOL with Morticia and bird Dig along. They do a recon pass and Dig spots a massive Plague spirit, but strangely no summoner, although Otters ID’s Mother Gorgon, the surviving toxie cult leader, as being on the island- they assume she must be masking. They also see the surviving Grid Pirates/Blackout Boyz, with heavy arms and armor, patrolling in two squads of 5. There is a hardened bunker-like building, a single crumbling causeway to approach on, and a collapsed dock on the far side of the island, so pretty good defensive position, but it also doesn’t look like they can retreat. The island is overgrown and has no obvious magical barriers- it seems like they were aiming to keep a low profile (which they have til now).

They plan the assault, with SK offering fire support from the WIndsor bank, while the team hits it from the Detroit side. SK will also attempt to manage any reinforcements that arrive and cut off any escape. They recruit Heat and Rose to help with matrix defense on the TacNet and figure some TM’s will be useful in general. Otters drops Creep off on the roof of the bunker with an alchemical token that Dig prepared, which starts shaping a hole in the concrete ceiling. Creep then catches sight of the huge patrolling spirit, which CG and Dig use to target their ritual- a massive lightning bolt which cooks off a bunch of the spirit’s scabrous armor. Creep starts blasting sensors on the bunker’s roof to mess with the defender’s weapons auto-tracking abilities.

PPJ goes astral to take on the spirit, as bird Dig and CG rejoin the fight, pouring fire on the spirit to try to finish it off so the van can approach. Otters gets some shots in as well with her new sniper drone, which does massive damage before being destroyed by acid spells from Mother Gorgon and the spirit. PPJ then successfully kills the spirit on the astral, and Otters starts racing the van up the causeway. Mother Gorgon goes astral as her remaining cultists drag her to cover, and Dig jumps in to astral as well to help PPJ against her.

With another brutal mage duel occurring in the astral plane, Creep and CG, using silenced weapons, pick off Mother Gorgons cultists from hiding, and then finally manage to kill her while she is away from her body. PPJ declares that he is best mage in the area as per usual. He returns to his body, and Otters flies him over to join the fight as CG keeps providing sniper support, Otters fires rockets and HMG rounds from the van, and SK mortar and sniper teams assault the remaining defenders now that the magical threat is dealt with.

They make short work of the surviving defenders on their side of the island, and SK reports they have the rest pinned down on the far side for now. CG uses his spirit’s movement powers to quickly dash down the causeway and join the team. Creep has finally snuck inside and gotten a look around- he spots Spritelok’s providing power, and shoots out the one locking the front doors. He also sees that the Blackout Boyz weren’t lying- many of their family members, including a number of children, are here, with a not insignificant number of weapons and what look like suicide vests.

In the van, Rose and Heat report that the TacNet is under assault from clear and red humanoid figures, the red ones drip worms from a writhing mass. Heat says he can hold it for now, while they task Rose with disabling the suicide vests. They hear her mumble “fuck em all” before she detonates them, killing everyone inside. When questioned she says she hates what the Grid Pirates made her in to but does not regret doing this. She is also badly injured from biofeedback. Not wanting to waste time (or ammo) CG has his spirits bash the door open and the team enters, with Heat staying behind to keep the van safe and block the entrance for anyone coming after.

They shut down the TacNet as the matrix assault increases and go LOS only. Wading through the carnage of the interior, they find another bunker-like inner chamber, air-gapped and still sealed, though the door is damaged. They bash their way in again, and Rose manages to get the elevator opposite working- going down. She takes even more damage doing so and is looking rough. She reports that the local matrix feels wrong and is filled with vines. They descend, and find a truly horrific site.

It seems that the plan here was to recreate “the 100” experiment- they only have about half as many TM’s but they are all hooked up to a massive central terminal. It looks a bit more jury-rigged than DelaMar’s facility under Boston, but likely still has some massive power for whatever it is they are attempting. Interestingly, there are no human technicians or attendants present- only drone manipulator arms on tracks. Worrying that time might be limited with the sound of renewed fighting above echoing down the elevator shaft, they approach the terminal and Dig hooks everyone up to their simrigs, the program reads all green, and they dive in.

They find that they have entered straight into the Foundation, and emerge into a dark carnival. Dangerously janky rides and hideous laughter abound. PPJ starts cutting some of the vines that grow everywhere, and instantly attracts attention from the white and black silhouettes wandering the area. Dig cuts him out of the Hitchhiker link, and PPJ gets dumped back into his body, deciding to focus on healing and monitoring the others. The rest of the team manages to remember to behave in a manner befitting the paradigm, and TD figures out the local layout. Otters is delighted to participate in carnival stuff and maybe has found a BTL addiction replacement in this hyper-real style of place.

They are also nearly overwhelmed by sporadic blasts of horrific noise. Otters retunes her RCC to bring the noise down to a manageable level, and they decide to track it back, figuring it must be important. Using TD’s understanding of the layout, they end up working their way up the line into the “tunnel of love” ride, which appears to be a river, clogged with vines, flowing downwards. The noise is coming from within. Upsettingly to all, it seems that not only are they in the Null Node, they appear to be able to travel down through it to something below- both Dig and Rose confirm that this is not a space known to exist.

With no other obvious options, they descend. Rose is almost instantly killed, and disappears, shattering into many tiny pieces. PPJ manages to stabilize her body in the basement as she seizes, but she seems changed. After assensing her, he realizes she is no longer a Technomancer! The rest of the team sneaks down the vines, spotting a grey silhouette at the bottom. They also appear to be back in the real world- they have their equipment again and are no longer having to fit with a paradigm. They open fire, and destroy the gray man, but this seems to attract further attention, as numerous of the Null Sect triangle mouths start flooding the chamber.

They spot a device in the center of the chamber, overgrown with vines, and labelled “Hengester SEED”. Otters opens fire on it and the others follow as the Null begin attacking them. Luckily Dig’s biofeedback filter absorbs much of the initial assault, but the team starts getting hurt, and PPJ frantically tries to stay on top of healing their bodies with the med drone and spells. Just as Creep finally blasts apart the device, he sees a huge switch on top, that based on vine growth patterns and such seems to have been turned on recently. Dig also was able to analyze the device a bit, and determined that it was the source of the noise, that it was hooked up to all the TM brains, that it was pulling energy somehow from the Resonance, and that this current project seemed intended to sever Resonance and Matrix connections.

With the device destroyed, the noise finally stops, but CG is quickly also killed alongside Dig as they fight the Null. PPJ manages to stabilize them both in their meat bodies. However, with Dig gone, and all the various shades of silhouette pouring into the chamber from the Foundation above as the vines retract, the rest of the team is one their own. Otters, tripping badly from some pyschotropic side effect of her wounds, notices some kind of strange pressure change, and TD and Creep are able to sneak through the crowd well enough to avoid further injury and guide Otters along with.

They head down the one side passage that none of the Null seem to be using, and find a rippling vortex blocking their way. With the Null closing in behind them, and seeing a glimpse of what looks like PPJ through a fisheye disttortion, they dive in, and all tumble back into their meat bodies- but it all felt so real! Only TD stays conscious from the dumpshock, though luckily PPJ is able to keep both the others from flat-lining. With the team all “safely” out of the matrix and badly injured, they prepare to figure out how to get out of there, hoping the fighting upstairs has wrapped up as they don’t have much capacity left.

They also see that all the TM’s hooked up to the terminal have flat-lined, and wonder if some of the ghostly forms they saw at the carnival were those same TM’s, slowly being used up…. They are able to ID most of the TM’s as ones reported missing around town since the Blackouts, but there are also a fair number of others, as if some were brought here ahead of time! Also- where were they? It seemed so real!

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
The Detective
Otters aka Roadkill
Pepper Jack

The remaining infiltration team, having barely escape the Black Lodge neighborhood before the ritual disruption caused a massive disaster, floats around in Lake St Clair for a while before Wood Raven finds them and hauls them back to shore, tactfully not mentioning the wreckage of his nice stealth speedboat. He tells them that a spirit dog showed up in front of him and guided him out to their floating wreckage raft, and Otters feels that Dog has perhaps repaid the favor owed to her.

When they get back to shore, Wood Raven helps Otters do some emergency drying out of all the drones and the team links back up with ChewGum and The Detective at the main offensive line/distraction attack position. TD had been helping with tactics and coordination. Creep also eventually shows up, a bit too late to assist, reporting that the spirits that attacked and chased him, trying to steal his leg, suddenly vanished.

Not getting any response on the radio, they decide to check up on the Belle Isle crew, and head that way, while Creep works on cracking the safe that Dig stole. Finding some explosives inside, he gets PPJ to use his spectral hand to disable them, and gets in. Creep is also a little weirded out, as is TD, by PPJ’s whole deal and backstory, especially given the revelation of there having been another PPJ in Black Lodge custody. At their insistence, though TD is much gentler about it, PPJ cuts himself and to his great relief, bleeds red.

Inside the safe are a number of Tarot cards and a sheaf of papers. The Tarot cards included 2 that the team hasn’t seen before related to the Seelie Court, one that was stolen from Smoach and Myrryr’s office, and one that was a component of the Crystal Bloodblade, which the BL has some historic interest in. There is also a mysterious 5th card, which seems to be from an entirely different Tarot. Creep stashes them for now, and finds that the mystery 5th card has some kind of repellent function with the standard 6th World Tarot cards, but manages to jam them all in his leg.

Looking at the sheaf of papers, they find it encoded using a language none of them are familiar with, though CG recognizes the use of ideograms, and PPJ spots some linguistic similarities to Sperethiel. TD is able to recognize some cryptographic qualities, and thinks it likely is using an ancient/obscure language as a cipher, rather than fully being written in alternate syntax etc.

PPJ checks the journal that he grabbed off Freddy Bales’ dad, who seems to have used the nom de guerre “Karyos”. The journal is also encoded, but has two other interesting features. One, there is one half of a key to the cipher in it. 2, it seems to have been magically linked to one or more other books, like a written version of Mindlink, but the spell seems to have recently collapsed.

Creep remembers that Penelope Beans was also in the BL sanctum basement, and suggests they check on her shop in Hamtramck after checking out Belle Isle. They arrive at the Isle to find it truly devastated. It seems the BL attackers were eventually fought off (likely unable to summon reinforcements given the team’s assault on Casa Aurelius), but at great cost. Most of the buildings are damaged or levelled, the Cleansing ritual has stopped, and a major portion of the populace has been killed or injured.

After using magic, drones, leadership, flexibility and strength to dig through the rubble, they manage to help pull out Rose and D2 (aka Daiyana Dimeeko) the sole survivors of the Belle Isle/Windsor crew. Rose seems embittered by her continual losses and a bit in shock. D2 is more pragmatic and explains that the BL was close to overrunning them so she was forced to set off some defensive demo charges she had placed around to protect the ritualists as long as she could.

She tells the team that the BL used some kind of horrifying new weapon that the survivors here are referring to as “ghost bombs”- some kind of alchemical container in which they had trapped dark spirits, including some of the ones that came through the rifts, during their various rituals and experiments. When opened or broken, the spirits madly attack anyone in their vicinity, which caused mass casualties and distress. The ritualists were also attacked in astral space by some massive conjured spirits, who luckily vanished right around the time the BL ritual went sideways in Casa Aurelius, so the team did still manage to help here, indirectly.

They eventually find a badly wounded Jaga recuperating inside a large congregation of plant life, and leave her to heal (with some guards), but Walker in Ways and most of the other ritualists have been slain. Dig offers to return to help more soon. Otters finds Howell killed, alongside his 2 cyber-tigers, and while talking to survivors TD and CG hear of a Vatican Sacred Detective who came to their aid, as well as one of the 36 Hidden Righteous Ones who awakened during the fight and managed to keep many civilians safe from the dark spirits, but unfortunately both of them were slain as well.

CG coordinates with The People of the Book to get their mobile crematorium and burial preparation team down here to help out, and Creep and Dig manage to make everyone uncomfortable by suggesting they call the ghouls to eat other remains, before TD smooths things over by clarifying that the ghouls will of course only eat BL remains, which everyone seems ok with. The team hauls the BL bodies off to one side and calls the ghouls. Then they head to Hamtramck.

Good thing they invested so heavily in the district! Local volunteer firefighters managed to quickly extinguish the massive blaze that broke in Penelope Beans’ shop and keep it from spreading. Investigating the burnt remains, they find evidence of alchemical arson, seemingly the same powerful fire magic that destroyed Smoach and Myrryr’s office. They find burnt reagents, tools, books and supplies, and a slagged anthrodrone covered in the melted remains of it’s realistic features “skin”.

Dig uses the catalog spell to search for anything else unusual, and finds a shovel head (the handle burnt) away from the other tools, as well as one loose floor tile. PPJ pries it up and digs a bit til he finds a book- it’s still warm from the extreme heat of the fire but this looks promising. TD goes to open it, carefully not exposing their skin, and barely avoids getting jabbed with a spring-loaded neuro-toxin needle. Looking carefully inside their seem to be no further traps, and this looks to be the other half of the cipher.

A number of pages were torn out and are missing, so there’s no further info than that, but the team can tell this was also part of the linked books spell that Karyos’ was also bound to. This one is also inert. TD hauls their open air bathtub up to the roof of the Tin Can since the team abandoned their safehouse out back, and they all head back to the Plat Zone to rest and work on cracking the code.

With TD and Creep’s skills and focus, and both halves of the key, they manage to make sense of the documents. It seems that the BL had initially conceptualized their Horror-summoning and binding plan based on some research done by something called “Project PILLAR”, run by the Ordo Maximus. The BL has apparently heavily infiltrated the OM and has good sources there, but seems concerned that the legendary vampire hunter Martin deVries may be onto Project PILLAR, so the OM set a trap for him, after being tipped off by the BL.

The BL doesn’t know how this went, as they heard no more from their spy in the OM, and then have lost comms due to the Blackout. The sheaf of papers also includes a lot of technical info about their rituals and plans, the ghost bombs, etc. The journal also proves interesting- it seems that everyone in the BL is constantly scheming. Karyos was worried that a subordinate wad trying to supplant him (the woman who lead the ritual where CG almost got sacrificed and Dog got split up), while also trying to supplant his own superior (Penelope Beans).

He complains that Beans has such a strong position due to her successful longterm infiltration of the IOND, which greatly upsets PPJ. He knew the Boston chapter of the IOND was compromised, but this implies a much larger corruption in his organization. Karyos knows that he needs to pull off something big to compete with Beans, so he made a deal with the Null Sect, through the rogue Brackhaus that the team recently exposed, to assist them with something called “Project IXION”. He apparently knew the Blackouts were coming, to some extent, and was able to prep for them.

He had already spent years building up the local BL presence, recruiting many to move to Detroit from DeeCee when the BL lost their power base there, feeling that ARES would be good protection against UCAS Shedim counterstrikes. He ramped this up even further in prep for the Blackouts, and then triggered his plan in the background while everyone else was distracted by bugs and no power. He also hints at a larger goal beyond his own/the BL’s power- humans need to be able to protect themselves properly against “deep/distant metaplanar threats” and this is how he sees to do that.

With all this disturbing paydata to mull over (and decide who to sell to), the team finally rests. The next day, they get a call from Ringmaster to come meet him and some other Plat Zone Irregulars in a large open lot not too far away. He warns them not to freak out as a portal opens and they hear a distant screaming. As a massive flaming buffalo head at the front of a biomechanical train emerges, they see another rift tear open and the train start entering that as it exits the other. It slows a bit as it moves until once “car” segment irises open and two figures inside frantically toss out a bunch of hardcases before leaping free themselves.

One of them semi-frantically asks if anyone has anything they can pay the train with to make sure it departs peacefully, and Creep offers up the Coin of Woe from his leg, since Cholula is no longer there to protest. The woman accepts it, and tosses it to another flaming buffalo head at the rear of the train as it prepares to scream- it instead chomps down on the Coin, and leaves peacefully, the rifts closing behind it one after the other. And thus also departs whatever remains of Iva Linus Hathaway.

The women uncloaks herself and reveals that she is Dr. Dyna Mite, the metaplanar travel researcher, who recognizes Creep, Dig, and CG. She seems a little horrified that they had a Coin of Woe, but explains it was actually perfect currency, as those trains consume souls to run- efficient travel, but costly and dangerous. She tells them a little more about other “ghost trains” which tend to run more regionally or along their old tracks, rather than free-roaming “Iron Buffalo”.

They chat a bit and catch up, and she explains that she had to leave Seattle, where they last saw her, saying that the Ordo Maximus was after her- she doesn’t know why exactly, all she was able to determine was that it had to do with something called “Project AVERNUS”. The team makes note. She also gives them the brief news update from outside- Free St Louis is official to go along with Seattle, the Sioux Nation has renamed themselves Oceti Sakowin after retaking a bunch of their ancestral lands, and they seems to be doing well in their new turf so far as they go the power back on quickly. Blackouts continue throughout the UCAS, with varying degrees of severity, but it seems like the Grid Pirates/Blackout Boyz haven’t been nearly as active anywhere outside of Detroit, though present in a number of cities.

As the other figure from the train uncloaks herself, she and Ringmaster engage in a handshake-to-hug, and the team recognizes Arleesh’s voice, Kendra de Santos. They all head back to the SCIF at the Plat Zone, and get into it. De Santos provides them with a bit more news from outside, and suggests that the BL ritual implosion that killed thousands of civilians in Casa Aurelius will be excellent PR to recruit for the Rogue Lodge, and then briefs the team on that a bit as well.

Ringmaster provides PPJ with some messages- Darien Black summons him to Denver, promising some information about his disappearance but not acting nearly as fatherly as PPJ always hopes, Jonny Silver survived the Wild Hunt and celebrated with a 100 hour set on a riverboat down to Free STL, and is now back in Denver running Perinawyr’s label and club, since P has been banned from Denver by Ghostwalker, and Prot0 is also apparently back in Denver, but in a secretive “international terrorist on the run” way. Guy is in the wind, presumably with Berto, and de Santos explains that Aylin now works, with her mother, for Grey Cell, and has been especially useful on anti-Fear the Dark and Ordo Maximus ops, being infected herself.

With this news confirming that PPJ will be headed to Denver alongside most of the team, de Santos suggests that it would also be a great town to recruit for the Rogue Lodge in, since they can’t operate as “openly” as usual given GW’s autocratic control. de Santos and Ringmaster next explains that as well as valuable medicines, reagents and the like that they brought on the train, they brought some more of the artifacts that the ASPS made in Chicago to establish a Spirit of the City there, and plan to do the same process here.

They hint that they aim to establish Detroit as a longterm R&D and training base for Grey Cell, as well as wanting it to stay free in general, which the team gets on board with. They say they will also need ritualists to stabilize and sustain the SOTC, esp as it first gets going, and Dig immediately volunteers to remain, distressing Creep, who is still reeling from Cholula’s loss, while also becoming closer and closer to cyberpsychosis himself. They decide to table it for now and talk about the job at hand.

Ringmaster provides them with a list of 7 likely candidates, though he says they are free to seek out more, and suggests they check them all out, and use their influence around town to bring different factions on board to help establish one as the new SOTC. With the Belle Isle cleansing ritual down, and the BL having fucked up local mana space significantly, this project should take some priority.

The team heads out to start their investigation, starting up near Hamtrack along 8 Mile at the Magic Bag theater. There, they interact with some Juggalos, who seem appreciative of the team’s efforts to get food and other supplies to town and distro’ed around, and introduce them to their spirit leader, Hatchetman. Dig stays in the van, refusing to say a single “woop woop”, even though Dog has some affinity for the callouts to “family”. The rest of the team spends a few hours there, and feels a beneficial sense of chaos, at least for the in group. The spirit seems to be engaged in voluntary karmic pacts with it’s followers, and seems focused on keeping them safe and well but also very willing to turn on outsiders.

They aren’t totally sold but other than Dig are not inherently opposed. Next they head to the Motown Museum in Downtown, and party with a mix of spirits and metahumans, who are rotating through various instruments, keeping a dance party going. The Museum seems impressively intact, and TD sees that some of The Keepers seem to use this as a safe downtown spot to sleep. They chat with Smokey, who seems to be “in charge”, and who explains that music is necessary for rebuilding, and people need to cut loose after all the trauma. They dance a bit, and Smokey even gets an earworm stuck in Dig’s mind, after he claims to never have cared about music.

Smokey seems to recognize the balance of business and art needed to make it work, so a strong contender currently. They head for the next one, at an old Ford plant turned museum in Dearborn. They find a bunch of gaunt but muscular workers laboring away to repair the surrounding area, under the guidance of an imperious spirit named “Henry”. They question him a bit, and he seems to have strong feeling about his paternalistic role towards his workers, and his vision for a city rebuilt for the “right” kind of people. Dig is totally onboard but most of the rest of the team is suspicious, especially given Ford’s political history.

They next head up to the Blight, to track down a spirit called simply “Blight”. They find some toxie cultists who call themselves the Scions of the Blight, hanging around the area known as the Rusted Heart. They take the team to a toxic pool, which bubbles and spews forth strange, rapidly growing and decaying vines and plant life, rapidly disassembling nearby structures. The spirit talks through it’s acolytes and calls for an end to Anthropocene- metahuman supremacy must be abolished, cities destroyed, and the world rewilded, through mutation, just another word for rapid change.

CG and Dig are entranced and want to sign on. They spend some team helping tear down some nearby infrastructure, while Dog feels a bit ambivalent and many of the others more so, though also participating for now. They head out but Dig is really onboard. They rest up after a long day before hitting up the remaining 3. The next day they start off with “Hatcher”, at the old Solidarity House in the Docklands. They find a mixed group of dock workers, downtown working class survivors, and Betas/Deso Angels hanging out, shooting the shit, drinking and organizing.

Behind the bar, Hatcher pours the team some drinks. Dig drinks a bunch extra when PPJ, Creep and Otters all refuse (2 for sobriety, 1 for no mouth). Hatcher seems pleased at Dig’s ability to toss them back but less impressed by his admitted lack of physical prowess. They chat for a while, and Hatcher comes across well- recognizing the need for employment and the ability to survive/make a living for the people of Detroit, but wanting to protect all the little people from corpo degradation. PPJ also picks up a buggy vibe in general, and realizes Hatcher may have multiple meanings.

Inquiring about bugs, Hatcher explains she’s against queens the same way she’s against bosses- she’s for collective organizing and power. They hang for a while and have a good time, before heading for the shores of Lake St. Claire, where they encounter Three Fires- 3 spirits who have sat themselves around a campfire, exchanging stories and gossip as a means of doing business, all seemingly having arrived via spectral canoes. These seem to represent the Council of 3 Fires, the Ojibwe, Ottawa and Potawatomi people whose ancestral homelands encompass the whole metro area.

They have a long and fruitful conversation, in which the spirits tell the team that especially with the news from out West, it is only a matter of time until all their lands are returned to them, but that the days of mass expulsions are over- assuming the UCAS doesn’t force their hands again. This seems to be more the long game vision though, and a Free Detroit seems reasonable in the meantime- always fun to stick it to DeeCee, plus the people here deserve better than either the Feds or ARES. The team chats and hangs for a while before leaving, also feeling these spirits are strong contenders.

Lastly, they track down Singing Sam, who seems to be glitching between classic Mafia attire and a more modern Triad look. They chat with him for a while and Dig manages to magically chill him out enough that he accepts the shift in local organized crime, taking on a Triad look fulltime. Dig also gets Smokey’s song stuck in Singing Sam’s head, who walks off whistling it with a purpose, seemingly reinvigorated. With all the info in, the team puts together a ranked choice ballot and votes. Hatcher wins out eventually, though the range of opinions was quite wide.

With this decided, they call on all the factional rep and contacts around town, distributing the ASPS artifacts around to everyone they can get onboard, and de Santos leads a ritual at the Plat Zone, setting up Hatcher as the SOTC. Hatcher’s first order of business is setting up a spirit council with the other contenders, all of whom accept except Henry, who prefers to go it along on executing his vision. The team hopes by not giving him more power, they staved off a “paper clip problem” situation, and are encouraged by Hatcher’s action, though Creep is disappointed not to have returned the control of the city directly to it’s Native people.

With that done, Brunwyn gets in touch and tells them that with Otters’ mapping data and the intel they managed to salvage from the rogue Brackhaus that the team revealed, she has managed to track down the “center” of the zap zone and presumably the source of the Blackouts- the old main power station from the wired grid on Zug Island, in the Detroit river. She tells the team it’s time to do some recon and plan their assault- they need to get the power back on.

The other big news is that with the SOTC chosen and initially established, the sky finally returns to Earth normal and the leylines around town start to normalize. Shortly after this occurs, SK troops who had held off a nearby Quebecois invasion attempt, enter Windsor in force and make short work of the “True Canadian” separatists there, focusing on lightning strikes and quick surrender once SK gains control of the airport. This puts them on a more even footing with Wuxing locally, given the heavy Triad influx, leaving AZT in the weak position of the corporate triad in town at the moment.

Runners
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
and the mysterious return of: Pepper Jack

The team spends a few days healing, repairing armor, gear and drones, and resting. ChewGum composes another memorial poem for Cholula, which is quickly shared around the memorial boards around town, and posted at the Plat Zone alongside CG’s memorial to Locke. Condolences for Cholula’s death come in from various different avenues, though there is also some relief from those who are still concerned about Betas as a phenomenon. CG also spends some time in his ritual space and summons a detritus spirit, a new entity he has learned to engage with, which will hopefully disturb others less than the corpses he usually summons.

Ringmaster calls them over to the Plat Zone for a meeting, and explains a strange situation to them. He had teams out fighting leftover spirits and closing rifts all over Downtown, cleaning up after the team shut down the big BL ritual, and one of them encountered someone. He helped them fight off some spirits and close a rift, and said some stuff about Denver and some other things, while seeming very confused. Ringmaster brought him here and got him fed, but wants the team to do a debrief on him.

He brings them back into the SCIF room at the back of the Brickhouse, and they are surprised to see that the man sitting there looks to be none other than former team member Pepperjack, who they are all very familiar with from the team file, especially having recently reviewed some of PPJ’s notes on the Denver “reality rips” while fighting rifts here in Detroit. He does indeed seem quite confused, and Otters does careful etiquette work to try to bring him up to speed while introducing the team.

PPJ seems to really hate blood mages and initially has some trouble with Dig who explains Red magic somewhat poorly, insisting it is based on the power of blood. Otters explains that it’s not quite like that, and tries to explain the Tzuri group, which then leads into CG, who they have to convince PPJ is not a shedim. Luckily, once they explain that they are fighting the Black Lodge, PPJ agrees to assist. His memory has some major gaps, but he slowly recalls stuff from before his disappearance in Temple of Terror IV that checks out with the team file, so they believe it to truly be him.

PPJ refuses Dig’s offer to read his mind to try to restore missing memories, still not quite trusting him. They check in with Ringmaster and tell him that PPJ’s story checks out, and that he will be working with them for now. Ringmaster thanks him, and in payment for his assistance agrees to attempt to contact some of his former team members (Jonny Silver, Guy, Prot0, Aylin etc) when able, as well as get a message out immediately to Darien Black via TM comms.

Ringmaster explains that they need to round up every ally they can to hit the Black Lodge in their fortified wall neighborhood, before they can complete whatever it is that they’re attempting now. The team decides to host another shadow meeting at the Plat Zone, and splits up to contact everyone they think can help. PPJ is delighted to hear that one of his contacts, Erika Knowles, is in town, so he agrees to tag along to that meeting as well as a bunch of the other ones since he actually seems the closest to a “face” on the team at the moment, with The Detective still occupied in rebuilding Hamtramck.

Creep has also been off comms for a while, scouting out the BL defenses, but they leave him a message and hope he checks it. CG and PPJ head up to Hamtramck and give TD a brief on the plan, as well as Sikh Burn and their other allies. They agree to send what help they can, with Sikh Burn planning to attend the meeting to represent their area. They stop in at Penelope Beans’ shop to get PPJ stocked up on reagents, as he reappeared with very little equipment and no money.

PPJ is instantly weirded out by Beans, who he has actually heard of before- she was listed as the info broker/supply point of contact for IOND shadow ops in Detroit when PPJ was doing that work for Darien Black back in Denver. She asks him about his affinity for crystals suggestively and he deflects, which also weirds CG out a bit. CG starts to notice that there seems to be a tiny lag in Beans’ responses, and they quickly assense her, finding no aura at all. Not having time to investigate further, they tag this to look into, buy their reagents, and head out.

Back at the Plat Zone, the team starts questioning PPJ about some of the things that Beans said about him, and he reveals that he has a blood Crystal spine, but refuses to acknowledge that it is blood magic at Dig’s consternation. When Otters scans him more thoroughly, she finds another small implanted crystal alongside the spine, which PPJ has no memory or knowledge of. He now agrees to let Dig read his mind, and Dig goes all out, finding that there is a large blank period between his disappearance in Boston and reappearance here, though it is only about 1/10th the amount of time that passed on Earth, implying some metaplanar travel and time distortion.

PPJ has only faint memories of a mazelike city, and being kept there against his will and forced to do things, and Dig is able to get a little more info there, and recognizes the memories of the city as “Dis”, that chaotic city that the team had caught a brief glimpse of, and managed to get a Quicksilver plate of, on the moon, through an anomalous portal there. But what does it mean? Dig analyzes the mystery crystal further, as it seems connected to PPJ’s brainstem, and tries to detect thoughts on it. It seems alien in nature- he’s unfamiliar with it as either a tech device or a magical spell/construct and can’t fully make heads or tails of it, but can tell it is storing something.

Also it seems to be made of the same material as the manatech weapon chips that TM’s have been digging for around the Scar blast zone. Dig decides to Mind Probe the crystal as well, and finds that it is storing some of PPJ’s missing memories, somehow, as well as working similarly to a Blood Crystal, in terms of providing an implant-like function in exchange for essence that would be lost if it were removed. He sees PPJ fighting and performing surgeries (making Chimeras, similar to the ones encountered at Site 000), all seemingly not under his own control, or in a kind of daze.

A cloaked figure eventually takes PPJ away after quickly implanting this crystal, and leads him on a mad flight through the chaotic streets of Dis, before shoving him through a portal, leading him into what looks like Kadath. PPJ stumbles through Kadath for a while before tumbling out into Detroit, and being found by Ringmaster’s crew. PPJ, with some memories restored, compares notes with the team on how terrifying Kadath and the Bone Bridges beyond are, and is disturbed when Otters seems to be a little too interested in Bridge building.

Otters also insists on deeper scans, and runs a comparison with Chimera samples they got for Knowles in Site 000, and finds that PPJ has been altered. She then does a thorough radar scan, and finds the alteration- an extremely long tongue that wraps around the interior of PPJ’s skull, like a woodpecker. However, it seems more lizard-like when Otters yanks it out to full extension and runs a series of experiments. It seems to extend very rapidly to a 3-4 meter range, and be both prehensile and very sticky.

PPJ goes along with this, but then, disturbed, leans on a wall, and is horrified when his hand phases through. He tells the team he can feel inside the wall and seems upset so they yank him out, pulling some drywall with. After some experimentation, he finds he can make his hands spectral, and slide them through solid surfaces, though it doesn’t work on objects and he can’t bring stuff back through. The team, thoroughly creeped out, takes notes, but it seems like since PPJ is as surprised as them, they stick with him for now.

They round up a number more allies from all over town, and get ready for the big meeting. Everyone shows, with the exception of Creep and Jaga/Walker in Ways. After some deal-making, overseen by Ringmaster, it shakes out as follows: The Betas will get to keep former ARES HQ tower, now renamed Freehive, as a base for their new style of merge, the University will remain a free enclave, Hamtramck assures it’s ongoing semi-independence, the gang coop assures it’s dominance of local street level crime (with a pro-social aspect), Biyu lays claim to syndicate control of Detroit via the Triad, with the ports under Wuxing’s aegis, and SK and AZT makes plans to split up the rest of the town, seeming to recognize that a somewhat freeform area can be useful to both their corps, with appropriate controls in place.

Otters makes the case for the streets as best she can after Ringmaster pushes a bit, and the corporate triad agrees- Brunwyn makes comparisons to Berlin having it’s uses, Cehualli seems happy to have space for some black labs and also an opportunity to make ARES look bad on a massive PR scale, and Biyu seems quite thrilled with holding onto everything she managed to grab during the crises here. Ringmaster side channels the team to tell them that he has some plans in the works he will bring them further into later also, to help ensure the city stays free.

With the meeting concluded and everyone onboard, Brunwyn privately insists on 2 more personal conditions for her assistance- PPJ will be interviewed by an SK doctor once Detroit reopens, and the team will assist her with getting the matrix issues resolved. She compares notes quickly with Otters and thinks that together they should be able to finally determine the origin of the Zap Zone. She explains that the rogue Brackhaus the team helped take out a few days back had apparently been working for the Null Sect inside the corp, having been lured into their employ with promises of treatment for his CFD infection, which he kept secret from the corp for fear of the obvious repercussions.

The team agrees, and Brunwyn signs on fully as well. The team gets a panicked message from Creep, saying he couldn’t make the meeting as he got ambushed by some people who tried to steal his leg. He got away for now but needs to keep running/hiding, and go dark while he does. They also haven’t heard from Jaga and Walker in Ways still, so bird Dig and Otters in a VTOL zip over to Belle Isle, and find it under attack both physically, from a few dozen well-armed and armored BL soldiers, as well as on the astral, where some powerful spirits are assaulting the cleansing ritual.

Both Dig and Otters are quickly spotted, though it seems the battle is pitched enough that they make their escape without coming under attack. Returning to the Plat Zone and reporting in, they all decide that they need to launch the attack on Casa Aurelius immediately, with at least some BL forces elsewhere engaged, and hope that splitting the BL’s attention can help their allies on Belle Isle. Wood Raven comes through with a stealthed rocket speedboat for the team to use to insert via Lake St. Clair, and Patricia Loveland (finally meeting in person now that Cholula is dead, though she still distrusts the Betas), Erika Knowles, and Ellis manage to make some quick and dirty mini-portal closers for the team to distribute around the area once they sneak in.

Everyone else will assault Casa Aurelius’ defenses from the land side, hopefully distracting the defenders and allowing the team to pull off their risky alpha strike. They get a number of side messages offering big paydays in exchange for paydata and items recovered from the BL stronghold. The team drives to the waterfront east of the Bligh, and loads up into the boat. Otters steers it down, remaining out of sight of guards on the shore. PPJ spots some patrolling spirits, and they make a plan. Otters, with her new sniper drone, and CG with his rifle, both take down one of the two guards on the beach they choose for their landing.

PPJ hits one of them again with a spell to keep him down, while Dig uses magic hands to pull them both into the water until they drown, while also hopefully concealing any TacNet signals. They approach, with Otters accidentally beaching the boat on some tank traps, but not catastrophically. Dig uses magic hands again to lift up the concertina wire strung along the shore, careful not the break the circuit flowing through it, and the team sneaks up to the mana barrier in between spirit patrols.

Dig reshapes his aura to look like Freddy Bales, and easily slips through. He then assists the others as they power down their various magics and enter, and has en easy time bringing all the drones through as he has “legitimate access”. The team sneaks through town, seeing the battle kicking off on the land side, as well as hearing distant muffled sounds of fighting ongoing from Belle Isle. Otters begins planting their mini-portal closer bombs via stealth drone at magical junction points spotted by the mages, as they all conceal themselves from foot patrols. One of which comes by seeking Freddy Bales- apparently someone detected “his” entrance through the barrier.

Dig does some quick bird recon, and finds Bales’ manor, figuring it’s a good target for looting. CG finds a sniper perch to keep a lookout and cause a distraction if needed, and Otters keep planting charges. Dig and PPJ head to the manor, and PPJ pulses the front to shut down electronic defenses, using his spectral hand to unlock the deadbolt from inside the door. They enter, and poke around, finding a study, where Dig uncovers a safe set in the floor, which he magically shapes concrete to free and then lifts out with his magic hands. PPJ reaches around inside but can’t open it, so they bring it with for now.

Otters has most of the charges planted when CG spots some other BL snipers taking high vantage points in preparation for the area’s defense. He takes them out with his rifle, but then has to flee, getting tagged a couple times by guards as he runs away. He leads them on a chase for a bit, allowing Otters time to plant the last few charges, before CG runs out of the barrier towards town, fleeing to the safety of his allies’ assault lines. He gets hit a few more times but luckily is defended by his spirit and mostly takes them on the armor.

Meanwhile, PPJ and Dig have found a secret door down to a sound-proofed and well-appointed basement. Sneaking forward, they find Bales’ dad in conversation with none other than Penelope Beans herself! Both appear to be BL leaders, and strangest of all, they have another PPJ tied to a chair in a vault room in the basement. They get in a magical fight, managing to take out Bales’ dad as Beans tries to seal the vault door. Dig prevents it with magic hands as PPJ quickly grabs a journal that slid out of Bales’ dad’s robe when he collapsed to the floor and died.

They get in a brutal magical slugfest with Beans, who deals them both a lot of damage before Dig finally manages to smack her with his magic hand, distracting her. Otters, searching for them now that the charges are planted, finally locates the basement, and rushes to their aid, blasting Beans with a Mule drone, killing her. Otters says they need to get out of there, and heads back upstairs, hearing some guards approaching, reporting 2 “high value assets’” biomonitors just triggered.

Otters waits for an opportune moment, and then detonates the charges outside to distract the response team, before fleeing out the back, telling the others to follow. In the basement, PPJ is befuddled by his seeming exact double, and the double (drugged and slurring) keeps insisting that he is the real one, and that the false one will bleed purple. Dig gives in and cuts the double, who seems completely horrified to see purple blood pour from the wound.

As PPJ tries to get them to leave and figure it out later, Dig fires the double with a lightning bolt, and then flees. The team races away from the back of the mansion as pressure builds in the air, heading towards the boat. Dig manages to hoist it off the tank traps partway with magic hands and Otters rocket boosts the craft free, though it is holed and taking on water. CG keeps shooting on the town side as the mana barrier starts to crackle and destabilize. Vihn Trong and other mages race forward to contain the expected blowback as best they can, as Otters races the boat straight away out into the lake.

As the district implodes inside the barrier and then explodes out from it in a massive pressure wave, the mages are able to deflect it out into the lake. The boat is flipped, but Otters in the VTOL and bird Dig manage to fly through it, and then are able to make enough of a drone raft to hoist PPJ up and keep him from drowning. They are eventually rescued by some allies after a while floating, during which they watch the astral sky stabilize to a more normal appearance. Not quite regular night stars yet but getting closer!

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Tabasco aka Cholula

Dig starts off the day by heading up to his magical order meeting at the zoo. Everyone trickles in, with Freddy Bales there before even Dig, and his usual preppy self, and then the other 2 showing up, concealed (Norman Burger) or wrapped up in defensive magic (Marjo-Lin). Dig gives an inspiring introduction to the day’s lesson plan, and Bales gives him a subtle thumbs up, casually undermining his authority as per usual. The initiation goes well however, and everyone succeeds under Dig’s guidance, gaining access to new powers and abilities.

Dig heads back, and the team briefs with Ringmaster- the rifts are still popping up, and still need to get looked into- he’s trying to keep anyone he can off the Downtown streets, whether that’s getting them out of the district or underground (where there don’t seem to have been any rifts yet). They head out and Creep and Otters work up a rift map of the known occurrences thus far, and start trying to guess where others might be based in their estimation of the cause/origin in the portal weapon that Vogel detonated to end the bug threat.

Dig casts a massive catalog spell to seek the strange reflective black metal, and they quickly find a rift. Two large horned apes in heavy smoking armor wielding greataxes have cornered a group of civilians and already taken some heads. The team decides they have to get involved, and CG debuts his new astral combat spell which he just learned from Dig earlier in preparation. They manage to send the two spirits back through the rift and get a drone in just in time to get some sensor data before it snaps shut. Dig also gets some magical analysis done. Unfortunately, the van takes some heavy damage from one of the axes.

The drone through the rift saw that the spirits, after being disrupted in our plane, seem to have reformed in Kadath, not healed but healing, so probably for the best that the team didn’t follow them in. Otters once again sees “through” Kadath to a Bone Bridge, but perceiving it through drone sensors seems to blunt the impact to some degree. Dig manages to determine that the rifts seems to be temporarily reaspecting their immediate area into effectively being a part of Kadath, which is probably why most of the spirits stick pretty close to them.

He also sees some magical tendrils drifting away from the rift towards the area of Downtown under the Scar, which looks unusually turbulent today. Otters and Creep have also compared some notes while updating their rifts map, and determined that they have a centerpoint- the former plaza/park that was right out front of ARES HQ downtown, next to the site of the detonation that caused the Scar. They head that way, stealthily, to see what’s up.

They manage some good recon without getting spotted, but what they see is pretty awful- a circle of 12 Black Lodge mages have a massive magical dome up around their ritual circle, and seem to be pulling some kind of cyclonic astral tunnel down from the Scar, though it seems to travel through and beyond Kadath now, as if they have redirected that astral effect. It hasn’t touched down yet, and seems to progress in jerks and starts, likely as more rifts open, from what they can tell.

They also have 4 heavy gunners set up in well defended positions with good views watching for any mundane threats approaching, and 2 adept guards with mage blades fighting off any spirits. Interestingly, the strange spirits that have emerged from the rifts seem drawn to this place, so they have their hands busy, acting as a quick response force to keep them from reaching the ritual dome.

The team tries to call it in to Ringmaster, and finds that either the magic or a jamming field is blocking comms, so they retreat a bit to call it in. Feeling that the threat level warrants it, they also decide to try to use their last two major arcana. Dig easily activates The Eclipse card, and sees a horrifying vision of the future if the ritual succeeds, which seems hyperreal to him, but is undetectable to the others. It shows the cyclone touching down, and the BL using this ritual plus others around town to fragment and capture a Horror from beyond the Chasm, across the Bone Bridge, chaining it with incantations and bindings as they slice it apart to make it manageable.

As this occurs, Dig sees in the vision, the local astral plane is immediately reshaped and made terrible, almost like an inverse of the establishment of a Spirit of the City, and much faster. Dig gets the feeling that even though they seem barely able to hold the containment, this will grant the BL an almost unimagineable amount of power, at least locally. He emerges from the vision trance to find the card gone, with no time having passed for the others. He describes what he saw, and they make the call as Creep tries to puzzle out the Discipline card.

Ringmaster instructs them to attack as they likely can’t afford to wait, and says he will call for aid but needs the team to slow or stop the ritualists in the mean time as it will take some time to muster assistance. Creep finally chills out enough, with CG’s assistance, to center himself, and lay out and clean all his gear in prep for this upcoming monumental task, and succeeds in activating Discipline. It manifests as a powerful Task spirit, in the guise of Rosanne era John Goodman, who says he will assist Creep and protect him during his upcoming ordeal. A drone zips in close to the van and a prerecorded message from Wood Raven wishes them luck, dropping off two missiles to get revenge for all the Swarm members lost to spirits and rifts lately.

Feeling as prepped as they can and with no time to waste, they make a quick plan of attack and head back to the ritual area. Creep and Cholula approach through the DDB tunnels, planning to attack from the East, where the final big bug breakout left a large opening, while the rest of the team hits from the SW. They set their mission timers, and wait to hit “go” until they see some strange spirits on the approach to distract the mageblade guards.

As some horrifying birdmen (who seem to perhaps have been lured here by small figures who slip away) attack, the team makes their move. Otters hits the spirits and mageblades with simultaneous missile and overlapping fields of fire from the two Mules, which takes out the mageblades and damages the spirits. The team finds the other 4 guards quite a bit harder, and gets into a brutal shootout with them, with Dig launching magical attacks from the cover of the van, CG sniping from extreme range at height, Otters firing from the van and two drones, and Creep and Cholula making their approach and hitting the opposite corner guard with flaming arrows, elephant guns and spirit powers.

The guards, heavily armed and armored, make fairly short work of both Mules and the van, spinning up their miniguns with devastating effects. Creep almost takes a couple bad hits that John Goodman saves him from, and Cholula gets tagged a couple times. Luckily, between Cholula’s flaming arrows and the spirit’s accident power, they manage to detonate their guards gun, and are able to chip away at his armor, even while coming under fire from one of the remaining guards.

CG has range on the guards, whose high rate of fire miniguns can’t reach his sniper perch, so he contents himself to just pick away at their armor when he can get a shot in, and also provide counterspelling support in case the ritualists get involved, which half of them quickly do. They turn to face outwards, and somehow channel some of the ritual energy into the 3 attacking birdman spirits, seemingly sucking their essence into the ritual and increasing it’s power and stability via their sacrifice.

Otters sneaks out of the van, staying in cover, and starts piloting the snake drones into the combat area to attempt some sneak attacks. Dig slips out in animal form and keeps launching spells. They gradually whittle away the guards, eventually finishing them off, but unfortunately have come to the attention of the ritualists, who have begun to target them with that same energy draining effect that destroyed the spirits. Luckily, with the guards gone, they are relatively free to maneuver so Creep gets John Goodman to massively increase his speed and plants all the team’s explosives around the magical barrier, detonating them and cracking it.

As the mages flip between targets, Cholula is badly injured and forced to retreat into the tunnel, while Creep is nearly killed, though John Goodman saves him, pushing him out of sight and getting destroyed in his place. Dig and CG are both targeted and injured, though they manage to stay in the fight with their counter-spelling. They all pour fire onto the damaged magical dome, including Cholula arcing explosive arrows out of cover, as Otters, badly injured herself from dumpshock, crawls forward to grab one of the Mule’s guns, as a distraction, before going prone and hot into the snakes.

They manage to crack the dome, destroying the mage’s magical protection, and begin attacking directly. CG starts blasting them with the sniper rifle, while also telling Cholula to reemerge from his hiding place to attack as well, he quickly lights some on fire. With all this distraction, Otters manages to successfully KO a couple mages with the snake drones’ darts- when they lose focus, they themselves are sucked into the ritual and destroyed. It seems to become more chaotic and less stable with each mage lost, but the team doesn’t have a better plan and only intermittent comms so they continue.

Dig is forced to hide himself behind a summoned concrete shield to break line of site as he is almost killed, and then turns to a bug and sneaks into the ritual circle while maintaining his concrete manipulation spell. CG covers him with sniping and counterspelling as best he can. Cholula is badly injured and nearly killed by the mages, who also finally manage to destroy the snake drones with lightning bolts, also nearly killing Otters from the dumpshock. As CG watches his team fall in horror through his scope from far away, Dig makes a last desperate move, pulling on his reserves of good fortune to shape concrete in such a way as to disrupt the ritual circle and it’s runes and markings.

With all the mages still alive and focused, they might have stood a chance, but as is they lose control. As they start getting hit with the massive drain of the failed ritual, and Dig flees the side effects, the BL mages begin bursting and being sucked into the ritual. The final mage throws back his hood, and shouts a horrified “teach! no!” revealing himself to be Freddy Bales, before slapping his hands together and himself exploding. He seems to have been the ritual leader, and the team sees that although the astral cyclone withdraws without ever having made touchdown, he was able in his final moment to redirect much of the energy of the ritual and it’s many sacrifices somewhere to the East.

Unfortunately, they also see that being the last one the ritual was tied to, Cholula has also been destroyed and sucked in, his limited essence and force providing some further power to some dark purpose as he is annihilated. Having nothing left of him to even try to heal, Dig and CG hustle to stabilize and heal Creep and Otters, and begin collecting drone and van parts they can salvage, as the reinforcements finally arrive. Brunwyn sent along her personal guards, who tell the team they are sorry they missed the fight (sincerely) but suggest a meeting with their master soon. A variety of other runners and Plat Zone regulars also show up, and secure the scene and provide support and transport to the team.

Dig invents a new drink called “The Cholula” and everyone takes shots of it back at the Plat Zone. Creep gets a new cyberarm to try to buff up his failing body a bit- it’s barely even surgery since he has the quick release ports. Dig is in a weird mental state, seeing as he lost a friend and also a student betrayed him, so he sentimentally holds onto Creep’s meat arm (literally), planning to keep it in the Vault of Ages. The team debriefs with Ringmaster, as CG does some scouting to the East to see where all that mana went. Upsettingly, it seems that the walled Casa Aurelius district is now covered in a fully opaque magical barrier, with armed guards patrolling outside.

The team remembers that Freddy Bales introduced them to an older man who he identified as his father at the museum gala in that district, and are horrified to confront the fact that although they were able to halt the main ritual, the threat of the Black Lodge may not yet be over. Passed on CG’s and other scouts’ reports, Ringmaster says they likely have a little time to heal, re-equip, and muster allies, since the BL seems to be on a defensive footing, but that they shouldn’t delay an assault for too long, as who knows what kind of nefarious deeds the BL might get up to in the meantime.

However, some good has come of the team’s actions already- they prevented the primary ritual, and this seems to have closed the Scar, as well as ending the sporadic rifts opening around town. None have been sighted since the ritual was disrupted, and Ringmaster has teams out cleaning up any straggler spirits and making sure their associated rifts close. The spirits seem to all be from the deep metaplanes or beyond- some are what are often classified as “lesser Horrors” or “Tzitzimine.”

The team rests and heals for a few days, with Otters, in a chipper mood as always, sharing memories of Cholula with those who will listen. Marjo-Lin tells Dig that she and some other Keepers were the ones that lured the birdman spirits over to the ritual, having heard Ringmasters call for aid, and also tells Dig she’s sorry for what happened to his magical order- apparently Norman Burger was another one of the BL ritualists! ML tells Dig that she was a bit surprised as she never got a human supremacist vibe off of either one, but this does explain Bales’ skill as masking his aura and appearing innocuous.

Dig briefly considers killing ML as well, just in case, but Otters talks him out of it. For one, she’s an ork, making her very unlikely to be a Black Lodge member. Also, she’s one of The Detective’s close contacts in the Keepers. For now, the team rebuilds and begins to try to figure out what to do about Casa Aurelius- a rich human-centric district makes a lot of sense as a BL stronghold.

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Tabasco aka Cholula

While resting and repairing at the new Plat Zone safehouse, the team gets a few messages. Peregrine says that he has a Johnson who specifically requested their team for a job, and Ringmaster says he needs some recon done around town on some rumors of small rifts appearing and vanishing ever since the Black Lodge ritual got disrupted and imploded. Creep pushes hard for doing the Peregrine gig for some solid non-magical payday times, and the team eventually agrees, though Cholula and Otters hope to maybe encounter some rifts on the way to get some quick intel.

They head out towards The Dom enclave, and only make it halfway before encountering a rift- 3 strange corrupted spider hybrids with long spindly legs are dragging a pile of drugged and bound captives back into a rift. CG sets up the quicksilver camera while the rest of the team engages the spider’s in combat, with Otters firing the van gun while Cholula charges in. He spots that the spiders have bound the captives with some sort of magical webbing after disabling them with a toxin, which he almost falls prey to himself.

They manage to defeat the spiders, and save the final captive as the rift puckers shut with an audible snap. Doing some investigation onsite, they are able to find a small fragment of unidentifiable black reflective stone, and crumbled and burnt remains of some more of the stuff. This seems to be what AZT mentioned the TM’s have been digging for, and doing some quick CSI, Otters is able to determine that the magitech weapon that detonated over Downtown, creating the Scar, could have shot shrapnel out to this locaiton.

Dig is able to detect some magical traces, that suggest that this tiny fragment was part of a larger whole, powered by sacrificial magic some time previous, and to do with portals or gateways. It seems to still have a small amount of power onboard so they stash it in Creep’s leg, and head back to the Plat Zone, with CG using his medkit to stabilize their rescued victim. At the Plat Zone, Dig asks if there are any TM’s around, and Electric Blue comes forward, and volunteers to touch the weird fragment at Dig’s request.

He says he feels a little more connected and whole, so Dig checks him out in the astral, and sees that he seems to have a possibly temporarily enhanced essence, but that this has drained the small remaining power from the fragment. It doesn’t seem to be instantly addictive, but EB does his best to describe the feeling, and how he can understand the pull of this would have, especially to anyone who had lost some of their essence to injury, implant, etc and wanted to restore that connection.

Ringmaster seems worried about this development, and even more worried about what the team tells him they briefly glimpsed through the rift, which he confirms with a look at the quicksilver plate. It opened into the infinite maze of Kadath, and though only Otters say through and beyond, her report of seeing the construction of a Bone Bridge is upsetting, Ringmaster warns her to guard her mind and dreams, but since she lacks the ability to reach the astral plane herself, thinks she should be reasonably safe for now. He requests more info, as they team continues their travels around town.

Continuing on their way, they reach the bar adjacent to the bank that is now included in the expanding Dom “safe zone”. They enter the bar, and find one of the Brackhauses from the hotel mission awaiting them with their bodyguards. Now appearing with a feminine aspect, and unclear which was the “true” appearance if either, the team decides to refer to this one as “Frau Brackhause” for expediency. The young Vietnamese street mage and Black troll bodyguard are keeping an eye on the meet from different points in the bar, but give the team a nod of recognition from their last encounter in the DDB.

Sitting down, Frau Brackhaus gives them the rundown- she wants to sabotage the other Brackhaus (who the team decided to refer to as “Herr Brackhaus” for expediency). She tells them that she will make sure their team is recommended to him for a job he is putting together, and that all she wants them to do is record the meet and the job, leaving themselves out of the footage, and plant a program in a system they will access as part of the job. She gives them a chip with the program on it, and asks if they want to negotiate.

Lacking the skill, Otters requests “a little more money than your initial offer”, and she chuckles and tells them what she’ll pay. They agree, head back out to the van, and shortly receive a radio call from Herr Brackhaus, requesting a meet, in a short while at the same bar. They agree, and Otters circles the block until it’s time to head back in. They find Herr Brackhaus waiting at a different booth, but with his 2 twin adept bodyguards similarly deployed keeping an eye on things. They seem a bit less friendly to the team.

HB explains that he wants the team to break into an electronics store and swap out some data cores, and then break into an apartment and steal any electronics present and fence them at the Trading Post, where he set up an account that will deliver their pay. The store break-in must be unnoticed and the apartment must be somewhat obvious. If this all goes well, he requests they come meet him after at the bar atop the hotel where they first met.

Dig inserts the program that Frau Brackhaus gave them into one of the data cores, and they decide not to investigate either that or the cores themselves. They reach the address of the store in the Golden Mile shopping district along the west riverfront, and do some quick recon. The lone proprietor seems to be running in and out of the store doing sales outfront and inventory inside, while a guard watches the front. It’s in a recently converted Stuffer Shack, so all the disused vents and grease traps are still onsite but not running.

There’s an emergency exit on the alley at the back, and no running security cameras, so they go for an old school distraction out front while other sneak in. Cholula and CG feign getting into a fight while Dig does some magical mood manipulation, and Creep sneaks in a vent and opens the alley door for one of the Mule drones, which Otters rigs in and uses to swap the 3 data cores. The distraction works, but the market seems to have some magical security as a guard comes running warning everyone of magical manipulation. Cholula tries to hip check him and gets whacked, hard, with a stun baton for his trouble.

Dig becomes visible, announces he is the magical mastermind, and then turns into a bird and flies off. With the guard a bit distracted by this, Cholula and CG take this opportunity to flee, with all 3 feeling they may not want to return to the market for a while. They head to apartment next, luckily encountering no more rifts on their drive across Downtown. They start doing recon on the apartment, and are hyper-suspicious of the fact that it seems to be a regular nice condo in a guarded building without any traps or special security.

Cholula and Creep sneakily scale up to the unit while Dig watches for ambushes and guard patrols, and CG and Otters drive back to the Plat Zone to pick up the VTOLs to load the goods. On their way back, they spot some horrifying floating heads with dangling tentacles chasing and capturing some children, and decide to ignore it, feeling underpowered. They both take a hit with their rep with the Keepers in response. They get the VTOL’s and head back, returning to the team with no further trouble, having also reported in their new sighting to Ringmaster.

The team executes a simple B&E with no issues and gets a good haul of high end consumer electronics, as well as a monogrammed shaving kit, though it doesn’t appear to have been used and has no ritual samples. They head to the Trading Post, sell the goods, and get paid as promised. They head to the Dom again and call Frau Brackhaus on the mesh network. FB thanks them for the data they got, pays them, and tells them to do the same thing again for whatever job HB offers them next (record, report in, get paid twice). They agree and head back to the hotel.

They spot the floating tentacle heads again, this time with no kids, but looking a bit inflated and moving slower. Otters takes a pot shot but they seem especially resistant to physical weapons, so she speeds away. They drive off and call it in to the Plat Zone on the radio. At the hotel, realizing that some of them had gotten spotted during their attack there, only CG and Otters head in, getting a pat down but not an especially hard time from the concierge. They reach the bar up top, and find the troll crooner, matronly info broker and other regulars ensconsed as usual, with some patrons drinking by the windows and calling out when they spot new rifts popping up around Downtown.

They head to HB’s corner booth and slide past his alert twin guards. He kicks them over a heavy armored case, and explains that he has a ton of corp scrip that he needs to swap for liquid assets, via a Triad exchange, and also use this to buy a short term Triad safehouse. Once the team makes the swap, returns with spendable currencies, and gets the safehouse set up, he’ll have one last task for them, and pay double of the last job. They agree, grab the case and head out. They encounter another rift near the scar, with a huge mass of flesh, eyes, and mouths chasing and absorbing some survivors, and growing as it does.

As Otters prepares to fire, it foes invisible, but Dig and Cholula confirm it is still around, so the team opens up as best they can. It moves upsettingly quickly once attacked, and gloms onto the van, beginning to absorb Cholula. Luckliy Dig is able to do some magical damage, and Otters uses a slick van maneuver to break it’s hold and throw it off, after which it retreats to its rift. Dig almost follows it in, but is talked out of it just as the rift snaps shut, with some of the team vowing not to stick around if he does. Both Dig and Cholula really want to enter a rift though!

After some discussion, Dig flies ahead to give Grandmother Biyu a respectful heads up about the double Johnson situation on this job so she doesn’t waste a good safehouse, and she has them meet with her semi-captive TM Tater, who seems to still be working off his debt. They make the cash exchange at truly extortionate rates, and get the safehouse address and details. Otters, fearing more rift encounters, decides to solo VTOL back to the bar, and uses the rooftop bar since she was already screened for entry, though she is patted down once more.

She passes over the much lighter case, and passes along the address. HB then gives them the final task- a hit on the local SK middle manager who is overall in charge or the corp’s ops here during the Blackout. HB explains that he has personal beef with this manager, and that instead of seeing HB’s promise and advancing him, the manager has been wasting both of their time playing HB off against another local Brackhaus while he claims all the credit for their successes. Otters asks a few questions but agrees- it seems this middle manager is the guy whose monogrammed shaving kit they found earlier. HB is able to provide them with some ritual samples, however.

Otters zips over to the Dom and back to the Plat Zone, getting approval to continue from FB, who seems quite content with how this is all going. All she wants is for them to tell her first when the hit is done. Otters tries to make sure the team isn’t going to get any blowback, and FB suggests that so long as they did their job and aren’t on the recordings, there shouldn’t be any issues. Dig uses the ritual samples to track the guy down, after which the team decides that the easiest option is just to have Dig do the hit too, since he can mask his magic.

He flies to the manager’s location as a bird, astrally disguises his aura to look like a rift and casts an illusion of a rift crackling with lightning, and the bursts the manager with a lighting bolt. Hearing some panicked screams from witnesses and passers-by about how “oh god the rifts shoot lightning now” and similar, he flees the area. With that done, Otters VTOLs back to the Dom, gets paid, and gets a “well done” from FB, who explains that as the survivor of this whole situation she will have greater discretionary budget available soon, and likely more use for the team.

They decide not to report in to HB, not wanting to get in whatever trap FB has set for him, and skip the final chunk of their pay. Dig muses about how cheap it is for someone to get the team to kill someone, especially when they don’t even bother to pick up the money. They rest up as CG initiates again to get the Flux metamagic to conceal his astral comings and goings from the Black Lodge, who almost surely have a ritual sample of his. Dig also levels up his astral combat with Dog’s approval, to better fight these disutbing rift creatures. Checking the team file, they can find no mention of any of them from the Denver section, the last time sporadic rifts were spitting forth monsters and sucking civilians back through.

Ringmaster says he needs them to keep looking, which they plan to do after Dig does his monthly magical order meeting. First, however, they are summoned to a meeting with Brunwyn on her boat. They all attend besides CG, who is busy building up and using his new magical lodge at Plat Zone, and Cholula, who is still concerned about being captured and exploited by corps as a specimen. The rest of the team goes to the meet and gets a light warning about interfering too much in SK internal business- Brunwyn seems amused with how all the squabbling of the mortal employees in town has gone up to this point, but wants to make a point that she is paying attention and has noticed the team’s involvement.

She turns to walk away, dismissing them, and DIg having missed the point asks “so why did you ask us to meet?” after which Creep has to intercede and explain what just happened, after which they exit, with Baritone also telling them they’ll likely receive some more work soon. They head back to the Plat Zone, and rest up while Dig heads out for his meeting, before they head back out to get to the bottom of these rifts…..

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Tabasco aka Cholula

The team, newly tipped off to some strange rituals occuring around town (performed by mysterious cloaked figures) head out to investigate, unable to find any initial traces of ChewGum. Cholula hangs back initially to finish healing, while TD keeps helping out in Hamtramck. Dig, Otters, and Creep navigate their way over the partially blown bridges to Windsor, which is starting to feel a bit separate- the physical difficulties of travel there currently manifesting in some slight cultural drift.

They head to the necropolis and check on CG’s bolthole there, finding all his stuff intact, but some evidence that someone had been there before them- a few well-concealed trackers, and some kind of hard to see trick with the door that they didn’t spot in time. Worried about who might come looking, they hid and surveil for a while, and eventually see a watcher spirit turn up, see them, and flee before they can engage. Dig tries to track it but something obscures his ability to do so. They are concerned that this watcher looks similar or perhaps identical to the one that was following Bloodripper when they ambushed him.

After waiting long enough (and getting enough drones on surveillance) to be convinced noone else is coming right now, they track down the ritual site – at an intersection of leylines in the cemetery complex. Dig checks it out, and Creep doses himself with some eye drops provided by the Walker in Ways, which allow anyone with their natural eyes to gain astral perception for 1 day/night rotation, with some costs.

The ritual looks like a large force endeavor, with a ton of reagents expended, and a sacrifice component, though someone has cleaned up the astral area since, making it hard to get specifics. Dig thinks he could recognize the cast if he encounters them or their signature. While checking the expended reagents for evidence, Dig recognizes some as of a brand he’s bought from Grandmother Biyu before, and heads over to her base to enquire.

Creep and Otters head back to Detroit proper on foot to meet up. Dig confers with Biyu, and she confirms that the reagents are hers, processed and sold at a Triad facility on the Dockfront. She gives Dig the location and calls ahead to tell them to cooperate. Dig flies over after radio-ing the others to meet him there. They link back up at the facility, and after some initial pushback the on-site Triad security let them talk to one of the clean-suited techs working there, who pulls up their purchase receipts, and confirms that they have sold a few large batches recently to the same person: Liam the Black.

They say he seemed kind of sleazy and they were surprised he had the kind of resources needed, but he had paid in full. The team heads back to the Plat Zone, and confers with Ringmaster, who tells them that Liam is a burnt-out street mage with no real pull except his natural sleazy charisma, who has apparently collected a small cult, but is not regarded by Ringmaster (or others) as a serious player in town. He is able to provide a location for the cult’s base though.

The team heads over and surveils it for a while, watching as the small group becomes increasingly debauched while Liam promises over and over that they’ll all be magical again soon (worrying). Eventually, everyone at the house crashes, and Otters sneaks a drone in, drugs Liam, and leaves him vulnerable to Dig’s mind probe, with which they get a lot of useful detail.

Apparently, Liam has been purchasing the reagents on the behalf of a woman named Helene Baptiste, who looks down on him, but is convinced he’s successfully using her to gain his power back as he believes she is connected to the Black Lodge. They get a few different locations from his mind where he’s made deliveries, including near the Windsor necropolis, so they think he must be delivering near the planned ritual sites, since Baptists seems not to think much of his acuity or consider him a risk or threat.

Not having anything else useful in his brain, they leave him and the cult be, but Otters and Creep stick around to watch and see if they lead them anywhere while Dig goes to check the other ritual sites. He finds more evidence of massive rituals, made to trap or contain something powerful, using tons of reagents plus sacrifice, and then astrally cleansed. Checking in with Ringmaster again, they hear of rumors of missing street mages around town, and get worried that CG might be the next likely victim for the upcoming ritual.

All they know is that it is at the University by Bloomfield, so they head up there and poke around, pretty quickly finding a leyline convergence at the library, and spotting a ritual in progress in the basement, which is closed to the public currently. Not wanting to step on any toes, Otters calls up Ronnie’s Raiders to warn them that the team is gonna have to do an op on their turf, while Creep sneaks in through the vents with mouse Dig and some of Otters’ drones.

Creep is able to get into the ritual chamber and slip mouse Dig out of a vent, while spotting 6 mages chanting in Latin and walking along a large ritual circle around a nude CG who is bound to a stone slab, seemingly magically summoned up from the poured concrete floor of the chamber. He seems drugged but alive, so Dig dashes over to him, slipping inside the magic circle without getting noticed, and uses his mindlink spell to get into communication with CG.

Creep relays all this to Otters, who is able to use it as proof of nefarious happenings in his meeting with Ronnie and Prof. Vinh Trong, who both seem confused and upset at the news. Ronnie calls an emergency meeting of the Raiders to try to coordinate an evacuation of civilians from the immediate area, while Trong starts pondering containment spells in case something goes wrong, and requests that they attempt to preserve the library.

Cholula gets eyes on some guards in armored suits watching the basement stairs, and sees them get a call just after this, with one of them heading downstairs to warn the ritualists. Conferring mentally, Dig and CG determine that if they can take out the ritual leader the force of it should harm the other mages present, and will at least be a good distraction. Using a consensual mind probe, Dig is able to identify which cloaked figure is Baptiste, the leader, from CG’s drugged memories. As Otters rushes back and gets the rest of her drones in position, they launch their attack.

Creep shoots Baptists, blasting through her armored cloak and magical protections, just before Otters darts her with two snake drones, flat-lining her. This causes the desired magical feedback as the remaining mages struggle to hold control of the ritual. Creep shoots another one of them, further hindering their ability to do so, and one of them lets out a frantic “oh no!”. Meanwhile, Cholula and one of the Mules have gotten into a fight with guards up top but manage to drop them quickly, and get the basement stair door open using one of their keycards.

Dig pulls CG free of the slab and his restraints using his magic hand, and starts hauling both of them towards the stairs when the ritual goes fully out of control and they are both pulled into astral space. They see a portal to some deep, distant point, but are more distracted by seeing Dig’s mentor, Dog, being pulled apart into multiple different aspects or segments and seemingly scattered. Dig hears a distressed whimper as this occurs. CG decides to stay astral for now, as he seems more functional there, but Dig is able to focus and maintain his spell, and keep hauling them to the stairs, which allows him to return primarily to his body.

The team all exfils up the stairs and out the front as they feel magical pressure building behind them, and then with a large pop, a huge section of the library building explodes outwards (seemingly only contained by Trong and some assistant’s frantic efforts) before imploding back in on itself, leaving a massive scooped out crater. The team sticks around to “help” but doesn’t have much to do. They try to warn Trong and others of the Black Lodge threat, but he seems to honestly believe it is just a conspiracy theory.

Ronnie seems a little more receptive, but hints that the team should be on their way since they just ran out of the library right before it exploded. CG finally rallies from his stupor as the drug wears off, and he and Dig are a little surprised when Freddy Bales seems to recognize mouse Dig and comes over to talk to them. Cholula, suspicious, tries to plant a tracker on Bales after he makes some pleasantries and then leaves to try to help Trong with magical cleanup, but Bales not only notices the tracker but almost manages to sneak it back onto Cholula. Detente.

The team heads back to the Plat Zone, and shares their intel with Ringmaster, who seems very worried and says he need to look into some things. Dig rushes them out the door again, hearing another astral whimper, to see what happened to Dog and if they can do anything. CG also wants to swing by his bolthole to grab his stuff. They head back to Windsor, and CG gets re-equipped, finding a few more tracking tags in the process as they do a more thorough search.

They also find a rippling magical dome at the previously examined ritual site. Dig manipulates his aura to appear like Helene Baptiste’s, and after a few attempts, gain entry. He find an aspect of Dog (pack mentality) here, and manages to call on his connection to his mentor to get this aspect to trust him and follow him out of the circle, after which it quickly vanishes, though distressingly it seems to have been made to manifest as the other team members can all briefly see it also. Being further concerned, Dig urges speed to the next few ritual sites.

At the next, on the waterfront, they find another magic dome, this one having attracted a bit of a crowd. CG takes some quicksilver pics, while Dig once again enters as Baptiste and manages to lure this aspect of Dog (play and chasing) out, almost getting bitten in his mouse form to do so. When the plates develop, CG spots that same watcher spirit observing them again, but it is gone by the time they look in astral…. this is starting to get suspicious. They head to the next site, some woods near the Blight, and find another trapped aspect (loyalty and friendship), which Dig again calls on his ties to his mentor to entice out.

Feeling like they’ve discovered about 3/4 of the fractured Dog, they head back to the Plat Zone to inquire about fresh leads, and hear of one more rumored ritual site in the DDB. They leave Ringmaster their data and the quicksilver plates so he can make some calls, and head down. They eventually track their way to the site where they fought the escaped lab experiment dog of Aurand’s, and find another magic dome there.

This is Dog’s protectiveness/aggression, and it is very backed in a corner with hackles up, giving off intensely scary growls. Otters says she’s got this, and Dig pulls her through the barrier, again posing as Baptiste. Otters totally confidently approaches, grabs Dog by the scruff, and firmly walks it out, with Dig pulling them through again. With this last aspect of Dog free and the 4 pieces reunited, Dig feels his connections to his mentor return, and both he and Otters feels that they can call upon Dog for direct assistance in return, as Dog seems unusually locally present still.

Heading back to the Plat Zone, they once again debrief Ringmaster and he shares some intel he got from the outside, riskily using TM’s to do so, bypassing the Null data blockade via Resonance dives. Based on the ritual used, and how it all worked, and the fact that it was able to make a mentor spirit manifest and the break it up to trap it, they collectively speculate that the Black Lodge may have been trying to splinter and capture a Horror, which might have been what they were preparing to summon. Or, this may have all just been a test run.

Once they start speculating, though, they realize that the Black Lodge may have been behind much of what’s been going on in Detroit, as a blacked out post-corporate city would be the perfect place to run a bunch of dark magic experiments. The team wonders if the BL perhaps was assisting the Malakim in harming ARES internally, ensuring both their weakening and their disastrous move, as well as if the BL was quietly boosting the Shadow, Famine, and other dark magic cults to try to create or summon a powerful spirit (maybe even a spirit of the city) that they could bind.

With this intel, plus some other Blackout knowledge, as well as some other tidbits and overall synthesis of what’s going on, the team decides to pull the trigger on the CEO Tarot card. Otters presses the button, and a logo appears in her RCC of each of the Big 10 Mega’s, with a small inset of their current CEO. After some debate, they decide to go with AZT, as they and Ringmaster agree that either AZT or SK are the two least likeliest to be infiltrated by the BL at their highest levels, SK cause of Dragons, AZT cause of 4th World enmities between factions of immortal humans.

Otters presses the button, and Flavia de la Rosa picks up. She seems intrigued but not patient, and Otters gives a quick synopsis of how she got her number, and what she and the team can offer. de la Rosa is interested enough to stay on the line, and seems like a skilled social operator, using effective mirroring and asking insightful questions as Otters shared the agreed upon paydata.

Asking what they want in return, de la Rosa is happy to offer eventual transport out, saying that there is a lot going on in Denver that needs looking into, which seems like a perfect place for a skilled team to travel next. She offers them a vacation diversion on the way, but Otters, having heard tell of the team’s last vacation disaster, demurs. They also get AZT to agree to air drop in food, to be distro’ed by G’ma Biyu but with AZT logos, which will be good PR. de la Rosa is also happy to promise some future equipment to get them geared up for their Denver trip, once the city reopens.

She also sends along a news update packet at Otters’ request, to get caught up on the outside world. Saying they likely will not speak again, she instructs them to turn to Cehualli for other local needs in the meantime and cuts the call. Interestingly, only the AZT icon vanishes from Otters’ RCC, so it seems like the other 9 CEO’s are still on the table for future calls, though punching this one through the Resonance was all that Ringmaster’s comms team can manage for now.

With that having gone fairly well, the team debates what to do with all the intense news they received in the packet- Seattle is officially free! The UCAS seems to be in a state of collapse! The Returned and Chimeras are popping up everywhere! Dig wants to broadcast it all on a public wideband, but they hold off for now to debate a bit first.

Runners
Creep
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Cholula

The team wakes up in the safehouse, with DIg having some disturbing memories of hyper-realistic dreams of vine-strewn deep matrix locales. CG races in, shouts that the are is under attack, grabs his magic flaming sword, and runs back out into the street, The rest of the team hurries to get dressed while Otters and Cholula give Dig a quick once-over and declare him cleared for action, though worried about what the vine dreams might mean….

Cholula dashes out and hearing multiple sources of gunfire and toxic spellcraft, sneaks up onto the bar roof to get a vantage. Otters army crawls to the van and launches the fly-spy swarm to get some overhead for the TacNet. Dig turns to a bird, and also gets airborne, while Creep sneaks out the front door, and The Detective hunkers down inside to avoid stray bullets and provide some guidance.

Cholula and the drones spot 2 groups of attackers, lighting fires, casting spells, and firing guns, approaching from opposite corners of the district. They also see a massive manifested sludge spirit in the middle of the district, wrecking house. Locals are fleeing and hiding, but being herded inwards, so the team gets involved. Cholula gets spotted by a mage, who launches an acid stream at him, but he ducks down behind the roof edge and hears it sizzle on impact.

Creep sneaks over to the mage targeting Cholula, while they see CG racing over to confront the other attacking opps team. They lost sight of him and he’s quickly out of TacNet range, which surprises them as the local mesh net is fairly robust- and just then, they get an alert that their TacNet is under attack! Dig flips into the matrix via his bird trode and finds a large corrupted Sprite wrecking house in there, seemingly one of the kidnapped e-life forms from the SpriteLoks driven mad in captivity.

Luckily it doesn’t seem to be targeting them specifically, just destroying things in the vicinity, but the local mesh is in bad shape. Dig confronts it, partially to stop Otters from shutting down the TacNet in a panic, since they need it up. Meanwhile, in meatspace, Creep shoots at the mage, seemingly a leader in the toxie faction that was running the grub labs, based on the skin mask he wears. One of his acolytes, wearing the armored rad suit with skin patch, dives in front of the shot and goes down.

Interestingly, the group seems to be half toxie cultists and half Blackout Boyz, and they don’t seem that familiar with working together, though each reasonably skilled. Dig continues fighting/distracting the sprite in the matrix, and Cholula comes under attack from the sludge spirit, which astrally steps up onto the roof he’s perched on. Otters, seeing this, opens up on the spirit with the van HMG, blasting off a bunch of it’s goopy armor but splashing Cholula with acid.

Cholula tries to bite the spirit, misses, and gets grabbed in a harsh grapple, taking more acid damage, and then is shot in the back when Otters misses on her next burst with the HMG. Cholula is then KO’ed in astral by the sludge spirit, who starts hauling his body off, down the street. Creep has also gotten himself into some trouble, getting surrounded by the opps team that he attacked, so he hides the leg that has all the team secrets in the alley and starts rolling around trying not to get shot, they seem like they are also trying to take him alive.

Otters, being the only one mobile, has to make a hard choice, and races over to Creep, blasting another toxie cultist with the van as Creep pops a smoke grenade and starts falling back. HMG suppressive fire forces the attackers to retreat as well. Luckily, Dig finally manages to best the maddened Sprite in matrix combat without taking much damage himself, and flips back to meatspace, flies over to the sludge spirit, and blasts it with a massive lightning bolt, destroying it but showering the KO’ed Cholula with yet more acid.

Dig then magically heals Cholula, who uses his return to consciousness to good effect, sneaking around to the side as Otters advances the van under HMG suppressive fire. Creep sneaks around to the other side, as Dig flies above, aiming for a triple “pincher” maneuver. Cholula manages to KO the toxie mage and one of the Blackout Boyz with Narcoject arrows while the team guns/magics the rest of the enemies down, allowing none to escape.

They load up the prisoners into the van, and dose them with Gamma Scopolamine to keep them docile. Dig calls on his spirit to assist and unleashes a massive Mind Probe on the toxie leader, Father Gorgon, who puts up a strong resistance but is unable to hold back the mental assault. Dig rifles through his secrets, and then for some reason decides to kill him by channeling lightning directly into his eyes, causing them to burst and run down his face like badly cooked eggs. The smell of frying flesh suffuses the van. The other paralyzed captive watches in horror.

They find out the following info: Gorgon was a cult leader of his faction of toxies, along with the other mage “Mother Gorgon”. Viking Cowgirl is the leader of the Blackout Boyz, or at least the one in charge of coordinating today’s actions. Both factions have been heavily depleted by the team’s recent attacks, and have worked together before but are both paid by some unknown outside party. The goal of today’s attack was to destroy district infrastructure, a project the toxies are often paid for (they’ve been behind the mesh network attacks), and also to capture specific targets if spotted- these being all 6 members of the team.

They had also been paid, alongside other local mages of questionable morality, to prevent or destroy any astral forms attempting to get messages into or out of Detroit, ensuring a near total information blockade, with the matrix down and MET2000 patrolling the land and sea exits. They’d also worked some additional jobs as backup for the Blackout Boyz but don’t know further details. It seems like the only survivors of this group are Mother Gorgon and the cultists with her.

This, suddenly, makes the team worry about where CG is, as he hasn’t turned up yet. They race over to the other side of the district (not very far), and find signs of a battle but no ongoing combat. Dig recovers the burnt hilt of CG’s flaming sword but it seems inert, so Otters gives it to a local kid who they find and question who saw some stuff.

Apparently, CG raced into the attack, flaming sword assisting him momentarily before turning on him at a crucial moment. He did manage to fry one of the toxie attackers before this. But, distracted by that angry spirit trapped within the blade, he was unable to also defend himself against the attackers and was KO’ed and captured- they called off their assault and fled while the rest of the team was still bogged down in combat on the other side of the area.

Not having any better leads at the moment, they check on the neighborhood, with TD saying they will focus on this for now. Finding no further attackers or threats, they tell everyone to come out and start rebuilding, and find that luckily casualties were pretty low- mostly Children of Loxley who were on patrol and whatever random civilians had the bad luck to be out in the open, as well as the occasional stray bullet or spell that punched through a wall or window.

Dig, slightly rested, and with the benefit of the secondary effect of the Gamma Scopolamine, is ready to question the second subject. Otters tries the social route first, without much success, but gets a little info. the BB’s seem to view themselves as guns for hire just trying to survive, who scored a sweet contract which also ensures their families/dependents are provided for (if local). He seems to think that the team is going to torture and kill him, based on what he has seen so far, and Otters doesn’t really convince him otherwise, so he isn’t overly cooperative.

Feeling they’ve hit a dead end, Dig gets the others to hold him and lands on his head, doing another Mind Probe. Things the team learns: they don’t know who they’re working for, or where they deliver the TM’s. due to liberal use of Laës provided by Stanli the Candyman, who also takes it to forget the transaction. They also don’t know where their families actually are, though they get regular trid calls (the team worries these could be faked easily by Null Sect). He thinks they’re doing some weird matrix ritual with the van routes, and has seen some matrix vines, but hasn’t heard of the Null Sect. The BB’s were all hired/assembled after the Blackouts started. They were behind the assassination of various scientists that Brunwyn was trying to acquire.

He also has some upsetting news from outside, seemingly gleaned from the vans getting some amount of comms in. The UCAS has declared martial law, due to the Blackouts, and has cut off aid to ALL former ARES locales- including Detroit, declaring it ARES’ responsibility to care for their citizens and former employees. ARES has also stopped supplying any aid to any UCAS locales, claiming it is the government’s responsibility. This leaves a lot of newly ex-corpos in a real shit situation- arcologies and facilities with no power, food, or water coming in etc. Also, there are some disturbing rumors of some III Corps members returning, often very confused and distant…

They call into Ringmaster, and ask to come to the Plat Zone to debrief, and head over. Once there, they decide they better actually fully relocate for now, just in case, so Otters spends some time hauling drones and gear over to a Plat Zone apartment while Creep and Cholula get healed up in the basement clinic and Dig rests from all his spellcasting. Once they resettle, they debrief with Ringmaster, and he shares some info as well: he believes that the Grid Pirates/Blackout Boyz are attempting a theoretical ritual to alter the “Sprite of the Grid”, effectively a matrix equivalent to a “Spirit of the City”.

He explains that this is a fairly new concept, revolving around the “noosphere” as an equivalent to astral space, and based on the severely limited comms he’s been able to get in/out via brave TM’s risking Null Sect attack- it seems that even with the matrix down, Resonance wells can still be found. He also says he’s heard some other reports of the III Corps vets and others, which are becoming collectively known as “the Returned”. He shares some rumors of anachronistic figures appearing who seem to have disappeared in both recent and much older history (Yucatan rebels and WWII soldiers from the Pacific theater), as well as some III Corps vets returning with what sound like chimeric mods like what the team encountered outside Site 000 in PA.

This is all very upsetting, and Ringmaster offers to pay the team to stay involved, though they settle for healing + safehouse for this batch of info. Dig flies up to G’ma Biyu and debriefs her on the latest re: vans, he also tells her where to pick up Father Gorgon’s body, which she says she should be able to process into some interesting reagents. She pays them another installment for their ongoing investigation, and also says she’s heard some rumors of a strange cloaked group doing small, dark rituals in obscure places around town. Dig returns to the team with this news, just as they get a radio call from Jaga at the water treatment plant.

She says that during their ritual a few nights back, they spotted a strange mana spike from the direction of the Windsor cemetery (where CG has a safehouse)- it looked like some bad mojo but came and went pretty quickly, and they’ve been too occupied to investigate it further. The team decides to look into it, though Cholula stays behind to heal more, still being pretty wrecked. Otters is also feeling antagonistic towards CG, in a way that seems unusual for her, and the team speculates that the love potion may have worn off. What this means for CG, who drank one of the love potions as well, they do not know! But they hope that perhaps investigating these dark rituals will lead them closer to finding him, as they have no current leads…

Runners
Creep
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective
Tabasco aka Cholula

CG sits out the van job in order to try to repair their rep with Ringmaster. He first replicates some food, then practices astrally cleansing his aura off of it to not be traceable, using his spirits to see how well he did. After figuring out the right balance there, he distros the food to the gang coop for further distro-ing in their area. He also throws in some resources and barter to fund the initial supplies. While doing this he also starts marveling at the amount of money he and Dig have given to Penelope Beans in the last few months, and wondering what army of reagent collectors she is funding…

Dig also throws a bunch of resources into rep management, but in a more hand-off way, acquiring more supplies for people to build, repair, and expand mesh nets around town. He also hears some disturbing tales of repair and install crews being attacked or killed, as well as mesh gear being ripped off or destroyed. Having heard rumors of this a few times now, he inquires further, and is disturbed to hear that the one unifying marker on the attackers spotted by sensors and/or surviving witnesses is a patch of skin adhered somewhere to their armor… more toxie activity?

The team puts that aside for the moment to focus on Cholula’s lead- he has managed to find a spot that the van he shot the tracker arrow into goes, once per day. They head over to the industrial riverfront area, and find a cop bar called the Crown Vic. Surveilling it for a while, it seems like a community hub for ex-LEO and families, with the bar still serving hooch from a still and people gathering around trash barrel fires to share gossip, barter, etc.

Reviewing Cholula’s previous surveillance footage, Otters and TD manage to recognize the three people who show up in the mystery van- all local freelance runners with a rep for taking a lot of corp jobs- meaning, in the case of Detroit, ARES. So seemingly all deniable assets on the ARES payroll, raising the question of whether this is still an ARES op or if they just for cut loose in the move. TD determines that the cops and ex-CorpSec hanging out at the bar seem to know these 3 and have a antagonistic but semi-friendly relationship, once again implying past corp affiliations.

Otters sees that when the van shows up corresponds with a swell in attendance at the bar, and that the crowd kind of rushes it though they don’t seem to be giving or receiving anything, until she realizes that they all seem to be checking devices- it seems the roving signal from the van allows for some limited matrix communication, though Otters is sure it is also skimming the traffic that passes through it, and doubts this is altruistic.

They wait for the van to arrive again, which it does, and Creep sneaks up and magnets on underneath it while finding a spot to plug in a data tap to give access to the system to Dig, who is flying above in bird form. Otters is also up in the VTOL keeping an eye on things and piloting the flyspys, one of which is able to detect the explosives packed into the van behind various panels and such. Streaming this feed to TD, they tell the crowd to back away from the vehicle, as it is rigged to blow, and share the feed as proof.

Meanwhile, Dig has backdoored into the van system via the data tap, but finds a nasty surprise waiting: a Null Sect entity! Recognizing the iconic toothed triangle, Dig decides to try to garner some data as he can’t get a good read on it’s power level. It quickly attacks him, maxing out his biofeedback protection on his deck- it seems to somehow be bypassing his device and hitting at him directly. He is also horrified to find himself link-locked when he tries to jack out, and fails to disconnect, sending out a panicked message.

Otters pulls an intense aerial maneuver, manage to fly right up to bird Dig, open the VTOL, and use surgical tools inside to carefully pull off his bird-sized trode while also catching him as he crashes from dumpshock. Creep pulls the data tap and begins exfiltrating as Otters hears a worried “intruuuuuudddddeeeeerrrrrrrrrr…..” staticky cry from MAMA and shuts down the TacNet. Suddenly worried about what drastic action the NS will take to cover knowledge of their presence, TD starts trying to work their way out of the crowd while continuing to encourage others to also get clear.

Both TD and Creep are caught in the edges of the blast as the van blows big, shredding 2 of the 3 runners who had remained by it, as well as killing or injuring many in the crowd who had pushed up to get good signal. TD and Creep both manage to get away, though not without some worries, and link up at the team van nearby, where Creep leaves TD in charge of keeping an eye out and heads out again, as he has spotted Cholula pursuing the loan surviving mystery van runner as he flees on foot.

They link up and manage to trail the guy back to the garage next to the Senator hotel downtown, where they’d previously seen some of the vans exit. Following him in, they trail him to the lower level, and see him use some kind of hidden control inside a parked car that activates an elevator concealed beneath. He begins descending, and they wait til the elevator has bottomed out before stealthily jumping into the opening after him.

Meanwhile, Otters and bird Dig, in the VTOL, have managed to find TD and the team van just in time, as some downtown scavs are starting to look pretty interested in acquiring the van for themselves, and TD isn’t much of a combat driver. Otters takes the wheel and guides both craft over to the Platinum Zone, where they report into Ringmaster, catching him up and asking for some assistance. He shares some intel with them as well, and gathers some additional hackers from the comms station to isolate and reboot the TacNet.

When they do, they manage to destroy a small foreign code fragment, which looks like some kind of digital vine, which Ringmaster explains is the NS’ way of both marking and acclimating to their turf (he thinks, a lot of this is conjecture). MAMA was totally shredded in her effort at defense, but the TacNet luckily is saved. They briefly mourn the loss of their agent, deciding they will name the eventual replacement STEPMAMA. Dig flies north to G’ma Biyu’s to report in as well, and she congratulates him on good progress, but still wants more info.

Back under the garage, it looks like the 2nd basement level was sealed off at some point, and there are half a dozen mystery vans parked down there. The runner they’re following heads over towards a door in the corner, this level seems about half as big as the one above, from what they can see. They race to catch up after he passes some biometric scans to be allowed entrance, and manage to slip in the door right behind him.

Inside, they are a bit surprised to find 19 people, all of whom have the look of van crews: local runners with mixed gear and specialties. 9 appear to be hot bunking, while 9 more are eating and cleaning weapons and such. They start to ready weapons in response, but Creep leaps forward, yanking out his bandolier of frag grenades and suggesting they be allowed to walk out or all will die. Unfortunately, his speaker is kind of tinny and everyone is talking at once so only Cholula really hears him. Cholula then shoots the runner they followed here in the chest with a flaming arrow, causing him to drop and everything to kick off.

Cholula dashes for the door, hauling Creep, as the sleeping runners rally and the other 9 give chase and fire on them. Creep is badly wounded, maybe killed, and Cholula’s armor is shredded. He chucks the grenades behind them, and gets a lucky bounce, with the detonation leaving mostly carnage in their wake. Unfortunately, the parked vans then start trying to ram Cholula. Also, the explosion was bad enough to finish off Cholula’s armor and do some actual damage, plus Creep is now partially disassembled. Cholula manages to scoop his torso and limbs up, making sure to grab the leg with all the secret team gear inside.

Cholula does some impressive dodging and weaving, seemingly achieving the near impossible, while avoiding getting his by any of the vans. Luckily there seems to be only a solitary entity controlling them. He then pulls off an impressive called shot, bypassing the armor and detonating the explosives pack in one of the unpiloted vans, clearing his way to exit elevator. He dives into the parked car and starts frantically pressing buttons, somehow achieving the correct sequence to get the elevator to begin rising, as one final van makes a frantic rush and detonates.

Cholula hunkers down in the dummy car, which he is blown out the back of by the force of the explosions, but he is still, barely, on his feet. The explosion also seems to have damaged the elevator so he frantically tosses all Creep’s parts up and then jumps after as another van races over below. Getting free to the sound of whirring and grinding behind him, he uses his previous recon knowledge of the area from the hotel mission to get atop a nearby roof without getting spotted, though he nearly falls a couple times and is at the end of his rope.

Not having any means to heal Creep he does what he can to stabilize his torso, and hopes for rescue, as he also doesn’t have any means to communicate. Luckily, Otters and Dig and TD, back at the Plat Zone, are all starting to feel that it’s been a little long since they heard from that team, and TD at least knew what direction Creep had head in pursuit, so Dig tasks a spirit with using the Search power to locate them, which it does. However, Dig went a little too hard on the summoning, and passes out after relaying the info.

Otters gets up in the VTOL with a radio, and flies circles in the area until she spots them, landing on the roof and frantically packing Creep in while hooking up the med drone to his various components. It doesn’t look great. Desperate, Otters send the drone on auto-pilot over to Leanna Octave’s, and then calls in on the radio for extraction from the Plat Zone. Cholula helps her descend from the rooftop, and they get picked up by some Plat Zone runners in one of the jury-rigged chem fuel vans.

Back at the Plat Zone, some of them rest while the rest review Cholula’s footage. They get face images of most of the runners they saw, and pass those along to Ringmaster to try to ID, and TD suggests also comparing to the “missing persons” message boards at various enclaves. They also spot some interesting details: there are no TM’s, or space to detain TM’s or other prisoners anywhere onsite. There are old mechanical hookups in one corner of the garage, though they didn’t get a great look at them. There is a banner with “Blackout Boyz” spray-painted on it. There are 12 maps up on the walls with routes and timetables, and a roving schedule of which team drives which route- implying they’ve taken out about half of their operating strength.

And perhaps most interestingly, there are plentiful supplies down here, all bearing the insignia of the Freedom Network, who the team knows from Seattle is often used as an unwitting meatspace cutout by the Null, whether directly or via their street wing, Popular Will. As they’d previously been involved with TM kidnapping and Null brain-in-jar experiments and such in Seattle at least, this all checks out, and gives more suggestions as to how this whole op works. However, this looks like it was just a staging ground for the vans, so there must be at least one more facility….

Also the lack of comms gear and astral barrier (earth and glowmoss panels) that concealed leave Otters wondering how they receive updated instructions, and she starts wondering about the route the vans are driving, and how the Null is moving about with no active matrix, other than the hyperlocal signals from the vans. Knowing that the van route traces old 1.0 Matrix infrastructure routes, she starts to worry that the Null are using those to travel and communicate, and decides to make another visit to the Run and Sollars library soon to look for old maps and layout and stuff, so they can start cutting off those pathways.

They get a radio call from Octave, reporting that Creep barely survived, but she had to do some radical cyber-mods to put him back together, so all of his limbs are detachable now. He’s not yet conscious, and Cholula and Dig are also still both banged up, so they spend the day charging tech, patching armor and resting. Creep finally flies home the next day, with some new cyber and a lower essence, and they all start catching up on how wild that mission was.

Before they can get to deep, though, CG races inside to sound of gunfire and screams from nearby, and frantically announces: “Hamtramck is under attack!!”

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective

The team finally follows up on CG’s famine investigation, and calls up Pretty out at the relocated Long Pig Farms. She reports that her and the other ghouls have been bogged down defending their turf from ex-ARES Corpsec militias, as well as packs of roving hunger-crazed survivors. However, the Bee spirit BETAS and some other locals they’ve befriended have all banded together with them, so they have a big farm compound and are trying to get another harvest in with whatever they can get to grow in the strange astral light.

The team asks them to snag any of the hungry people they come across, as Pretty reports that they often have lower essence than it seems like they should, and thus don’t make the best meals. Still, trespassers = free food. The team spends a while patching armor, catching up on sleep, charging all their gear, and refreshing all their rituals and magical supplies, and CG also trades a little more info on the famine situation with Penelope Beans.

They listen to a new dating show on Radio Free Detroit called “Motor City Meet Cute” while The Detective gets high in their dry tub outside, and Pretty calls to report that they caught a live one, with the weird “missing essence” problem. The team heads out to the farm the next morning, and Otters gets some more usable data points for her attempt to map where the center of the Zap Zone blast occurred.

They meet up with Pretty and Rains, who both seem a bit exhausted, but who lead them through the recently fortified farm complex to a reinforced paddock where they’ve chained up a gaunt human man, who is idly clawing the ground, almost like he’s trying to dig something out. He seems minimally aware, so Dig mind probes him, and finds that he is experiencing a depersonalization, akin to cyberpsychosis, but not triggered by any obvious source of the massive essence loss.

They think about it a bit, and compare notes and knowledge, and determine that Vamps, Shadow Spirits, or some other critters could be the source, but nothing points to any of those in particular. Diving further, Dig discovers that they guy is totally addicted to the SnakAttak Packs, and that acquiring more is his sole desire- he seems to have been near-mindlessly searching for other food to trade for them when captured.

Scanning him astrally, Dig does detect the same dark magic that was present in TD when they ate some of the chips, but in a larger quantity. Probing to the very depths of the man’s near-empty mind, Dig manages to get a good idea of the location where the food for chips trades occur, and then he and CG stick around to watch some ghoul farmhands consume the man, which they make short work of- they complain that there isn’t much to him, but Dig is relieved to see that whatever the dark magic is doesn’t seem to transfer, and reports to Pretty that it should be safe to keep eating any interlopers.

The team heads north, following bird Dig, who is astrally scouting the area the man thought of. They find a large ARESFood complex, with one of the buildings running off a generator on limited power. Desperate-looking individuals queue and mill about carrying whatever food they’ve scavenged out front until they are let in by security, after which most of them leave through one exit with chips in hand. However, some small number don’t emerge at all.

After some further drone, astral, and physical recon, plus an infiltration by TD posing as a hungry wretch with some emergency rations to trade, the team discovers what is happening here. Guards, who are all wearing armored chemsuits with metahuman skin patches sewn on somewhere, manage the queue and keep things orderly. The hungry are let in, and sent to one of two machines by a scientist inside, and either drop their food into a hopper or are fed into an industrial dissolver.

Those that drop food in the hopper then head to the exit where they are given an amount of bag of chips that seems to correspond to their essence. Upsettingly, while whatever food they bring in seems to be the basis for the chips, one of the additives is from compressing some sort of enormous grub, kept out of sight of the line, with multiple piled containers showing they’ve been at this for a while. The ones sent to the dissolver all seem to be super low essence, when the team compares data. Following a slurry tube into an adjacent building, the team finds two more of the skin-patch guard pouring it into 55 gallon drums, sealing them up, and loading them in a van.

Mouse Dig and Creep are almost killed when Creep slips partway into the dissolver solution, but escape, and the team decides to wait and follow the van. Otters does so via van initially, but seeing that they seem to be heading towards the Blight, switches to VTOL with mouse Dig along for the ride, as the van battery won’t get them home after that long of a drive north.

They park the van, and the rest of the team, at Moreau’s, who is thrilled to see them as he needs to offload Dr. Aurand back onto them. He has hooked her brain in a jar up to a low end spider mech body, but says he will do no more for someone so unethical and will no longer tolerate her presence. He also seems to have taken a full turn against making biodrones, though he says he will still of course care for them at the facility.

Aurand loads up in the van, where Creep tries to get her to watch Roseanne, which she refuses. Meanwhile, Dig and Otters track the van to another old, abandoned Chrysler warehouse in the Blight, in the Toxic Valley Exclusion Zone, which also seems to have been reactivated. Some new duct and pipe work runs from the side of the building into the ground, and there is a high force ward around the structure.

Dig gets worried he got astrally spotted by something large, pale, and slimy and Otters sees something with a skin mask coming out with a rocket launcher, so they delta outta there, following the valley towards the lake, and are disturbed to find numerous drain and runoff systems converging into a major spillway into Lake St. Clair, the sprawl’s primary water source. So it seems like these people are also poisoning the water, as well as the desperate hungry locals.

The link back up with the team and head back towards the safehouse, before deciding they don’t want Dr. Aurand to know where it is, so they foist her off onto Leanna Octave, both of them seem excited about expanding their surgical and experimental frontiers together. They make some calls and Dig flies up to visit G’ma Biyu.

She offers assistance as well as some guidance for their plan, and they also enlist the help of Cehaulli, the somewhat creepy AZT mage and fixer. They decide to keep it to a tight circle, as surprise will be critical. Remembering some rumors they heard from The Swarm, they head out the next day to the former ARESpace/EVOSpace collab area past the destroyed Damien Knight Int’l airport.

Once there, Otters gets some more good data points for the Zap epicenter, and Dig does a massive Catalog ritual to look for parts, while Otters and the others grab some additional supplies from the safehouse after securing the area as best they can. After a mammoth effort, they have assembled two scrap planes, using up basically all the remaining parts, fuel, and engine components, which Otters is pretty confident she can get airborne, though they’ll have to glide from there.

They get a delivery of a bunch of fertilizer and other supplies from Pretty and other friendly farmers, once again massively depleting available stock, on Biyu’s suggestion, and her demolitions expert, a very full-of-themselves individual named Xero Dae, comes out and rigs everything up. Creep heads back to Hamtramck to The Trading Post and picks up another HE rocket for the launcher, and a rigger interface for Otters’ plane, so she can pilot remotely from the VTOL behind it.

Dig quickly learns a little piloting from some simulators that Otters has handy, and plans to fly his plane physically before bailing out as a bird. TD sneaks up to the first factory to keep an eye on things and be able to stay on comms to Dig and provide leadership, as that facility has low magical security. CG and Creep sneak up to the other facility in the Blight, Creep with the rocket, and CG with his sniper rifle.

Otters and Dig manage to get airborne, and fly the planes towards their targets, both gliding in to stay as stealthy as possible. CG manages to snipe another guy in a face-mask coming out with a rocket launcher when the plane gets close enough to be notable, and Creep hits the magical ward with the rocket, to knock it down enough for the plane to hit full force. Dig manages to fly his plane as a chimp, before switching to steering with magic fingers and diving out the side, turning to a bird midair.

Both planes hit their target factories and blow big, levelling the structures, as well as some of the surrounding area. The team in the Blight also sees a magical blue circle glow suddenly with some sigils they recognize from Cehualli’s robes as their is some kind of small implosion, and Otters has the feeling of something powerful happening that she is unable to detect, other than a sort of hair-raising feeling.

They link back up at the safehouse, and report into Cehualli, who sends them a big payment, but seems exhausted by his banishment ritual- he is thrilled the team came to him with this and excited to work together again. They then decide to all watch a new (old) flatvid that Creep has been saving for a special occasion to celebrate, and pop in some Harry and the Hendersons.

Deciding it would be better projected, they radio Ringmaster, who seems busy but says they can use the venue space at the Plat Zone. They head over and start watching, with Dig creating a magical contentment aura. Ringmaster is rushing back and forth but stops to say hello, and Creep mentions that the team was involved in the two huge explosions. Ringmaster pauses the playback and insists on an explanation. When everyone continues to seem too chill for his liking, he uses some kind of device that shuts down all of Dig’s spells, so he is suddenly nude and everyone is less chill.

TD pushes back on Ringmaster, insisting that the team remain freelancers who don’t “owe” him anything, and he pushes back on that re: the state of the city, and what he perceived to be the mutually cooperative nature of their relationship. After tensely working their way towards a middle ground, the team lays out what happened, and Ringmaster explains that he is not unhappy with their work, or even not being in the loop ahead of time, but instead with not being informed about the involvement of people he considers close allies in what appeared to be a major, random attack, for which he has been seeking explanations and doing damage control all night while they kicked back and watched vids next to his office.

They then kinda see his point, and everyone is feeling a little down, until Stitches comes up from the basement, fresh out of a gory surgery and needing a break, and they get the sitcom party started again. With Dig having promised Biyu that they’ll be looking into mystery vans again next, they all eagerly await Cholula’s report on what he found while trying to get a signal from his tracker arrow that he had fired into one of them….

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

The team receives a frantic radio call from a Cutters members named Lil Caesar at The Dom – Peregrine managed to open the vault, but something came out, caused some chaos and is now chasing Peregrine. The team loads up and races over, minus Dig, who is mid-ritual restoring the golems.

When they arrive, they find LC, a Scottish Troll, waiting for them, and do some quick investigating. It looks like 2-4 large animals of some sort charged out of the bank vault, through the lobby, down the steps, and down the street towards Downtown. Cholula and CG head out to start tracking the beasts and hoping to help Peregrine, while the rest of the team keeps investigating onsite.

Creep and TD question LC a bit, and take a look at the damage inside, while Otters examines wounds outside and determines that whatever did this has both sharp claws and some kind of multi-pronged horn or antler. The beasts seems to have been just bulling through a crowd rather than specifically attacking, aside from two mangled Cutters who look to have tried to get in the way.

Lacking medical skills and supplies, the van team heads out to catch up to the trackers, who have made impressive work of tracking the trail of destruction towards Downtown. The van catches up and Otters gets Morticia out front and spots Peregrine getting cornered into a dead-end alley by the beast- there are indeed four, and something is deeply wrong with them.

They appear at first to be mutated deer, but also have the face of a bear below their twisted, dripping antlers, long hairless muscled arms ending in sharp claws, in addition to their 4 hooved legs, and exposed rib cages, dripping some kind of ichor, which seems to disappear shortly after it hits the ground- looks like we’re dealing with spirits! Luckily the team brought LC along, who says he is decent at fighting these things, and seems like a bit of a wildass.

The team engages, and finds that there non-magical weaponry is hardly having any effect. One of the beasts gores Peregrine badly, and drives him back into the alley. Creep, Cholula, and LC charge forward, trying to save Peregrine, while Otters engages at a distance with the van, TD provides leadership (which LC happily accepts), and CG fires with his shotgun and uses his spirit to lower the beasts defenses.

While the non-magical gradually chip away at the spirits, LC is doing massive damage with his magic punches, and Cholula takes a hint and starts biting the spirits with his jaw. Creep also spots that all 4 beasts have some sort of antique collars buried deep in their muscular neck flesh, glowing with strange runes and arcane sigils. Seeing that the collars seems to be regenerating the spirits, they adjust their targeting.

They eventually manage to destroy all 4 collars and 3 of the spirits, with the final spirit only attacking CG’s spirit. Otters accidentally misses with the HMG and knocks CG prone (luckily only wrecking his armor), and then has a bright idea. Since the last spirit seems “freed”, if they all play dead, the spirit may accept that is has achieved dominance and leave them be.

Cholula, having raced to the alley, slams a trauma patch on Peregrine after stuffing his guts back in, and then also drops prone when he emerges from the alley and sees everyone else doing that. The spirit raises it’s head, paws the ground a few times, huffs, and then dissaparates. The team breaths a sigh of relief, dusts themselves off, and then races back to The Dom since none of them have any better medical ideas, with Creep hanging back to collect what he can of the destroyed collars.

They get to The Dom with the trauma patch still working, but find the medical staff there overloaded and under-supplied dealing with the other casualties from earlier. LC and Cholula race across the roofs over to the Plat Zone to restock, and LC gets distracted talking to Ringmaster about suit tailoring for dwarves, trolls and others outside the fashion norms. Cholula stays on task, gets what he needs from Stitches, and they dash back.

The rest of the team heads into the Vault to check things out and collect their reward, and find it disappointingly empty of treasure. They carefully check for traps, and then investigate. They find a broken summoning circle, where Creep recognizes the same runes and sigils as from the collars. It is atop a wrought-iron gantry set exactly center in a near perfect sphere made of brick. There are bone fragments and cloth scraps underneath it, which Creep slips through and grabs. CG does some astral investigation, and finds that the ritual has been disrupted, and though this still seems like a bestial magic locus, the leylines connected are fading back again a bit.

The medical staff says they’ve done what they can for Peregrine, but he’s still in rough shape. Everyone heads back to the Tin Can to debrief and drink while Otters secretly works on the van out back, so that LC doesn’t learn their safehouse locale. They have some fun before LC heads out, and then Cholula stays up late to recharge the van since Dig is still working on his rituals. It occurs to him that LC would probably like another electro-charge-bike, so he collects some parts and runs it over to The Dom.

There, he sets up a public charging station out front, which instantly gets swarmed, while LC madly pedals away. Cholula spots a draconic form flying over him, before turning into Brunwyn Harridan as she alights into the medical area through a window. He sends LC up to investigate and takes over on the bike. LC pushes into the medical area, and sees Brunwyn and Peregrine shaking hands, seemingly cementing some sort of deal.

Pushing it a little bit, LC asks what this is all about, and Brunwyn explains that she is taking over providing supplies to The Dom, and will clean up “the mess” in the basement. LC, feeling slightly intimidated, backs out at that point, and reports into Cholula. Cholula races back to the safehouse to debrief with the team. Meanwhile, Otters has taken the VTOL to Run and Sollars private library to research the bank.

With the help of The Cartographer, she finds info that a fur and lumber fortune family scion mysteriously vanished in the late 1800’s, after he developed a fascination with the spiritual and occult. He had been meant to run a new family establishment- the bank which has subsequently become The Dom. Otters head back to report in.

Meanwhile, back at the safehouse, CG has done a Ritual of Bone on the fragments, and gotten a small amount of info- TD oversees to provide some guidance. They determine that whoever this was came from wealth and sought forbidden knowledge, that he joined and investigated various cults and secret societies in pursuit of knowledge, and that some secret society seemed to be behind it all- which the team puts together is likely the Black Lodge.

Meeting up, the team shares all their info, and puts the story together as best they can. It seems like a mana spike must have occurred to allow the ritual, but it was likely corrupted by bad or toxic reagents from the time, as well as a lack of full understanding of how the magic works. It looks the caster was trapped and killed, and slowly ground to bits over the centuries since by the trapped spirits. The ritual circle was likely meant as a controller for the collars, which would have given the caster significant power, especially at the time.

Then, they decide that Brunwyn must either be behind one of the two SK Brackhauses, or have taken over their op to supply The Dom, likely wanting control over the bestial power center as their primary goal, though the good PR never hurts. They decide to look into the famine problems next, worried about more dark spirits gaining too much power….

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

The team starts the day after the lab raid fresh, and begins discussing how to parcel out the info and who to sell it to. After some options and debate, they decide to go with Cehualli for a big payday with some options for non-monetary recompense. He is delighted, creepily, to receive the info and says he is glad they were finally able to work together. He transfers them a large sum of nuyen, as well as a sapphire weapon focus for Dig and a Tarot card for CG- one of the last few they haven’t seen before, the Chief Executive.

The team spends a while puzzling over the card before noticing what looks like a button in the holo-projection. They decide to delay pressing it for now, and Creep stashes it in his leg with the rest. They decide to visit Peregrine next, having requested to be kept updated by him and having received an update message. They head down to the rechristened “The Dom” enclave, and find it looking healthy and somewhat bustling. Aid supplies are being distributed out front and an informal barter market has taken over much of the lobby, alongside a notice board and wall of the missing, similar to the ones that Ringmaster and Deadline have been setting up at other enclaves.

TD tries to get a feel for any creepy/culty/etc stuff going on and can’t detect it, but notices that the people here seem to be working together symbiotically unusually well. Dig and CG take a further look at the leylines, and determine that they seem to be surfacing further, presumably as Peregrine makes progress on opening the vault below. They look bestial in some way, but not quite familiar to Dig, and using his arcanoarchaeology knowledge he determines that the locus was likely a mana spike in Victorian times, that someone managed to capture, use or contain in some way. This rouses the team’s interest to say the least.

They have a chat with Peregrine and he gives them some updates on the enclave and seems his usual friendly self, though his mysterious connections still leave them with some suspicions. He wants to hire them to secure transport of some supplies (food, meds, filters, etc) from a promising new supplier he is trying to establish a relationship with, but he’s been having some trouble in the Down Below from some former ARES/Mafia goons who have started up a protection racket covering some of the main junctions, including the point where the handoff is to be made tomorrow.

The team requests some time to discuss, and Peregrine exits to let them chat. They check and noone seems to be monitoring, though Otters is delighted to find a functional local mesh. They decide they want a share of whatever’s in the vault as payment, and Peregrine agrees, with some limits due to lack of knowledge, once he returns. Creep and Cholula head down to scout the route, and Dig turns into a wolf to help. Using their extensive tunnel maps and Dig’s powerful nose, they plot out as direct a path as possible while avoiding major settlements and intersections.

They head back to the safehouse, rest, and make a plan. The next day they head back underground a few hours early, with Dig and Cholula using a mindlink to stay in touch while each patrolling half of the route and using magic and/or might to keep it clear. The rest of the crew posts up in or near Knight Junction, where the exchange will take place, and quickly spots some plain clothes ARES goons filtering into the crowd. Since the goons haven’t spotted them, they decide to trigger an ambush, and manage to quickly take 2/3 of them out, with the other’s retreating, hauling their wounded and leaving their dead.

Meanwhile, Dig has spotted 4 more ARES goons wearing heavier armor posted up alongside the route, who start racing for the Junction when gunfire pops off. Dig and Cholula give chase and come under fire themselves, and have to fall back a bit, though Cholula manages to get word to the rest of the team and they set up a quick pincer. Dig hits the armored goons from behind with a powerful spell, driving them towards the Junction, where the team makes quick work of them with another fusilade, supported by two other runner types that Otters quickly hires who were scoping out the Junction.

As Creep examines the corpses, he notices that although they have ARES armor, their weapons and gear are all Onotari Arms. He makes note for later. The two other runners, who the team has recognized as the guards they saw via clairvoyance in the suite of one of the two Brackhauses at the hotel downtown, make their exit. A short while later, another well-armored squad enters, hauling some crates on air cushion sleds.

Although they are not branded or obviously labelled in any way, they are clearly SK, or meaning to look like them, down to the slight AGS accent of the one who speaks, though all wear full-face visors so it is hard to tell who is who. The speaking one passes over the goods and says to pass along the message to Peregrine that they consider this all satisfactory and will trade again in future. The other four pop out mobile field stretchers and load up all the enemy corpses and haul them off.

Otters gets the Mule drones to haul the supply sleds, and they carefully make their way back through the tunnels to The Dom without any further trouble. They hand over the goods to Peregrine, who seems quite happy with their performance, and tells them he’ll be in touch as soon as he cracks the final layers of security on the vault for their payment. He also tells them to refer lone/small group survivors to him as needed- he is trying to expand The Dom’s footprint to house more, as well as connecting other enclaves to secure safer housing for those that want it.

The team heads home, rests up, and gets ready to face whatever comes next…

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

The team all debriefs together after their separate missions, and decides that next up they need to take out Bloodripper, as he has gone from violent thrill-kill ganger to fulltime serial killer. They make a series of elaborate plans for trap scenarios and the like, before deciding their best bet is a simpler plan. They find a mostly empty shuttle parking lot in Dearborn near some factories, and Dig hides the van with Otters, Cholula, TD and himself inside under some concrete, using magic, while CG waits in the center of the lot with a ring of grenades strung around him, just far enough that he won’t be hurt when they detonate but close enough to be able to cover any direction that Bloodripper may approach from.

CG also reveals the existence of his own personal VTOL and private Bolthole, sharing the details in case anything happens. Some on the team are quite shocked by this revelation, especially Cholula, though they all also recognize it as a pro move and wonder if they should do the same.

Creep hides under a nearby abandoned car, and CG tells his spirit to start using powers once the fight kicks off. Having a left a note at their safehouse with their specific location, CG sends out a cryptic radio broadcast intended to lure BR to the note, and thus to the trap. After waiting around for quite a while, and believing themselves to be watching carefully, they are surprised when BR suddenly appears at the edge of the grenade circle, having spotted the poorly concealed trap.

CG explains that they’re just for lubrication and exciting fireworks, so BR spurs his bike forward over the line, and dismounts before embracing CG in a crushing embrace. CG’s spirit reports that it can’t see BR in astral space but that a Watcher spirit seems to be following/observing. As the team failed to trigger their ambush when BR wandered in, they scramble to catch up as CG is slowly being crushed to death- BR seems to think this will be a worthy devotional act.

Creep says “fuck it” and shoots BR, blowing off most of his armor, as Dig finally gets it together and gets the concrete moved so Otters can drive the van up and open fire with the HMG. Unfortunately, CG’s spirit uses the accident power on BR and he seems to attempt to protect CG from the gunfire but fails and trips, throwing both of them into it’s path. BR is killed, spectacularly, and CG is badly injured, though the team manages to stabilize and heal him somewhat as they race over.

With that settled, they scrape BR’s remains onto his burning, ruined motorcycle and let it burn. They swing by the Plat Zone to check in with Ringmaster, since it’s been a while, and debrief on all the dark spirit business. They confirm that as a syndicate hitman, pre-Blackout, BR was likely a devotee of Cernobog, and most likely has been manipulated by a spirit of pain and disease named Crepitus into believing that he is sacrificing to Cernobog while actually empowering it.

RM congratulates them on their success effectively ending the shadow zombie threat, though news of Shedim involvement is upsetting to him. Also, he has now taken to wearing a biohazard suit, well-tailored of course, to keep others safe from his HMHVV infection, as he explains he was able to avoid infection and is himself now also a carrier. He offers the same tech to Dig, who refuses, and gently warns the team again about the risk.

They talk about other Spirit threats- Famine aka Mezcallus Negh seems like the next biggest one, and they hope that Crepitus will be diminished by it’s acolyte’s destruction, assuming it doesn’t have others. Luckily, the Mafia got mostly wiped out and the Vory doesn’t really have a toehold, so they don’t think there will be any obvious candidates. They also figure they better deal with Pygmy and Li Wei at some point, who have joined forces under the moniker “The Blood Knights”, claiming to be hooders keeping Detroit free from the corps, which to them entails sacrificing any corpo citizens they get their hands on in blood magic rituals. Effective perhaps, but maybe not cool.

Putting that off for another time, they decide to follow up on a lead from Erika Knowles about some stolen ARES data and tech, and determine that it is likely in the possession of Tilda Aurand, the same doctor they were looking for in relation to the various collared lab animal escapees. On the way, Dig calls Grandma Biyu to float the idea of hosting corpse bonfires adjacent to food giveaways, and she eagerly agrees, since Ringmaster is also throwing in some support.

Biyu explains that due to a new local alliance between the Seoul’Pa and the Reality Hackers and the Triad, they will also be able to make these into the central nodes of further mesh nets as they continue to expand. The team, as usual, worries what all these alliances will look like when things reopen someday, but for now they are doing the best they can. They start tracking down the lab via the hacked collar that Dig managed to salvage, and eventually do home in on the signal- a facility seemingly contained behind and under a streetfront pet store.

Creep heads in to investigate, and works his way down a partially exposed secret elevator shaft. He is almost overwhelmed by some kind of venomous mice, who swarm him as he tries to clamber back out, so Cholula races in to try to rescue, and almost succumbs himself. Using some clever combo’s of flashbangs and smoke grenades, Creep manages to drive the mice hoard back, while Cholula accidentally covers himself in lube with a bad grenade toss.

Dig comes in and Pulses the mice after Cholula fails to Animal Control them and reports that they may be biodrones- which Otters thought was impossible due to size. They get Cholula out, and CG finds a pet wash station to get him cleaned up, while Otters and Dig dissect a sample mouse that Creep retrieves. They find it suffused with nanites, with no other implants visible, and Dig manages to Pulse in time to keep either of them from getting the nanites in themselves.

They regroup and all head down, aside from Creep and CG, who do some recon and keep an eye on things up top in case of a trap. TD holds up a note in front of one of the cameras in the store, which appear hardwired to something below, offering to talk rather than fight, and with the elevator powers back up and takes them down, avoiding the lubed mouse pile at the bottom of the shaft. They enter a wrecked lab, and searching for traps, Cholula finds that the defenses were all turned inwards when they were destroyed.

They find a series of rooms with bashed open doors, all also from the inside. though the enclosure cages all seem to have opened normally…. as they head further in, hall lights turn on and off to guide their path. They check out more experimental rooms, and finding some of the notes it looks like this is where the collared animals all came from. There are various destroyed drones around, which seem like the only facility staff, but which were only able to contain about 1/2 of the escaped test subjects.

Coming to final vault door, it hisses and opens, and they hear a faint crackly voice requesting assistance. They find a brain in a jar on the floor with a small speaker attached, and determine that this is what remains of Dr. Tilda Aurand. She convinces them with knowledge of the escaped subjects, as well as by leading them to discover her body, which is on ice in the back, with the lid of her skull removed like an egg cup. She requests that they remove her from this place along with her body, from which she hopes to grow a wimp clone.

Dig asks why they should bother, and she points out that the server stack is slagged and says she is the only source of the knowledge now. Dig offers to Mind Probe her, but the rest of the team figures it’s better to have a new friend, so he doesn’t. She requests they provide her with a visual sensor, so Cholula slaps one of his surveillance dots on the brain jar and gives her control. Otters notices that she has both a nice deck and rig incorporated, and they see that the jar seems to have rolled free of an anthroform drone when it was wrecked fighting an escapee.

She explains that Otto Hendricks sent hitmen after her when she fled ARES with all her data during Latvian Gambit to this lab that she had slowly and methodically set up in the background over years while planning her escape. That was when she was forced to freeze her original body and transfer her brain to this slapdash arrangement. CG assenses and she is indeed alive, and free of nanites, so they agree to her terms.

She provides them with a magical research paper as initial proof of the quality of her info, and keeps trickling more info to them as they remove her from the facility. This includes intel on various ARES projects- security dinosaur biodrones, Encounter Suits for more safely exploring the Deep Metaplanes, as well as intel about who knew what and when- apparently the Bottleneck portal closer devices, including the massive one that Vogel set off to end Latvian Gambit, were based on tech stolen from the mysterious metaplane of Dis, and the development of the ALPHA merges and the metahuman possessions of bugs on Colony/Vhortas were based on tech stolen from AZT from their cyberzombie research.

This is all big paydata, and the team needs some time to discuss who to pass or sell it on to. For now, they have a quick debate about what to do with Aurand. Dig wants to kill her, as she seems like a pretty objectively mad scientist with low ethical qualms about her actions, plus they’ve got what she knows now. The rest of the team votes to try to help her get a body and make a new ally. Giving her a few options, she chooses to be taken to Moreau for his biodrones expertise, as she doesn’t trust Ellis (a former coworkers) and doesn’t know Leanna Octave, and seems suspicious of her new turn towards nanotech.

The team drives her over to Moreau’s facility, and then settles in to figure out where to sell the data.

Runners
Creep
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective

The team decides to finally follow through on helping Smoach finish off the Shadow Spirit threat in town, partially in revenge for Myrryr’s death. Otters fixes up the van and replaces the wrecked Mule drone with parts from RRR, and finds out that their numbers have been significantly reduced due to some treachery and infighting spurred by a local, now deceased, fixer named Florio. Rubberhead still gets them what they need though, and tells them that they have more shielded solar, chemical battery, and old-school combustion engines up and running for vehicles, drones, generators etc that they are selling around town. The team is also starting to see more local mesh nets up and running after they distro’ed the know-how on the radio.

Following Smoach’s freshest lead, they find a busted up combustion van, that seems to have been on corpse collection duty. 2 bodies left behind are possessed by Shadow spirits, one of whom was the driver who is scarifying his face in the ritual manor while still half-launched through the windshield. The team waits and observes while the 2 spirits extricate themselves and take some medical tools from the van, and then Creep sneaks after them when they leave on foot. Otters and Dig approach and take a look at the crashed van, which seems to have run into…. nothing?

Dig decrypts the hardwired camera footage while Otters secures the scene. The Detective ends up talking to and calming some locals who approached and seem super traumatized. As they calm them, they notice it has an astral effect- some sort of pooling fear dissipates. TD tells the team and Dig gets airborne to take a more thorough astral look, and sees that the path Creep is following the Shadow spirits on is one outer tendril of a web of fear that they seem to be reinforcing- almost as if someone is trying to create leylines or aspect the local manasphere in preparation for a larger invasion.

Dig reports back while Smoach uses his TM abilities to retain comms with Creep as he gets further away. They take another look in the astral and notice that their is Famine feeling coming from the North and West, which seems to be somewhat bolstered by the Fear and vice versa, though their effected areas seem to carefully not overlap. Using Dig’s astral map. Smoach’s surveillance intel, and everyone else’s knowledge of the city, they determine where the Shadow spirits are headed: the locus of fear Downtown, the cities largest emergency shelter, which also serves as the overflow morgue for mass casualty incidents. Reviewing the video footage from the van, it looks like Shadow spirits ambushed it with a invisible barrier wall while the van was full of corpses (likely either for ghoul food or cremation, depending), and then killed the survivor of the crash. A swarm of bats flies in and the bodies rise and take off en masse, leaving the driver and one in the back behind to loot.

Creep sees that the Shadows are trying to terrify and harass any people they come across, and briefly chase but don’t attack them. The team decides that they need to limit the spread of fear, and after all bolstering themselves against the existential dread of what they’ve encountered, aided by a happy spell from Dig and some Guts, they race down to pick up Creep and destroy the spirits. They make short work of their bodies with gunfire, and Dig manages to disrupt their astral forms with spellcraft, and then sees a truly horrifying sight- an awful ravenous bat-like maw visible in the distance near the Scar in the astral sky seems to consume the spirits instead of allowing them to travel back to their homeplace when disrupted, and seems to both gain power and become somewhat more proximate in doing so.

Dig reports this in, and Smoach shares some of his more obscure research, which turned up hints of the Horrors, and something called The Book of Harrow, that Myrryr had been obsessed with. The team, worried, decides they need to cheer up the town before they head to the morgue/shelter, and head to Biyu’s while Dig naps to recover from drain. He stays behind at Biyu’s to rest and learn an astral armor spell while the team distro’s food (to fight the famine) alongside a stirring spiel from TD (to fight fear) and some data chips that Creep loads the 10 best episodes of Rosanne onto (which are received with all the enthusiasm of a religious pamphlet by most).

They do successfully change the vibe a bit with the effort though, and TD can see that they seem to be constraining the spread of the Fear tendrils if not actively pushing them back. After Dig rests they head Downtown to check out the locus. They find it well-marked and signed as an emergency shelter, and it seems not to have been fortified, likely as a trap for desperate survivors to enter. Using their maps and knowledge of the DDB, they determine roughly where an emergency exit should be down there, and decide that they should hit it from both sides in a pincer.

While surveilling, Otters spots someone else also surveilling, so they pull back and used one of Creep’s LRAD’s to tightbeam a message over to the area, after Dig assenses and can’t find anyone, but detects a deathly aura that they all assume means Shedim. Recalling that Shedim have supposedly heavily infiltrated UCAS SpecOps, they think this may be the team they heard was in town, and assume that an enemy of an enemy could at least be a temporary ally? They get a radio call from Marshall Eugene Trapp shortly after, in which he circumspectly offers to pass along a message, and tells them to come meet with him in person to keep if off radio.

They head to his office in West Downtown, and he refuses to confirm or deny knowing of any sort of SpecOps in town, but goes over their plan with them and confirms with Otters that if the runners cover the aboveground exit, Smoach can guide the other team down to the emergency exit, where they will breach and drive anyone inside out into the team’s field of fire. The team agrees, and arms up with some rocket launchers and heavy duty ammo for fighting spirits. They head over and set up their ambush, with Creep making a large lube field while Otters rigs some grenade tripwires at choke points.

Dig hides as a mouse in Creep’s pocket, who has a grenade bandolier and flamethrower ready to go. TD has their flamethrower ready in the van as well, while Otters rigs the van and mounted weapons. They get a stream from Smoach who says he’ll follow the Shedim team in and maintain comms as long as he can. They see the team, very pro, having cleared a space in the survivor encampment around the door, apply det-cord, blow the door, and breach very quickly. They race into a long dark tunnel with flickering emergency bio-lights, all cement block.

After a long eerie traversal, they enter a huge morgue chamber, also badly lit, which the team at first thinks is strewn with bodies, but instead see are all unzipped, empty body bags. Smoach pans around and they see that all the freezer corpse lockers have been opened, with the sliding slabs partially out. It is very creepy, with no bodies in sight, until Smoach zooms in on one of the soldiers checking the body bags, and sees one of them unzip from the inside, from which a corpse sits up and detonates a suicide vest. The feed cuts out. Up top, Creep notices some ripples in one of the areas where the lube has pooled a bit, just before he hears the terrifying sound of hundreds of mostly bare feet running up the dark ramps towards them.

They prepare a bounding overwatch in case they need to advance or retreat, and slam some combat drugs as a huge zombie hoard charges forth up both ramps in a horrifying flesh wave. Otters cuts down the first few ranks with suppressive fire, with Creep supplementing with chucked grenades. The subsequent ranks stumble over the first as they fall, and slide through the lube field into the grenade traps, as Otters follows up with a rocket, and TD reloads the launcher. Dig is frantically trying to disrupt spirits in the astral plane but has to flee the sheer number of spirits that the team has disembodied there.

He continues trying to fry them but see that those spirits that can are taking to dead bats littered around the parking area in an attempt to escape. TD and Creep open up with flamethrowers while falling back, while Otters uses the remaining rocket and suppressive fire to continue scything through the zombie hoard. As they are further thinned out, the team starts to hear and see automatic weapons fire from behind the hoard as well, it seems some of Shedim team survived.

With the Shedim survivors entering and fighting with brutal efficiency on the astral as well as the physical, the team just manages to prevent a mass bat breakout. They may not have got them all but they definitely disrupted a lot, and destroyed the necessary hosts of many more. Dig and TD can already feel the fear locus lessening in power from their actions here. Without any further convo, the Shedim head back belowground, with only Creep spotting two of the less damaged zombies from first wave rising to join them, seemingly providing hosts to some of the Shedim whose bodies were destroyed in the suicide bombing in the morgue.

The team heads home to rest and mourn Smoach’s death, though he at least went in with his eyes open and chose to be there. They find Chew Gum and Cholula waiting for them, saying they have an upsetting report from their investigation into Bloodripper’s whereabouts…..

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
The Detective
Tabasco aka Cholula

The team gets everyone into position and triggers the assault against the OOSG fortified warehouse. Rose is providing TM comms support to boost the range of the TacNET, giving everyone some critical bonuses, while ChewGum and the spirits watch the back for anyone trying to escape towards the river. Otters keeps the van out of sight for now, running the RCC from inside the smuggling compartment, while The Detective rides inside, keeps an eye out locally, and provides leadership and oversight via the TacNET. DIg and SINder set up to provide magical cover for the assault team, while Bard is covering from a sniper perch.

The assault team approaches, with Cholula and the Windsor crew members Signpost, Smaug, and Lunatech easily hopping over the fence that rings the building. Otters’ mule drone gets hung up for a moment at the fenceline while also providing covering fire for the bounding overwatch maneuver. Creep sneaks up without anyone seeming to notice him. As Cholula turns to help out the drone, some panels on the warehouse wall drops and two of the ballistas fire massive bolts into the drone, destroying it. Bard takes out one of their crew with a well-placed sniper shot, while Dig keeps missing over and over with lightning bolts.

Signpost cracks open some more defensive paneling and those 3 slip inside, with Creep sneakily following, and Cholula ascending to the roof. CG opens up with suppressive fire on the back wall, keeping everyone trapped inside with the spirits on overwatch. The ballistas next turn their fire on Bard’s position, and he is hit and drops off the TacNET, seemingly unconscious or dead. SINder seems to be distracted trying to help him, and Dig manages to distract one of the ballista crews with another unusually weak spell, but it provides enough cover for Cholula to manage to light them on fire with phosphorus arrows.

The Windsor crew takes out the other ballista crew, as Cholula comes under fire from a crossbow-wielding knight, and a half dozen other knights charge and dogpile the Windsor crew, wildly swinging their claymore’s in some kind of combat frenzy. One of them seems to be the obvious leader, who Creep and Cholula mark out on the TacNET. They appear to be making short work of the outnumbered Windsor crew, so Creep and Cholula open fire on them as well, revealing their positions.

Dig also launches some spells at those he can see, and CG starts descending from his perch to breech from the rear and help. Otters moves the van closer for support and extraction now that the ballistas are out of commission. Cholula gets hit by a couple of stun grenades and is forced to retreat, and Creep has to fall back outside after two of the knights charge up towards his position. CG’s spirit manages to cause one of them to fall on his own sword during the attack, injuriously, and Dig snags the other one with his magic fingers to keep him from catching Creep.

Creep leaves a grenade behind and detonates it, shredding the knight’s armor. He still charges out in pursuit, and Otters drops him with the van HMG. Dig approaches closer to get into the fight as well and almost gets tagged with some kind of nasty toxin thrown by the leader. It seems to briefly increase his drain, but he feels like he dodged something worse. CG blasts his way in from the back and opens up on the OOSG knights who have been hacking up the Windsor crew.

Singpost looks dead, Smaug is badly injured, and Lunatech also looks pretty hurt but is sneakily hauling herself free over towards the pile of toxic chemical barrels in one corner. She starts fiddling with some tubes and wires connected to them when she gets there while Otters takes out another OOSG knight who tries to come after Dig in the doorway, and CG frantically dodges attacks from the 2 who charge him. The leader manages to counter a powerful spell from Dig, and starts swinging his sword at him after annihilating Dig’s spirit with his mageblade.

Dig dodges impressively well with some assistance from Otters and TD, and manages to hold the leader just long enough with his magic fingers to allow himself to escape to a safer distance. Unfortunately, SINder was trying to use his own spell to haul the KO’ed Smaug out the door to safety, and Smaug is cut in half by the OOSG leader. Lunatech seeing this, and with 3 knights remaining and them team out of good ideas on how to fight them effectively, and with the van damaged from another sword blow, makes a decision, and shouting “to the MOOOOOOOOON” ignites some det cord she has wound around the chemical drum tubing she has spliced together.

CG goes down under the OOSG assault, though his spirit is able to keep one of the knights from stopping Lunatech. Cholula decides on a crazy rescue plan, and takes a running jump off the roof of the van and goes into a sliding dive to grab CG and get them both out the back of the warehouse before it blows. TD grabs Creep into the van as Otters spins it around to put the open door away from the warehouse and the van between Dig and the warehouse.

It blows big and Dig manages to leap into the open side door as the van is blown towards him. CG and Cholula roll free with some more help from the plant corpse spirit, and get picked up. Rose and SINder haul a bandaged and unconscious Bard down, still impaled with a massive ballista bolt, and get back to their vehicle to head home and try to regroup, much depleted. The team heads back to their safehouse and rests.

The next day, they package up their assorted intel, and Dig heads up to Smoach’s to get help interpreting it. He promises they will help Smoach deal with the Shadow spirit threat soon. Smoach ID’s the toxin used on him as “Void Blast”- it apparently messes with channeling, and would likely have done a lot of damage as well if it had hit full on. He also ID’s a key sigil that the team saw on the OOSG bladed as “St. Hubert’s Key” a symbol of a sort of purification- he’s heard some Catholic’s think there is an artifact affiliated that can stave off or prevent HMHVV infection. But this seems darker, like they wanted to “purify” the world of the Infected.

This would explain the noxious chemical cloud over the part of downtown where the fight took place, where some of whatever was in the barrels is still burning, or at least smoking. Smoach also ID’s the sigil on the necklace the leader wore, which is what he used to counterspell Dig, as a rumored symbol of a shadowy group called the “Cult of the Great Hunter”, and explains that he had thought they were just a paranoid internet rumor. Supposedly, they were some 4th World humans who didn’t hide during the transition to magical downtime, and instead spent the time hunting and killing dragons, fae, and others while they slumbered or sheltered in their Kaer’s. As well as, rumors say, continued their work into the 5th World, and beyond, up to the present- though once again, Smoach says this is all just fringe rumor stuff, or so he thought.

With data in hand, Dig flies down to Brunwyn’s yacht, and passes it over. She seems thrilled that them and the Windsor crew took the initiative and dealt with the OOSG, and after Dig fumbles around a bit, gives him some money. She says that she has to rescind a few previous job offers, as some of the people she’s been seeking have been found, either by herself or others, in which case they did not survive. Someone else appears to be hunting the scientists that she’s been collecting. However, she says she can always find work for a quality team, and seems happy with their performance here. After casually intimidating Dig a bit, he leaves and visits Grandmother Biyu, who tells him she has another lead on the mystery vans.

Returning to the safehouse, Dig reports back on all this, and they decide to split the pay between Otters getting her mule replaced and sending a bunch to the Windsor crew. They also get some new updates= apparently Canadian separatists have blown the 3 main bridges from Downtown to Windsor, cutting the SE district off significantly from the rest of town. Cholula is still super stressed about the threat of Bloodripper, so he and CG agree to try to track him down.

The rest of the team decide to finally help Smoach deal with Shadow spirits, and start readying themselves to deal with that threat once and for all.

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

While the crew is running errands for Biyu, Cholula organizes the new gang coop to strike/eliminate the 696 Slayers, who everyone has some degree of beef with, and who seem to be a growing threat to Motor City with their nihilistic embrace of violence, cannibalism, and a growing cult-like adoration of Gorechuk Bloodripper, who also problematically is still magically in a twisted sort of love with Chew Gum. Luckily Cholula is better at strategizing than talking, and comes up with a plan good enough that all members of the coop throw is some means of support, and the mission is mostly successful. The 696’s are wiped out, their current captives freed, their turf reclaimed. BUT- Bloodrippers escapes, screaming out a vow of vengeance on all who oppose him, and Cholula specifically.

With that problem dealt with, for now, Cholula returns the safehouse for a well-earned rest and links up with the rest of the crew before they head back down to the Old Dominion bank Downtown to talk their way in on behalf of Peregrine. They spend some time planning, and decide their best move is to invite the Cutters to join the gang coop, and spend some time getting couriers from the Keepers to deliver a dossier The Detective compiles on the proposal to all the members.

They have a radio call, and find that the different factions all have some different ideas of how voting, decision making etc should work. Some of the more classic gangs have sent a higher up to make the decisions for them, while other newer cooperative orgs have sent elected delegates with pre-approved limits etc. The team gets everyone to agree to assign Ronnie’s Raiders the task of coming up with some proposals for internal governance, which the group (primarily college students and teachers) eagerly agrees to.

For now, they get everyone on board with inviting the Cutters, though it also raises the question of what will become of the coop once the Blackout ends (if the world outside survived), as the Cutters will be the dominant faction locally, and have better international connections than any other member group outside of the Ancients. This is tabled for the time, as a “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” problem. The team compiles their proposal for the Cutters knowing what little they know about their local situation leadership, mostly based on an interaction Cholula had during Latvian Gambit.

Once Downtown, they talk their way into the well-fortified bank, finding that even though ARES cut the Cutters loose, they managed to hang onto a lot of heavy armament. After a comically bureaucratic process, they finally get through to Ripper, the local leader. She remembers Cholula, though seems surprised at his updated appearance and change of moniker. Using this friendly lead-in, The Detective makes the deal, though Ripper proves a canny negotiator and TD has to contact Peregrine to confirm a few changes to the proposal.

After all that’s done, they chat a bit and head out, and then get very stressed out when Dig suggests that Peregrine could be a Null Sect member, especially since he’s suspiciously new to town and they haven’t interacted in person. However, they quickly find a friendly dwarf walking in and introducing himself, still using the unidentifiable pan-Euro accent that made Dig initially suspicious. He pulls a power move of getting patted down and then passing over a wicked looking concealed blade that the security missed.

He converses briefly with the team, and then says he has to get to work taking a local census, addressing needs, and taking a look at the vault downstairs that he’s so eager to get to. Ripper had said they hadn’t had any luck gaining access yet. Almost as an afterthought, Peregrine manually lock picks his way into the 7 Sisters message drop, and Otters leaves a note for Astrid Case with their radio code. Taking a look at the astral situation around the bank once they leave, they notice that it seems likely some old leylines converge underneath it, though they can’t get a good feel for their initial aspect or for what might be at their crossing, as earth and/or other magical barriers prevent it.

Following up on a tip from Ripper, they go examine the nearby site of a blood magic sacrifice one of her scouts found. They ID the victim as likely being one of the Jaguar Guards in town with the AZT mage Cehaulli, and get some intel on the crime itself- a prolonged and painful ritual bleeding resulting in sacrifice to power the caster. CG also gets an image of his face using the Mortis Optigram- an Aztlaner man with a face repeatedly tattooed over and over such that none of the individual designs are decipherable. They call it in to Cehualli on the van radio.

He and The Detective chat a bit, and he reveals he had already found and investigated the site, and confirms that it is the work of the serial killer they are hunting, who he says is a Path of the Sun extremist heretic. TD still doesn’t like Cehualli overall, but he seems to appreciate them reaching out and views it as an expansion of their relationship, so he shares some further info, in case the team can track down the killer. They decide not to pursue it for now, but to keep their eyes open.

Back in the van, they get a call from Astrid Case, responding to Otters’ note. After she strongarms them a bit, she gives into their threat to reveal her involvement in the planning runup to the Blackouts, as she says whoever was paying her retainer before missed the most recent payment. In agreement to keep her name out of it, she tells them she was paid a lot of money for about 6 months of prep work, via a shell company she didn’t bother to try to track beyond the Carib League. She did pick ups and drop offs from an office Downtown, near the Senator hotel, but only ever directly interacted with drones or Camden Espinoze.

She gives them the address, but tells them the property was rented by the same shell company that paid her so they likely won’t get much from that. They head over to investigate, and find the office burned out in an intentional arson. Examining the setup, it was obviously rigged to burn professionally, and probably had been set up to go up at a moment’s notice while it was operational. It looks like the office was run exclusively by drones (which are totally slagged), and it seems like office sounds were broadcast over speakers while standees and cardboard furniture would give the impression of a bustling space behind the privacy frosted windows and doors.

Based on their investigation, they determine that this must have been the work of the Null Sect- who else could run this level of scheme, with this result, using only drones, with this kind of funding? It feels like solid inference, even though they lack direct proof. They head back to Biyu’s, and get paid for their investigation, as well as for the assassination. She also cooks them up a nice dinner as usual. She seems at least semi-aware of the Null Sect, and warns them against saying too much about them over comms, even in the Blackout, but compliments them on a job well-done.

They rest up again at the safehouse, and wake to some distressing news: Neverland Candy Shoppe has been torched, with no known survivors. They head down there to see if they can help, and find Lunatech and Smoach looking pissed, but unable to even search for survivors given the ongoing extreme heat of the shell of the collapsed building. Dig summons a water spirit, and Creep uses it to get inside, where they find a torched and melted body pile near the center of the blaze, bearing marks of archaic weaponry. They deduce that this was the work of the Order of St. George, and decide to put an end to them.

They say they will track them to their base, while Smoach and Lunatech round up their crew to support the assault. Dig, as a wolf, starts tracking, and then CG uses one of his spirit powers to make him considerably faster so that wolf Dig can easily pace the van. Cholula also tracks on foot but falls far behind. They find the OOSG fortress, a barricaded riverfront warehouse, with ease, but come under bombardment while parked outside discussing what to do.

Otters manages to dodge the flaming ballista bolts, and they retreat, finding a rendezvous point with the Windsor/Belle Isle crew. With roughly even numbers contributed by both groups, they plan an assault using bounding overwatch, with about an even split between the close quarters and ranged teams. Otters parks her body in the van, to use the HMG for covering fire while sneaking a cloaked Mule in alongside the CQC team.

Cholula gets shot at again while doing some recon, and thus confirms that the OOSG has at least some members who can see and target astrally, which also explains how they made the van so easily. This complicates things a bit, but just furthers the argument to hit them fast and hard. Everyone loads up, tightens the straps on their armor, and gets ready to charge…..

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective

The team decides to hold off on tracking down the escaped critters lab, and Cholula heads off to keep an eye on the 696 Slayers and start plotting the gang coop mission to take them out. The rest of the crew decides to knock out the assorted jobs they have for Grandmother Biyu. They head down to the Long Storage facility first and try to contact Static, the AI landlord, who appears to be absent or offline. They break in, and are nearly overwhelmed by the terrible odors coming out from many units. There are also a lot of obvious signs of looting and other break-in’s.

Luckily, Dig as a dog has an excellent nose and tracks down the unit they are looking for with ChewGum and necro spirit assistance, and they manage to talk their way in without any trouble, despite some home-built auto-turrets that Tator has rigged up. He turns out to be a somewhat chaotic-seeming dwarf with nano-tats, who seems to be a Technomancer who ended up in deep debt to the Triad. He says it was actually kinda lucky since he was in a Farady’ed holding cell when they Blackout hit, so wasn’t effected as many TM’s were, and now can work down his debt at an accelerated rate.

He has the pieces of the previous mystery vans the team blew up, which Biyu seems to have retrieved after they tipped her off. He also has a more intact third van, as well as a cracked-open SpriteLok. He explains that he managed to bust it open and free the captive Sprite onto the local hardwired grid, and when the team, worried for Static, asks if he say anyone else on there, he says it looked empty to him. He also agrees to free the Sprite from the Spritelok that the team recovered, since they don’t have a handy grid to let it stabilize on.

He passes on some intel he’s scraped from the van’s nav and comms systems, and Dig and Otters manage to retrieve a bit more, recovering another few days of Jackpoint logs from the first few days of the Blackout- it seems there is a lot of live information manipulation happening, and confusion as to where is or isn’t blacked out, what caused it, what’s happening etc. Also, there was at least one sighting of somewhere wearing a III Corps jacket who appeared mutated in a fight inside the ARCHology in St. Louis. Based on team file records, the team speculates that the Black Lodge portals used to construct that facility may have been involved….

They also review the info Tator found. It looks like Camden Espinoza, who they previously extracted for Brunwyn, made the offline GridGuide substitution as well as the hardened map devices that the vans use. So the team now has the route, as well as knowing a little more about Espinoza’s role. They also trace it back to Run and Sollars Private Library, where the map Espinoza used came from. They decide to head there later and check that out as well.

They stop by the port and pass along the small mystery package to a somewhat chastened-looking Triad LT, who is missing an ear. They then swing by the container graveyard adjacent, and with a clever idea from Creep track down the seafood container they are looking for via it’s massive heat output from it’s (luckily) still working AC. They manage to get it all loaded into the van as well as a trailer they buy from Rubberhead at the Triple R for this purpose.

Managing to speed by various hungry survivors on the way with no serious problems, the team drops off the seafood and reports in to Biyu, who pays them the first increment and also buys the trailer off their hands. They next head to Casa Aurelius and pull off a quick assassination, blasting the shit out of an elf businessman with CG’s shotgun from the open side door of the van before Otters speeds off while under covering fire from the machine gun mounted on the roof.

With that done, they rest up and then head to the library the next day. Luckily TD and Otters have good reps there since they didn’t call ahead, and TD manages to con The Cartographer into showing them the visitor log by claiming they are trying to help find out who kidnapped Camden Espinoza, as his family has been asking around. They get the name Astrid Case, ESQ, which Creep and TD recognize as being the honorific for a lawyer.

Knowing only one set of lawyers in town, they head to Belle Isle, and find Sahara Jones working for STV, having been left behind in the chaotic ARES withdrawal. Happy to see her previous saviors, she helps them out for free, and tells them Case is a local hardline corp rights attorney with a high fee who works for a boutique firm. She gives them the mailing address they have on file- an old bank downtown. They head there next.

The bank is under control of the Cutters, who took it over after ARES cut them loose back during the bug crisis. It looks like they have a civilian community there also, though the relationship is unclear. Dig notices an unknown number trying to call them, and puts it through. They make contact with the fixer Peregrine, who they’ve heard of but not interacted with yet. They agree to work with him to get an in with the Cutters, make sure the civvies are being taken care of well, and get him access to the basement, in exchange for him getting them the info they need on Case.

With some recon ahead, they start talking through some plans for how to get the Cutters on board, but since Peregrine is offering resources and material support, they think they can make it work without excessive bloodshed, though he seems open to a change in gang leadership as needed.

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

After retreating from the guards’ raking fire during the extraction of Camden Espinoza, Cholula spends some time tracking the mystery vans he saw fleeing the scene on his surveillance cam. He manages to keep pace on the rooftops for a bit with the movement power, but starts to lose them, so he tags one with a detachable shaft tracking arrow, and hopes to pick up the signal again someday. He then tries to get back to the safehouse but gets pinned to the ground with a spear thrown by Bloodripper, who wants to say hi to ChewGum in his own special way.

Cholula manages to start wiggling himself free off the spear, but his dripping fluids seem to have attracted some hungry-looking humanoids wearing lab collars- possibly the same ones the team has been hearing about? Regardless, they seem somewhat intelligent and attack with a pack tactic that proves damaging and effective. Cholula chooses to flee and manages to make his escape, retreating to the nearby Plat Zone for now to heal and rest, before eventually making his way back to the safehouse.

When the rest of the team arrives back from the gang coop meeting, they find him there, and decide it’s time to deal with both the critters and Bloodripper. They have the brilliant idea to combine both into one plan, and head up to 696 Slayers turf, where CG multiplies some food to impress the gangers (and hopefully stop them from killing for a bit, as they seem to have begun eating their victims), and instructs Bloodripper to hunt down the Critters for him.

Bloodripper agrees, behaving in an almost parodically chivalric fashion. He packs up some (metahuman?) meat to go in a tray from the school cafeteria, and the team heads off. They decide to check in with someone about getting paid to end the critter threat, and call up Ringmaster who seems to want them to look into it but is initially surprised they aren’t doing it solely because the critters have eaten some of their contacts, most recently some Keepers. He also tips them off that there have been reported attacks amongst the survivor communities newly moving into the DDB.

Otter zips over to Moreau, not having checked in on him since the Blackout started, and worried he may be involved. She also wants to drop off a radio with him to keep in better touch. She finds Moreau having fortified and extensively trapped the approach to the Bloomfield Nature Reserve, though from an aerial view, she can see paths in marked by small piles of meat, presumably so animals can safely find their way through.

She manages to make contact through Moreau’s e-dog, Buddy, and safely lands. Moreau seems like he’s been spending too much time with the animals and has lost the habit of regular speech, but otherwise “ok”. He does also seem to be feeding the animals metahuman meat and also possibly eating it himself, from those who come to the nature reserve looking to eat the animals there. He put up warning signs so he feels it’s only fair. Otters passes over the radio, and Moreau gives a tip about the rogue ARES animal scientist who might be behind it all, as well as a lead on some hackers who may have some info, the Coquillards.

The team decides to investigate the underground while Bloodripper is on the hunt above. They head down and find some survivor communities, unfortunately Dig has taken the form of a large wolf and terrifies the mostly blind (in the pitch black) guards they first find and some gunfire is exchanged. Luckily noone is badly hurt and The Detective manages to talk everyone down as they explain that Dig is a human shapeshifter and not the beast that has been hunting down here.

After comparing accounts and reviewing the most recent crime scene they can find amongst the poor fortifications and tent and tarp dwellings, they decide that this almost surely isn’t the same critter as the pack aboveground, and start to get worried that Ringmaster might be hunting when he turns into a werewolf. Dig wants to stop investigating and go confront him/protect him, as these civilians are worthless in his eyes, but Otters manages to determine that the behavior doesn’t match up with a werewolf of Ringmaster’s intelligence.

They track some old blood traces deeper into the tunnels, and all take Guts. This pays off when they are able to shrug off some sort of mystical fear, though Otters is partially paralyzed by a chilling howl from below. The largest Barghest any of them have ever seen charges up from the dark and tries to chomp on CG, though Cholula bravely dives in the way, taking the damage. Dig blasts it with lightning as Otters opens up with the guns on the Mule drones, and Cholula manages to drop it with a flaming arrow just before it gets another attack in.

They wait for the white phosphorus to burn out, and then Dig and CG start harvesting reagents while Otters gets what she can from the crispy collar. It looks like a basic RFID tracker with a shock electrode, but most interestingly has a number stamped on it. The team hauls the remains back to the survivor camp to show them that the beast is dead, and encourage them to better defend themselves. Otters rigs up a simple telegraph between two station’s communities, and show them how to do it by stripping old tech, and Cholula promises to come down and train them sometime.

They at least seem to have enough food- crates of old emergency shelter rations from earlier in the century.The team heads back aboveground and checks in with Ringmaster, who also seems relieved it wasn’t him behind the attacks, but spurs them to keep looking. He also tips them off to some animal fights run by ex-Mafiosos down by the Docklands. They head home and rest, but are disturbed to hear in the morning Radio Free Detroit that the 696 Slayers have been on a rampaging hunt across town and residents are advised to avoid them at all costs.

This triggers another discussion about what to about Bloodripper and crew, which quickly gets sidelined when they decide to go to the animal fights instead. There they find another dog with a collar, seemingly a loyal companion to the ex-Mafioso running the fights, after talking their way in by offering to do some vet care. Otters spends a depressing day patching up survivors from the Pit, but they do get some good info- none of the other animals have the collars, or seem enhanced in the same ways as the collared animals.

They get the info from the ex-Mafioso about where he found the dog, with a promise to sell him any more promising animals they encounter, and head up to Vendor’s Row to look for more clues. They check in with G’ma Biyu while they’re up there, who gives them another job as well as a clue- she had her people take out another enhanced dog that was roaming the area and attacking people, and provides the cut collar to prove it. Cutting apparently bricked it, but they get another number.

They decide to use the day old possibly metahuman meat tray as bait in a variety of locations within their search grid, observed by drones, while Creep cuts himself a little and the rest of the team watches his back at a 7th location. Luckily, nothing attacks Creep, and when reviewing the camera footage, they spot mostly various survivors excited to find free meat and asking too many questions. The only one that stands out is some sort of enhanced cat which seems very stealthy.

They head to that location and Dig manages to track it back to it’s lair, taking the form of a great cat and intimidating it while also using magic to make it more docile. It uses some of it’s strange abilities but Dig doesn’t fall for them. Cholula offers to try to knock it out with arrows, but Otters quickly intervenes and manages to lure it out and calm it. Dig hacks the collar and they manage to get the RFID signal, which they can probably use to find link devices if they ever find themselves within range.

Otters delivers the cat to Moreau, to try to rehab it, and they make plans to try to find the location all these experimental animals have been coming from after they rest up again. When they awaken the next morning, they find the 4 critters from the aboveground pack all staked to the ground outside the safehouse with one of Bloodripper’s spears, with a note saying that he thinks they found them all, and that though they killed some of the gang, they weren’t particularly satisfying victims. He also summons CG to visit him.

Guess the team better deal with that soon too! Perhaps they will take Biyu’s advice and turn their new gang coop against the 696.

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective

The Detective manages to convince the other team (possibly one of the Brackhaus’ guards? Likely the one from the roof bar if so) to disengage, as Otters has successfully grabbed the target and spirited him away in the VTOL. Realizing that they are really blown though in terms of attention, Otters, Creep, and CG all sneak out under cover of CG’s spirit’s powerful silence and concealment effects, barely avoiding some very alert hotel security staff. The Detective decides they want their money’s worth, and rushes back to their room, purposefully dishevilling it before taking some Bliss in a filled tub.

The onsite security does room sweeps, and TD manages to bluff just well enough to not get in trouble, since they can’t find anything in the room, but seem suspicious about Creep having left without anyone taking note, as his arrival was noticed. Regardless, TD gets their desired soak and trip, so all is well, enough. When the other team gets back to the van, they find Otters’ surveillance drones waiting along with a note from Cholula that says he “went to check something out” and to leave without him.

They do. Heading for the preprogrammed rendezvous with the VTOL, they find Smaug and Lunatech from the Windsor crew waiting to accept the handoff and presumably deliver the guy to Brunwyn. Dig requests a little time to look into the wrecked deck they also snagged, and after confirming that they weren’t followed, Smaug sets up a perimeter. Dig manages to pull a tiny amount of data off the deck, with Otters helping to write a quick program to collate the fragmentary bits into something useful.

They find a few useful things: the target was a longterm MCT data and device architecture specialist, who had been targeted for extraction before (possibly why he was using an assumed name). He was looking into shared vulnerabilities amongst various devices, and trying to design a new in-house MCT device architecture that would not have the same flaws. He was in a virtual meeting with his bosses when the Blackout hit, his deck bricked, and he flatlined.

Dig also tries to read his mind, but there is nothing there- he seems brain dead or close to it, and only his wife’s careful ministrations likely kept him alive this long. They write up their findings and pass it along with the deck and the guy, which Brunwyn accepts as the pro move it is, offering them more work and sending along their pay, along with the promised “on-time” bonus.

They head back to the safehouse and rest up, and decide to look into Howell’s “unite the gangs and enclaves” mission next. Instead of calling him for more (/any) details, they just dive in, reviewing the intel Cholula has been gathering on his semi-nightly prowling of the city. They make a list of the promising factions to ally, and start making plans and dividing up work amongst themselves. They also decide to resolve smuggling out the Toronto Mayor and his ARES lover.

TD calls up the UCAS Marshal, Trapp, and hints that they have a line on a government official in danger. Trapp agrees to a meet, seemingly also not wanting to give up his safehouse location, they settle on a high end street market Downtown, which the Marshal reports has become somewhat of a trade bazaar during the Blackout. They pass along their intel and Trapp agrees to contact the lovers at the hotel and either keep them safe or get them out, he is light on details. But it seems like the team made a good impression.

Otters decides to do a little shopping while there, and they head down to the most red market-y shop in the area, where they see a classically costumed bandit dropping off some assorted loot. Wanting to know more, they try to approach, but blow it, and the figure rappels away, and they return to the safehouse. They take the next day off while CG summons a new corpse spirit into the body he was gifted by Bloodripper, and Dig has a meeting with his magical order.

Freddy Bales is there first, as usual, and is his usual obnoxious, helpful self. The others roll in, and Dig talks up the gang unity mission a bit more. They all initiate while Otters, who accompanied Dig over, alternates between watching and wandering the mostly abandoned zoo. It seems like the remaining zookeepers have had to prioritize saving the less edible animals.

After the meeting, Marjo-Lin gives Dig the Discipline Tarot card, and they banter about their somewhat at odds Mentors (Dog vs Lion), and ML says that Lion told her that she had smelt Dig in one of her realms- the Hermit’s cabin perhaps? Regardless, the card is a reward for his perseverance in getting Order going. ML also reports that the Keepers have lost some members to attacks from those mysterious collared critters.

After splitting up the job of convincing different factions to show to the big meeting, The Detective contacts Ringmaster, who agrees to host with Marv at the Plat Zone, specifically the Brickhouse, and to distribute a radio to any faction who attends as a reward. TD also gets Creep to make pizza, though he says all he can promise is a sauced flatbread, but CG learns a spell to multiply the matter significantly.

TD contacts the Keepers, who agree to attend. Creep heads out the Metal Maniacs first, and finds them seeming even more post-human, as well as seemingly “upgrading” some local street kids, who are serving as lookouts- it seems they are both expanding and fortifying. Creep decides not to become a Monad, though they make a good case that “our AI brethren need homes right now more than ever”. Leanna Octave agrees to send a delegation to the meeting, though.

Creep then sneaks up to the Blight and finds the Nightmare’s base of ops. This does indeed seem to be veterans of the Urban Brawl team protecting a civilian enclave, and he uses his sneaking skills to impress them into coming, though they say they will only do so if the Maulers aren’t invited. Creep points out that since the Maulers absolutely will be invited, it “could” be a good time to raid their turf, if someone wanted to.

CG gets Sikh Burn to agree to attend, easily, as a rep for the Children of Loxley, who have also been expanding, protecting the Hawala network and mesh net that the People of the Book have been building. Disturbingly, some malefactors have been targeting the mesh tech, as well as sometimes the people sent out to repair it. CG then hoofs it to the Bligh with spirit cover, and convinces the Maulers to attend, using his good rep with them for leverage. They seem depleted and a bit more desperate with Kong’s death and the various defections to other new gangs.

Dig flies around to round up his targets- the Ancients are an easy yes as he helped rescue some of them from ARES prison, though they are still a small faction. He then heads to north Oakland County and finds the student enclave, Ronnie’s Raider, where he once again encounters Freddy Bales, who happily introduces him to some assorted professors and Ronnie herself, who seems like a tech wiz- the enclave has a lot of clever sensors and traps rigged up of various tech levels.

Otters heads west to Dearborn to go another Red Market, and manages to make contact with a thief there who will neither confirm or deny if they are a member of the Ghunday, although the filmic bandit outift suggests they likely are. Otters passes along the invite, which includes the other guests, and gets a bad feeling this may just be a way of telling some thieves who to steal from at what time. Otters also barely spots a stealth blimp, and sends out a wideband appreciation text, but receives no response. Back at the Scar Wood Raven agrees to send some of the Swarm along, though he seems mostly interested in the promise Dig has made of a free power charging station- he has made another bike golem in his downtime, to leave running at the Plat Zone.

With everyone (possibly excluding the Ghunday) agreed to attend, the team links back up and heads to the Plat Zone to set up. Marjo-Lin comes by to perform a solo set as promised, the rest of Glock .50 having left for Denver after Latvian Gambit to start recording their debut for Silversound Records. She seems to have brought all of the Keepers with her, possibly lured by free food. The Swarm rolls up and quickly monopolizes the charging station, with many of them dropping off into BTL stupors as quickly as they can.

The Maulers and Nightmares both send small delegations and make nasty eyes at each other, but keep the peace at the meeting as promised. Marv sitting out front with his assault cannon probably helps. Lady Jain herself shows up on behalf of the Ghunday and seems to take a shine to/be working something up with the Keepers. Sikh Burn trades some tactics advice with the Nightmares, and talks about the experience in Hamtramck and what of the community successes there they can export elsewhere.

The Ancients, Metal Maniacs and non-BTL’ed Swarm exchange Blackout tech and implant tips and tricks with Ronnie’s Raiders, who seem pretty engineering focussed, and Ancients and Swarm talk about high speeds and hot races. Meanwhile, the team watches for trouble, makes sure everyone has food, drink, power etc, and TD circulates, pulling on their rep to try to get everyone to sign up.

With some impressive networking, TD manages to get everyone present to agree to a loose coop- basically they won’t attack (or steal) from other factions who have also joined. Both Lady Jain and one of the Nightmares make some quick calls after, possibly ensuring a backup plan for if the meeting went poorly isn’t executed. With that out of the way, the team parties with everyone present for a while, everyone rocks to Marjo-Lin’s sparse but intense set, and then one of the Metal Manias closes it down reading a posthuman manifesto of some sort, as Creep promised they could.

This kinda kills the mood, so everyone goes home. They call Howell to report success, and he seems surprised since he had a whole job planned, but figures this is still job done overall, so slides them some pay and offers some work as well. The team is getting a solid rep in town, and has good amount of jobs available to choose from, even amidst the confusion.

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

The team does some initial recon on the hotel that the scientist they have been tasked with retrieving was last seen at. Otters flies by with the VTOL, and even with all the digital security obviously offline feels like she almost got spotted. However, she gets a good look at the layout and general vibe- fortified but seemingly still a functional hotel, though with much more overt security than usual. Dig does a flyby as a bird and also gets some intel- 3 mana barriers are up, and he is able to tell that someone inside one of them is also thinking about the team’s target: Camden Espinoza. Unfortunately, someone behind the next mana barrier spots him and he gets slapped with a hit of pure mana before fleeing- at least it seems they were aiming to wound rather than kill! The only thing he saw was a flash of golden eyes.

The team rests up and finishes doing repairs from the last run-in with the mystery vans, and heads to the area late the next morning. They park behind a semi-wrecked Taco Temple adjacent to a news building with a large billboard across the street from the hotel. Cholula scales the building and billboard, leaving a camera set up to watch the parking garage entrance while he watches the front. Otters strings up some drone relays to keep comms semi-functional, and The Detective walks up to the front door, unarmed, and successfully both doesn’t get shot (there are some bodies stuck in the razor wire perimeter) and negotiates for a reasonable price for a room with an obsequious concierge.

Told that guests are acceptable so long as they also check weapons and go through security, TD brings in Creep, who hides a glass cutter, a gun, and Dig (in mouse form) in his pockets well enough to dodge the search. They find an unoccupied room a few floors down from TD’s room and cut one of the windows open, and Otters flies ChewGum and herself in, and then sends the VTOL over to perch on the billboard next to Cholula and await extraction. They split up to explore the hotel, with CG holding down their entry point and keeping comms updates going to and from Cholula.

Dig and Creep do some magical investigation with support from Otters, and manage to figure out that the lowest level mana ward seems to be a large MCT contingent, possibly including a family but with a lot of supplies and security. The highest level mana ward is the rooftop bar, where The Detective heads. They see a troll crooner singing his heart out on stage while looking only a little bored, and meet the Madame who oversees the establishment. Deciding to make a little harmless trouble, TD orders a drink for one of the two people making eyes at each other across the room while pretending not to.

And perhaps most importantly, TD tries to do some casual surveillance on the golden-eyed middle-aged man in the corner, who is attended by two similar looking female bodyguards- 1 appears cyber and one an adept, but TD can’t get a read on the guy at all. TD also gets spotted and summoned over, and goes. They have a brief but largely friendly chat, where they realize they’re looking for the same person, but not necessarily on behalf of the same person. The man tries to hire TD and team out from under Brunwyn, but TD refuses, feeling honorbound.

The man takes it fairly well, but says they will then be competitors on this job, though he hopes TD will give him a chance to hire directly in the future. He then gives a sharp whistle and his 2 guards leap up in unison and race to the elevator and stairs. TD, aiming for cool, stays and finishes their drink before making their goodbyes. Meanwhile, Dig, Creep and Otters have looked into the remaining mana ward and see that it encompasses the penthouse level, which has it’s own elevator key and locked off fire stairs.

Doing some careful, and higher level, magical investigation, Dig is able to spot yet another golden-eyed middle-aged man with two guards- this time a large Black troll with a ton of tattoos and a Vietnamese teen who looks to be a mage. Aiming not to attract their attention just yet, they head back to the meeting room and all debrief together. TD gets a feeling they were followed on the way and finds a hidden camera that they destroy, when they double back to check.

Putting their heads together, the best they can come up with is that this seems to be two people both aiming to appear as the SK archetypal Johnson, Hans Brackhaus. Since both SK and others use this ID for true and false flag ops, the team feels a little over their head and is glad to be working for neither, though the strong hints of SK association that Brunwyn gives off don’t make them feel much better. When TD head back to their room to take a bath and get high, they find a note waiting.

The woman they bought the drink for at the bar is requesting assistance. TD grabs Otters and they head to her room. She explains that she (an ARES financial corpo who took some leave not expecting the Blakcout) and her secret lover (the mayor of Toronto) were having an illicit meetup post-Latvian Gambit but are now stuck in the hotel. Worried about how an ARES association will play right now, the Mayor hasn’t yet left his wife as promised and doesn’t want to be seen in public- hence the glances across the bar that TD spotted.

This woman wants them to smuggle her and her lover out of town, in the hopes of beginning their life together. She seems fairly drunk. TD and Otters asks some questions, and get some useful info from her in exchange for agreeing to help. She takes them, wobbily, to a room that she says always has room service being delivered and dishes carefully stacked out front but that noone goes in or out of. Taking a quick magical look, Dig spots two tween teens, a middle-aged woman tending to someone in a homemade bio-bed, and in the bed itself: Camden Espinoza. He looks fried, possibly brain-dead, and has a burnt-out high-end MCT deck next to him. Looks like someone physically pulled the plug.

The team quickly fills Cholula in and rallies back to grab the guy, getting the VTOL in position near his room’s window. Unfortunately, Cholula spots a figure in camo crawling down the outside of the building, just as the team inside spots 2 more cloaked figures at opposing hallway corners. Cholula manages to narcoject the figure outside, and then Otters rams their unconscious form with the VTOL, breaking their gecko grip and sending them plummeting to their death, which alerts the guards below. Cholula fires off a few distraction arrows around the guards to keep them occupied before being forced to flee, retrieving his camera and Otters’ drones on the way.

Inside, Dig has made a huge magic hand and flicks open the room’s barred door. Creep chucks a couple thermal smoke grenades but throws badly and both roll back towards the team so the scene is chaotic. CG sends his spirits after the two cloaked figures, and manages to delay one with various powers while his cat corpse spirit is destroyed by the other. He blasts out the window in the room with his shotgun while Creep covers the family and Dig uses his magic hand to get Camden and his deck into the VTOL while Otters pilots. TD keeps everyone working together while trying to figure out a plan…. maybe now that they have the guy the other team will give up?

Outside, Cholula quickly scans the cam footage he retrieved and spots something interesting: just after everything kicked off, two of the mystery vans stealthily snuck out of the parking garage, driving off in the opposite direction of the fight before quickly turning in opposite directions off the main street….

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

Cholula has been haunting the streets of Motor City, checking out the developing gang scene. Some seem relatively pro-social, some less so. He begins hunting the most thrill-kill gang he can find, the 696 Slayers, further depleting their numbers from the massive hit they already took from the team (unbeknownst to one another). ChewGum stocks up on reagents (Penelope Bean is still getting a supply from…. somewhere?) and does some investigation into the mysterious critter attacks.

Using some intel from the Keepers and other contacts, he manages to find a site of a recent attack, and with a ritual and some tracking and assensing is able to piece together what happened. Some horrifying looking creatures attacked in a group of 3-4, ripping two civilians apart. The creatures seem very hungry but not malicious. And they are indeed wearing some kind of RFID collar. He pegs this as “needs further investigation” and rejoins the crew, meeting up with Cholula just outside Casa Aurelius’ guarded walls.

Inside, Otters and The Detective approach Corinna (the Nadja Fixer, seemingly in from Chicago) and Eugene Trapp, a UCAS marshal, who are discussing dangerous bounties in town. Otters talks about killing a Wendigo and Corinna extracts herself as Otters and TD chat edgily back and forth with Trapp for a bit- he is some kind of canine SURGE, and seems to make note of their scents.

As the party seems to be winding down, and they have other allies present they can ask for more info on other attendees as needed, they head out. Otters and TD wait in the van while Creep and Dig as a mouse sneak up onto the roof through the vents and then let themselves down in a guard blindspot that TD spotted. They get in the van and slip back into the smuggling compartment for now. After they watch a series of guests leave via various, mostly unpowered, conveyances, the staff and guards finally start filtering out.

They see the guard that DIg mind-scanned carrying a hard case big enough to contain the data cube, but he splits off from the rest of the guards and hops into a matte-black, fully tinted van that pulls up just as he’s exiting the building. Otters leaves the parking lot and posts up in a stealthy spot further down the road, and CG and Cholula set up in outside the main gate to the area, having communicated with the team via stealth VTOL.

They get lucky and guessed right as to the black van’s route, and Otters quickly scoops up the 2 outside the gate as Creep and Dig get back out of the smuggling compartment once they’ve cleared security. Otters tries to subtly follow, with the VTOL aloft to triangulate. As they continue, they head into the ruined area of Downtown, which seems like a good spot to lose pursuers. Seeing the van ahead slow, Otters pulls into a side street and sends the VTOL in for a closer look.

They see one of the white vans with the dishes pull up alongside, both side doors slide open, and somethings get passed back and forth. Unfortunately, the white van as usual gives off a brief burst of signal and seems to spot the VTOL in the matrix, and the white and black vans peel off in opposite directions. After a quick debate, Otters guns it and follows the black van.

Not waiting this time, Otters opens fire, damaging the vehicle. She is also gaining on them, and the other driver, while capable, doesn’t seem to match her level of skill. The back door flings open, and a short human inside fires a rocket at the team van, with Otters managing to avoid a direct hit but catching some shrapnel. Otters fires back and blasts the human back into the opposing van.

Dig magically sends his sight over into the other van, and sees a team of 3, plus the guard, with the human on the floor either dying or dead. They look like shadowrunners but not total pros. As he watches, the guard lifts the launcher and fires another shot at the van- direct hit! Massive damage, but Otters keeps them on he road. Creep and Cholula return fire, lighting both the man and van on fire, as CG orders his spirit to cause the man to have an accident.

Dig also spots one of the mystery boxes hooked up to a power cable, seemingly powering the van, and the team decides they better grab it. Creep crawls onto the van roof as Otters maneuvers into position to see the box clearly. Dig uses magic fingers to yank it free of it’s bolts but it’s still hanging by the power cable, which Creep manages to shoot through with impressive aim just as the guard fumbles his launcher reload and detonates the black van.

The wreck crashes and burns hard, and the team van is almost wrecked as well in the shrapnel cloud. The mystery box, though damaged, appears mostly intact, and Dig attempts to analyze it magically but can’t make much sense of it. There doesn’t seem to be anything living inside when CG assenses, so they head back to the safehouse to rest, heal and examine further. While Otters and the repair drones patch up the van and the golem pedals away, recharging it, the team sleeps and recovers.

In the morning, they call up Smoach and he agrees to come take a look. Dig says he’s got some tasks for the day, and heads off to Stanli the Candyman’s house/fort. The rest of the team reports into Howell and gets paid for dragon investigating and gala info, sending the data device over his way along with a written report on what they learned. He says he’ll examine it all and get back to them about it, but in the meantime he has a client looking to get some of the gangs in town working together.

Cholula is stoked about this since he wanted to do it anyway. TD bites the bullet and radios up Cehualli, and the AZT agent hints that he works for Armando Salazar, the AZT operative depicted on the Hermit card, He provides two tasks for the team, and offers to pay in info, artifacts, or nuyen as desired. One, they are to track down an ork serial killer named Pygmy who has fled here. Two, if they encounter anything interesting ARES left behind or lost in the move, they are to sell it on to Cehualli. TD agrees, for now.

Down at Stanli’s, Dig in bird form gets a tense introduction to a member of the Reality Hackers, who seems to have fled Seattle after killing a demiGOD. Dig, going against the team’s plan, sells this individual the Damien Knight snuff BTL he’s been working, and mixes up some alchemical drugs to go along with it to really heighten the experience for the topline customers. The RH-er trades him a very fancy attack-focussed deck and gives Dig access to an RH gear mefeed, if he ever gets regular matrix. Stanli also reups DIg on some drugs, stoked about this wild new product the he can now peddle to a local populace with a lot of hate for ARES.

Back at the safehouse, the team readies for Otters’ scheduled meeting with Brunwyn Harridan, though Cholula decides to stay behind to keep an eye on Smoach as he examines the device. Smoach manages to figure out what it is: a horrifying prison for a sprite, who in it’s frantic attempts to escape, generates the electricity the device is pumping out even as it’s code degrades into madness. He’s injured in the attempt to communicate, and suggests they need to free it onto a larger grid in the hope that it can stabilize somewhat there.

They share some beers and sad conversation, sitting together and pondering the darkness of the world. Smoach also reports that FTD seems defeated locally, but that the Shadow spirits are likely still a threat, and he has a next lead on where to look, when the team is ready. On the river south of downtown, the team finds the Austrian ork Baritone waiting for them in a dinghy. They hop aboard and he rows them out to a very sleek modernist houseboat, which CG spots as having impressive aesthetic flourishes, and Otters ID’s as also being very fast and potentially deadly.

They are ushered aboard by a German hobgoblin named Geraldo who seems to have weapons hidden all over his person- Creep is impressed. Brunwyn herself gestures them back into a tastefully appointed state room, and is once again dressed to the 9’s, though more subtly than at the gala. She waves away her guards when they subtly inquire if they should join. Based on the whole vibe and a quick chat via mesh network, they assume this is all an SK opp, so good to be careful, though it may be too late as they are already in the room.

After some banter, they get down to business- Brunwyn wants them to grab up some scientists, data and matrix specialists specifically, off a list of names that she has. She will pay well, she states, in a form of the team’s choosing, and a barely detectable tempestuousness crosses her features when TD dares to negotiate. She quickly recovers her charm however, and agrees to a short timeline for the job for bonus pay. TD, feeling like there isn’t another better option, agrees. They get some intel, and Brunwyn tells them where to meet and by what deadline.

They head back out, likely having just made a deal with a dragon, and link back up with the other teammates at the safehouse, where they see Dig’s impressive new deck, which he flew back clutching in his bird claws while using an illusion to make it look like a fish. They get another call from Howell, who seems to have been investigating along some of the same lines as the team, and reports that he got a lot of good data from the gala, but that specifically he wants to know more about a group calling themselves the “Grid Pirates” who seem to be the ones kidnapping TM’s.

They are also likely behind the mystery power boxes, which Howell names a “SpriteLok” based on recovered data., It seems likely they are selling/renting them around town, including to the gala for the event, though the renters likely don’t know what they are and are smart or desperate enough not to ask. The team reports that there is at least one surviving white van, and Howell says he’ll do more digging but likely have more work for them soon. Some of the worst news: the GP’s must have at least one Dissonant or otherwise corrupted/coerced TM and/or powerful sprite under their control, as they would be required to trap the sprites in the devices as the Faraday cage exterior of the SpriteLok is assembled around them….

Runners
Creep
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective

ChewGum heads out to restock on reagents and look into the rumors of strange animal attacks that The Detective picked up. Cholula continues prowling the permanent twilight feeling strangely at home. The rest of the team starts looking into “new dragon in town” rumors for Howell. Based on his initial intel, they head Downtown, with Dig arriving first in bird form. He does some astral investigation and finds some talismongers harvesting reagents, who take a shot at him when they spot a “magical bird.”

He then becomes a man to try to explain, and they take another shot at him, thinking he’s a shapeshifter- these don’t seem like ethical talismongers. He eventually convinces them he’s just a mage, and tries to get some info out of them but fails to catch them in an obvious lie and retreats. Meanwhile, Creep and TD encounter an Order of St. George foot patrol- 2 archers and 2 broadsword wielders in medieval appearing but seemingly modern armor. They approach peacefully and TD makes a judgement call to not try to ape their archaic speech patterns in case they take it as an insult.

The OoSG knights explain that they too have heard rumors of a dragon, and are hunting it as all foul wyrms are a threat to metahumanity. They seem excited to be hunting “worthy prey” instead of merely nests of ghouls and other flesh-eaters. They also obliquely praise strong leaders of a fascist variety to these don’t seem like good people either. Unfortunately, they do seem very well-equipped and capable, the team was hoping they were just LARPers.

They manage to exchange some info though, and get shown a high quality sketch of the dragon on a scroll that the knights say is a composite from multiple “enhanced interviews” with witnesses. After the knights also reveal that they are hunting a nest of ghouls in Windsor that the team figures out is some friends of theirs, they quickly make their exit and plan to warn their allies. Creep and TD finally arrive to Dig’s location on foot, and they track the pair of talismongers down again, with Creep hanging back in case of trouble. TD has better luck socially, and manages to bribe them with a certified credstick for some info.

They’ve heard rumors of dragon sightings from some sketchy street contacts and are looking for any kind of windfall- scales, spit, shit, whatever- anything from a dragon in valuable. They explain that their contacts are mostly addicts and street people of various sorts, and that many members of both groups are ending up Downtown as it’s a bit of an open/chaotic zone right now, with large swaths under noone’s control. They pass along a description, which matches the OoSG sketch, and also say their contacts refer to the dragon as “she” for some reason.

TD thanks them, and after refusing to purchase any of their sketchy wares from inside their voluminous coats, they head out to seek out a street reporter named Miles Two-Go that might have more info. They find him along with a bunch of riggers and gangers hanging out in the Scar zone- Dig is still feeling a bit bad there from the strange mana ebb but not as strongly as before. The crowd here seems to be racing modded vehicles that they’ve attached space rocket boosters too, having hauled a bunch over on horses and carts from the ARESpace/EvoSpace facility out by Knight International.

They meet the man in charge, a troll named Wood Raven, who seems like a philosophical speed demon, but explains he’s trying to give all the riggers and go-gangers in town something positive to do so they don’t totally lose their shit. The team chats a bit with a few Ancients that Creep recognizes from the prison break, and they also warn Lunatech (from the Windsor crew) about the OoSG threat, and she says she has to go make some radio calls. They also manage to get a few other Ancients freed from an obviously annoying conversation with the reporter they seek.

They find that Miles Two-Go is a scoop-chasing conflict zone photojournalist, and another mediocre-to-bad person. He seem full of himself, sleazy, and annoying, though not unskilled. He shows them some partial images of the dragon he’s managed to capture with some bashed together old-tech trail cams he’s rigged up around Downtown. He explains that if he got some kind of crude mesh network up and running he could get the cams to talk to each other and likely get better images as they could retarget on the fly based on each previous cams data.

The team agrees to help him out, reluctantly, but recognizes that they can use and then abandon him at least. Feeling like they’ve got enough for now, they head back to the safehouse to link up with Otters, who has been charging and prepping her drones for the night ahead. They stop on the way to steal some formal wear (black suit and tux) from a prom store Downtown that hasn’t been looted yet. Otters drives them to Casa Aurelius, and they find the exclusive gated neighborhood still has a few lights on, it looks like some industrial generators are powering guard station lights at the checkpoint entrances as well as some street lights and other public features.

if any of the visible mansions that rise over the security wall have lights on, they’re keeping it to themselves- candles, chemlights and the like are all that is otherwise visible. The team heads in- SIN scanners are still down so they breeze through with their gala tickets, with Dig as a mouse hidden in Creep’s pocket, and Creep hidden in the smuggling compartment. They stop at another fancy clothes store, this one seems to be open, and get some accoutrements and additional items to spruce up their looks, though the proprietor seems annoyed at being unable to custom tailor the garments at the moment.

TD successfully navigates the uptight rich lady social dynamic though, and they head to the gala, with Creep and Dig sneaking out a few blocks away. TD and Otters wait in the van til Dig and Creep make their entrance to make sure there aren’t any issues that require assistance or extraction. Dig creates an illusion of some teens setting off fireworks and cursing at the guards before running away, with Creep using a carefully buried flashbang to help sell it. The guards give chase, and Creep manages to melt a small hole in the door just before another pair of guards comes around the building to replace them.

Dig shifts into cockroach form, and squeezes through the welded hole, turning back to a man inside and pushing the door open for Creep. Creep is appalled at Dig’s lack of stealth in doing so, especially since the only reason the fire alarm didn’t go off appears to be the lack of wireless. They sneak up to the 3rd floor and find a weird shielded data cube with no ports and a number of cables running out of it. It looks newly, but securely, installed. Creep tries to get a data tap into one of the cables, but they seem to be outputting electricity only- nothing goes in, and no data goes either way. A mystery!

Meanwhile, TD and Otters successfully enter, passing through a mana barrier after showing their tickets to the bored teens and young adults staffing the gala. The security staff seems much more alert and competent, but still a bit complacent inside. They find a candlelit event room, 3 stories high, topped with a cupola letting in some of the strange starlight. An 8-person orchestra is playing some atonal modern classical that seem to be creating an audio dithering effect, allowing for the feel of a full room of people talking while also creating some privacy for the individual conversations.

They take a quick survey of the room, and notice some interesting individuals around, as well as few friendly faces (Ringmaster, Pretty, and Ellis are all in attendance). Upstairs, Creep and Dig have managed to sneak into the ductwork and navigate to a duct overlooking the gala, and successfully manage to hand off the device they snuck in to TD via sleight of hand, without security noticing anything. However, a few people in the crowd seem perhaps to have spotted it- interesting.

Creep and Dig surveil astrally and aurally while TD and Otters begin circulating. The pair on foot initially spend some not very productive time talking to a city councilor (the lone survivor of the Shadow attack on the council), who is speaking to an empty chair. After TD determines that no entity occupies the chair, and that the man seems to be badly in the grip of PTSD, they make a polite exit. Creep overhears the museum curator and host, Stella Hoargrave, doing her bubbly socialite thing, but seemingly with a bit of a frantic edge. She performs her one tiny magical ability of making small lights over and over with a canned bit about it finally being useful.

Dig spots a few different magical beings in the crowd, but focuses his efforts on seeking anyone with knowledge of technomancer kidnapping. His first spotting: Rose and SINder! A technomancer and her brother, who seem to be thinking a lot about missing TM’s. Also, this is likely the other runner team that Howell told them would be doing the other half of the job while the team carries around the device he gave them. Dig decides not to make contact, but tells the rest of the team that the pair is there.

Otters and TD next approaches two very fashionable elf woman, both of whom might have witnessed the device handoff. The first seems to be a Nadja clone (or Nadja Daviar herself?) and they steer clear for now, but the second woman has eyes perfectly matching the description and image of the dragon! She introduces herself as Brunwyn Harridan, and her bodyguard as Baritone, and seems delighted to make their acquaintance. Otters advertises herself as a local expert, and they set up a meeting for the following day to discuss things further, before Brunwyn gets back to socializing.

Otters then heads over to chat with some professorial looking types, happy to hear that they are discussing hard sciences instead of liberal arts, but fails to insert himself into their convo until TD makes it work. They discuss the rift and the footage Otters got inside the Scar right after it was created, as well as both prof’s theories- Simone Palomer is an astral travel expert and Vinh Trong is a “rules of magic” specialist, carrying a large bound tome mounted to his chest in a modified baby bjorn.

After they say their goodbyes with a promise to continue sharing info, Otters heads off to chat up Red, the vampire, and TD heads over to a mysterious troll woman who seems noticeably unobtrusive to TD’s studied eye. Red seems amiable and he and Otters chat for a bit about threats in town and the worsening situation for the Infected in Chicago. TD finally manages to corner the troll woman, and discovers that it is Patricia Loveland, who agrees to talk after confirming that “the abomination” (aka Cholula) is not present.

Loveland warns TD again about the threat of even “friendly” bugs, and TD tries to counter with more experiential data, which Loveland brushes off, saying she’s read the Jackpoint posts, and disagrees with the Monad comparison. Unable to reach a common ground on BETAS, they agree to leave it there for now and discuss other issues. Loveland shares some info about other party guests as a sign of good faith- her fellow expat DeeCee operatives Cass Wandering Horse and Sahara Jones (now working for STV it seems) are both there, as is an AZT mage named Cehualli and a few other interesting individuals.

Otters helps ID one of them, a buff troll woman, as an ARES heavy hitter named Ruby- kind of a one-woman clean-up crew. Both she and Loveland wonder why ARES left Ruby behind, and who she might be hunting. The whole crowd also turns to watch the final, stylishly late, attendees arrive- a Tir royal throuple, entering ethereally bedecked in high Elven fashion. Otters makes a quick stylistic analysis and guesses they are Tir Tairngire rather than Tir na nOg, but isn’t sure. Regardless, intriguing….

Dig, hiding still and magically scanning, spots the newest member of his magical order, Freddy Bales, introducing an older also visibly wealthy man who could be his father to the 2 professors. Loveland hints to TD of Black Lodge presence in town. The team spots Julia Pesina wandering the crowd with her ever-more battered camera drone Grover in tow, filming guests and getting short interviews, though some guests seems to intentionally avoid her. TD heads over to the AZT mage after Otters confirms with Red that the farm and their neighbors have been suffering some crop failures, and warns them of the corrupted AttakPak snacks.

TD tries to shock the mage into admitting some knowledge of corruption or other things but he manages to get them on their backfoot instead by referencing the team’s extensive recent use of Tarot cards. He suggests he’s just as happy to be an enemy as a friend, and TD chooses friend (for now at least). They have some loaded banter for a while before Cehualli suggests they ought to discuss things further soon, in more privacy. As this convo wraps up, Dig finally gets another hit on his spell: one of the guards is thinking of kidnapping TM’s! Dig ID’s the guard to the rest of the crew and they start pivoting the job over into a kidnap mission.

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective

The Detective, while wandering around and checking in on the city and their contacts, has collected some intriguing new rumors to follow up on. The Keepers warn of strange animal attacks, with the animals all seen wearing some sort of collar. There is a new, well-resourced, fixer named Peregrine setting up operations Downtown. Food hoarding is becoming obvious and may lead to shortages. Blight gangs are running newly amok without Kong or ARES to restrain them. And there’s a hot new snack on the street- AttakPak! TD tracks some of these snacks down and eats half a bag, as well as doing their best to analyze them- they seem filling but not nutritious, perhaps useful but a little dangerous in these hungry times. They do some astral analysis and notice some dark magic on the half-full bag but fail to get further info.

They head back to the safehouse and link up with everyone else, who is recuperating from the FTD ambush, and they collectively debrief. CG offers to take a deeper astral look at TD post- summoning a new plant spirit, after Dig fails to get any useful info. Everyone patches themselves up as best they can and rests a bit while some calls with more job offers come in on the radio. Howell wants them to investigate some dragon rumors and also do some intel gathering at a gala, Grandmother Biyu wants them to acquire an abandoned bread truck and keep looking into mystery vans/TM kidnapping.

Biyu also asks for contact info for the Skins gang, having heard they took a beating during the FTD ambush. She seems excited about the prospect of them teaming up with the Triad to gain some further status/supply/protection in exchange for help moving product, food, etc through the DDB tunnels, avoiding some of the dangers present on the surface, with an increasingly stressed out populace becoming more and more agitated each day the Blackout drags on. Dig and the team agree and pass along the info, though they start to wonder if they may someday be too deep in the Triad’s pocket.

They finally search the Mage on the Hill’s duffel, and find a collapsed masked ward, which likely fell apart when he died. Inside, amidst various dingy changes of clothes and an empty book, they find another one of the Tarot Queens, and spend some time analyzing it and guessing what it might do. They also realize that they once again have all 4 fours in their possession, and after identifying the common “heart” imagery amongst them, manage to activate the set and change the cards into 4 vials. Otters drinks hers immediately and finds herself feeling very loyal to CG. CG then drinks his and feels very beneficent to himself.

Dig suggests that maybe this is some sort of “love potion” so both Dig and TD hold onto their doses for now, awaiting a better use. They rest, and the Golem bikes away, recharging their tech. The next day, after CG summons a new spirit to replace the ones he lost in the ambush, the spirit analyzes the AttakPak snacks and TD as well, and finds traces of Corruption magic on both. This rings a bell for CG, who remembers discussing a famine spirit with Cass Wandering Horse. The team also gets worried about possible connections to Taco Temple, since they still haven’t quite figured that one out.

With food feeling a bit urgent and the gala not for a few days yet, they decide to tackle the bread truck first. They do some recon passes (Otters in a VTOL and Dig as a bird), and find the truck parked directly behind a private school for mid-level corpo kids. It looks like it had pulled up the loading dock the night of the Blackout and then got abandoned. An incipient go-gang seems to have taken over the school lot for their own use, and the team ID’s them as the newly formed 696 Slayers, who seem to be made up of some riggers and some ex-Maulers.

They also seem to have some prisoners, and based on their human skin flag and their Reaver-style vehicle decorations and home-made weaponry, these guys look pretty dark and fucked up. But the truck seems intact so game on! They make a plan and head over once night falls, hoping some of the gang will be out raiding or whatever. Creep sneaks up while the van parks a ways back, but he spots one of the mystery vans cruising by on a side street, and weirder yet, gets a burst of wireless signal from it. He races back to the van and they give chase, with Dig and Morticia getting airborne to assist.

Through some skillful driving and excellent triangulation, Otters manages to track the van down, catching another wireless burst- however, as the team’s devices all ping back, the other van also notices them. They start blasting at each other while Otters gives chase. The other driver seems quite skilled and almost surely a rigger, but not quite as good as Otters. They manage to critically damage the other van and Creep attempts a boarding action but just misses and crashes to the road, which turns out to be good as the other van slows to a halt and then explodes.

The team van is badly damaged, but still functional, so they gather what intel they can from the scene (not much) and head back to the bread heist. Otters deploys the mules and creeps the van up into LOS, while Creep sneaks in again. He cuts into the bottom of the truck and confirms that there is A LOT of bread in there, and then guides Otters in to access the manual controls and get it in neutral, while he sets a grenade trap closer to the gangers. Dig summons a massive beast spirit to help push the truck and then flies over the gangers in the schools quad/field to try to distract them.

He finds them doing some gnarly torture under hot lights that they seems to be running off a poorly-maintained school generator, and uses mob mood to amp up their blood frenzy. After quartering two captives with their combo of electric and diesel vehicles (presumably also charged or filled off the gennie), half of them head out, leaving the other half of the gang on foot. It seems like in a Blackout even go-gangs have to make sacrifices.

Creep doubles back to help Otters after she gets halfway through figuring out manual controls and then gives up in frustration, and finishes the job. Otters sneaks back to the van under concealment from CG’s spirit as CG and TD sneak up to the van, CG steering while TD gets on the roof to act as lookout and support. Creep lubes up the initial push zone to help get it rolling and then manages to yank open the fence gate on the back of the lot, but this causes a lot of noise, and the remaining gangers respond.

The first batch of them to arrive set off the grenade trap and are all killed or badly injured, and the rest take cover while taking the occasional pot shot. Between the 2 mules pulling and the spirit pushing, they get it slowly moving, but CG is initially unable to get his spirit to use the movement power effectively, so Otters repositions the van and cuts down the remaining gangers with the turret, while Creep climbs atop the truck and also picks a few off. Unfortunately one of them seemed to be talking to someone on a big whip antennae radio, so they get worried there may be more coming.

They keep pushing as best they can and are struggling a bit until Otters brings the van in behind to help push, and CG finally gets his spirit to add some magical movement. Now they’re cruising- still very slow, but steady. Unfortunately, TD spots and smells a diesel smoke cloud and they hear some loud engine noises approaching. The leader of the gang, who Dig had ID’ed as one “Bloodripper” from his earlier surveillance, appears to have some cruel looking home-made spears he is preparing to throw. Otters fires on them, as does Creep, and they manage to take a few gangers out, crashing their bikes, but Bloodrippers nails Creep with a spear, near killing him.

TD frantically tries to save Creep’s life, managing to help stabilize him, while providing leadership for the team. CG is keeping the truck on the road, and Dig uses an illusion to distract the gangers, though Bloodripper doesn’t fall for it. Otters tags him with some fire from one of the mules, and Bloodripper takes out the van with another spear. Dig tries to catch the other gangers in a big spell, but it flops, and they are feeling pretty desperate. Otters manages to get the van safely stopped but is stuck inside, since CG can’t stop the truck if they want to get it to Biyu. They inevitably leave Otters behind, with her trying to get the mules in to defend herself as the gangers start cutting into the van with large diesel saws.

Dig, needing a hail mary, tells CG to prepare to shout as loud as he can to leave, and flies down as a bird and chucks his “love potion” at Bloodripper, scoring a direct hit. The gangers keep cutting into the van as CG tells them to go home. Amazingly, Bloodripper responds, calling off the goons and they all peel out back towards the school. Dig flies surveillance for a few hours while Otters patches the van up enough to be able to limp home, with the near invisible mules firing off occasional shoots over the heads of anyone who comes close.

CG and TD arrive out front of Biyu’s and CG slams the brakes for the first time, with TD having to grab the spear impaling Creep to keep from flying off the top. They also share the info they gathered about the mystery van. Biyu seems thrilled and says that she can deal with the bread and truck from here, and offers 3 payment options- they choose the highest nuyen value, though that won’t be immediately useful most places, in honor of Creep’s wishes, and then haul Creep back to the safehouse to try to patch him back up. It looks like he’ll have some permanent internal damage from this one. Otters slowly rolls in with the busted van shortly after, and everyone crashes after a long day.

They take the next day off to heal and patch up, and get gala details from Howell. They start planning outfits and who will attend vs who will be in support roles. They also get the latest news updates from Radio Free Detroit- it seems like they’re stuck here for now, with the UCAS declaring martial law and MET2000 locking down all city exits, but the Blackout Blitzes have continued to provide occasional supply drops, and Otters is thrilled to find that the Trading Post is still semi-operational, and gets yet another repair drone. With everything recharged and repaired, they get ready to party.

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.

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective

Dig heads off to attend to his magical order while the rest of the team is poisoning Michael Turpentine. He barely makes it through some active combat while disguised as a bird and masked, but does arrive intact. The 2 members of his order trickle in, along with a preppy, affable, new potential named Freddy Bales. Bales has to step in a few times to provide additional instruction where Dig fails in the moment, but they all successfully take on animal form, though only Dig and Bales manage to initiate, as the other 2 weren’t properly prepared, Dig not having told them to expect that as a monthly component of the meetings. They all take off, and Dig focuses on internalizing some things he learned about instruction from Bales.

Everyone else rests up and stocks up on some gear at the Platinum Zone, with Creep getting a rocket launcher and Chew Gum learning to cast spells from Li Wei, who encourages him to grow his power. They receive the bounty payment from ARES for killing Otto Hendricks, routed through a series of cutouts as promised, and split it up once Dig returns. Tabasco, still in a weird mental place, bows out of the subsequent mission to seek further upgrades, to be ready to take revenge on the Shadow spirits. He also prefers to stay at the Plat Zone and fight ALPHAs than go to bug vs ARES central.

The rest of the team gets the call in the morning to go grab Carol and get him to ground zero- the bugs have a huge new crater just in front of ARES Tower, and are pouring out in what looks like a suicidal final attack. ARES forces have fallen back to the Tower and surrounding plazas and are waging a desperate defensive action, but could be overrun. The various merc forces are effectively unable to reinforce as they are fending off ALPHAs (and trying to save/rescue the civilian populace, unlike ARES). The team heads north, with Otters in the VTOL, Dig in bird form, and the rest on foot. They also call Ellis and their ghoul allies to warn them to stay away from Downtown/out of the astral due to an unspecified “mana threat”, and tip off the Irregulars as well.

Under The Detective’s guidance, they use some small unit tactics to safely avoid entanglements on the way, and find a somewhat gray-skinned Carol waiting in the irradiated van. They all hop in and plot a route, with Creep’s extensive knowledge of the city from his nighttime prowling providing excellent navigation.They exit the NGZ to the north of the nuclear blast zone and swing around west, entering back in through Irregular controlled turf in Zone 4. From there, they cut into Downtown from the west, with Otters carefullly sneak-driving to avoid trouble.

Otters flies CG in the VTOL up to a forward vantage point to get eyes on, and Dig accompanies as a bird. Dig decides to snag an ARES comm from one of the many corpses, so that ARES hopefully won’t shoot the van as it approaches, and CG provides sniper cover against some spirits as Dig gets it and flies away. However, some ARES drones almost spot CG so he as to hide for a bit before Otters can fly him back out, he got good overview info of the battle ahead though.

Dig and CG head back to the Plat Zone to help there, worried about the mana effects of the device in the van. Otters, with Creep’s help, hides her body in some rubble and remote pilots van and VTOL from there. She also uses the electrochromic coating to make the van look like an ARES vehicle to match their stolen comm signal. Unfortunately, this attracts some ARES stragglers in the neighborhood who try to get to the van for a ride to safety, pursued by bugs. Otters gives them some covering fire from the HMG but then speeds off, and the ARES survivors are quickly cut down.

Getting closer to the battle, Otters switches to full speed approach as the few square miles around the Tower are basically flattened rubble piles and mounds. It’s rough driving, but Otters is managing, partially using the VTOL to have an overhead view to steer from. She dodges the blasts of some stray ARES shells, though the van takes some flack damage. They manage to speed right up towards the crater, as a large amount of bugs split off from the main assault across from them and race towards the van. Otters uses HMG suppressive fire to corral them into a close center, while Creep leans out the side of the speeding van and launches a rocket into the bugs’ midst, holding on with his magnet hand and The Detective supporting.

They smash through the remaining bugs and Otters pulls a bootleg turn to swing about and stop, flinging the back doors open. Carol has been loosening all the bolts on the device’s frame, and with the help of the mule drone, hauls it out to the crater edge. Just as he does so, a massive insect emerges right behind him. Creep fires his last remaining rocket, and barely misses, still doing a decent amount of damage. Carol chucks some FAB grenades into the crater while running forward and pulling some ripcords on his armor, which starts emitting a stream of FABIII. He calls out to the team that they must trigger the device!

Creep races out and with The Detective’s encouragement, Dig’s previous explanation, and Otters providing covering fire from the mule and the van, manages to input the trigger sequence correctly on the first try. He dives back into the van as Otters revs it and peals out, having seen the 10 second countdown start. They gun it as a far away as they can before the detonation, which peppers the van with shrapnel, along with a following shockwave that flips them and wrecks the vehicle- luckily not badly enough to severely hurt those inside.

There seems to have been some kind of EMP effect as well though, as comms go down and Otters loses connection. Luckily the effect field seems fairly limited and she has a good view through the more distant VTOL of what happens: after the initial explosion and shockwave, some kind of rift opens in the sky about the Tower and plaza and some sickly green energy pours through. When it touches the energy emitting from the increasingly unstable area where the device was, a second magical shockwave pours out. This seems to kill smaller bugs where they stand, and paralyze or send into paroxysms the larger insects. Shamans appear to be driven mad and are easy targets for ARES sharpshooters, though Otters also spots some amongst the ARES troops falling and seizing- either bug infiltrators or mages, presumably.

This magical wave also hits at the Plat Zone, and both CG and Dig take some damage that feels like bad drain, while also making them somewhat nauseous, though they manage to shake it off. They do some others around them who were more battered fall, and help get them down to the medical area, where Jaga, though puking, is helping to heal and stabilize. Back at the front, Otters picks her body up with the VTOL, and then locates the van crash site via dead reckoning and regains point to point comms with Creep, the mule and The Detective. CG and Dig get the Quicksilver camera airborne to get some magical pics of whatever just happened, and get a few usable plates of the rift and immediate after-effects.

They initially plan to head back to the Plat Zone, but instead decide to do one more recon on the battlefield. From a distance, they see a lot. ARES troops are casually executing any surviving bugs and shamans, the bugs seemingly unable to move or defend themselves and the shamans stumbling, maddened, from the crater. There is much cruelty from some of the troops, though the majority appear to be just mechanically slaughtering. They see Carol also crawl forth from the crater, arms raised and shouting something, holding a commlink in one hand. The matrix appears to be down but the team’s devices all seem to work, so they try to get a message to Carol that they can come grab him, but give up on this after he is quickly surrounded by ARES forces.

Shortly thereafter, an armored platoon shows up, which looks to be Zone 4 and 6 survivors, having cut through the remaining ALPHAs to get here. General Ritter (aka Grey Ghost) emerges and confabs with some other ARES leaders on the ground. Tensions seem high but he distributes some info that seems to calm things. At this point, a heavily armored Arthur Vogel emerges, seemingly have claimed control, suggesting the Knight has indeed died or been incapacitated. The armored command of the conventional ARES forces at the Tower seem to refuse this transfer of command to Vogel and open fire on the newly arrived troops, but it seems like Ritter was prepared for this possibility, and the fascist Downtown commander Danforth and his loyalists are quickly gunned down.

Vogel gets Carol free and they shake hands, but amidst the chaos and confusion, the team sees a figure in blood-spattered heavy armor walk up behind Carol and calmly shoot him the head repeatedly. This figure rips off their helmet, and the team sees it is Carol’s brother- Michael Turpentine! Screaming something about “betrayal” as far as they can tell, he continues shooting Carol’s corpse as he himself is gunned down and turned to pink mist by Vogel’s bodyguards with their railguns. The team, shocked, pauses to reflect for a moment, until Creep realizes that Carol was how they were going to get paid, and against better advice, heads over to Vogel, who luckily recognizes him before Creep is destroyed by railguns as well.

Vogel seems at least put out by Carol’s death, but also very busy, and confirms that he will ensure the team is paid before sending Creep on his way, quickly muscled out of the inner circle by bodyguards. However, Creep manages to slickly pocket the commlink that Carol was holding. They all head back to the Plat Zone, marked as friendlies by Vogel’s command (it seems that all Irregulars have been). Hearing celebratory shouts and gunfire from the battle zone, Dig and CG were hoping for the best, and as the rest of the team arrives and new trickles in of bugs dropping citywide, and ALPHAs either killed or in retreat, a massive party starts.

Dig takes a celebratory BTL to celebrate, and plans to accompany The Detective back to their safehouse in Oakland County so they can do some Bliss and take a bath while Dig keeps an eye on things. The rest plan to stay and party. First, though, Otters shares the VTOL footage, and Creep shares Carol’s comm. Dig manages to hack it even while high, and they find that it is basically a high-end burner through which Carol had been communicating with his brother. It seems like it started out with Carol trying to provide anonymous help, but his bro figured it out, and eventually used it to track Carol’s location and kill him.

There is an attacked vid file that Dig opens, which shows the cybereyes perspective of Michael as he psychs himself up in a bathroom mirror to give Damien Knight the chess piece. He is talking initially about how this can secure him a permanent board place, and also get Carol safely back on the corps’ good side. He heads into an ornate conference room past two muscle-bound, oiled up teen bodyguards. Knight greets him as he enters, almost calling him Carol again before correcting, and asking for help getting into his battle armor, which “must have shrunk since last time.” As Michael moves to present the chess piece, Knight begins hacking, and his veins start turning black and bulging out as he falls to the floor.

Michael panics and tries to catch him, but then has to defend himself as the 2 guards outside rush in and assume he did this (which he did, though he doesn’t know it yet). He kills the two teens, seemingly horrified, and then seems to put 2 and 2 together. Sensing that Carol has been working at cross purposes, he starts strapping on what he can of Knight’s armor and looks into another mirror, vowing revenge, as Knight’s body dissolves into the carpet behind him, before the feed cuts.

Dig suggests they make a snuff BTL of Knight’s death/a brother’s revenge, but the rest of the team convinces him to hold off for now, though Otters confirms it will be a best seller for sure. They share some info with Ringmaster before getting into serious partying, and Dig and The Detective take off, with Dig getting the first look at The Detective’s strange shabby chic abode. They stop at Grandmother Biyu’s on the way so Dig can tip her off that now is a good time to make a move on the mafia- any dead can be claimed as bugs, and their mages were surely effected by the mana blast wave, and with Knight gone they’ve lost their best ally in ARES. Ravenheart approaches CG and asks if he has seen Li Wei- apparently Wei’s blood magic got the better of him while fighting off a major ALPHA assault earlier in the day and he hasn’t been seen since. A rogue blood mage is a big problem, though Ravenheart would like to help him if possible.

After the partying, everyone crashes. The next day Dig and The Detective return, and the matrix starts gradually coming back online- not just the local net but the whole deal, it seems that ARES jammers are offline for the first time in a while. The team gets their remaining pay from Vogel, and also sees that Jackpoint is back up! A new group called the GOD-Slayers claims credit for helping end the embargo, alongside many thanks to the Nexus and Asgard Data Haven for assistance and secure backups. The big news, as well as Detroit and the death of Knight (assumed in battle) and the return of Vogel (previously thought dead) is “what happened to III Corps?”

From the currently available info, it seems like the entire III Corps, plus everyone else within a large radius around Dutchville, PA, all vanished off the face of the earth. There were strangely/conveniently no satellites overhead when it happened, and noone on the boards has been able to get sat feeds overheard since. Attempts to send drones have failed, so intel is low. But speculation is high. Perhaps something to investigate? However, the boards are warning runners not to try to leave Detroit JUST yet, in case whoever is controlling the satellites that enforce the cordon haven’t stood down yet.

The situation in the UCAS as a whole looks a bit dicey- Colloton has pulled back military forces to defend important installation and major cities, in the wake of the III Corps disaster and what’s happening in Detroit, and this has left some borders vulnerable, which the CAS, NAN, and other bordering nations are all too happy to exploit. Detroit also seems to have suffered badly- civilian casualties are estimated to be around 150k so far, and that doesn’t even include the SINless, DDB dwellers, and Irregulars from out of town. ARES forces also took a bad hit, though they aren’t revealing any internal info, external estimates are putting their losses at 60%+ of their military and auxiliary capacity. But- there have been no signs of bugs in the NGZ since the device went off, so Latvian Gambit may have kind of worked?

Otters heads out with mule and VTOL to salvage what she can from the now-less-irradiated van, and finds scavengers picking over the battlefield all over, with more official ARES salvage ops nearer the Tower. However, there seem to be less bodies around than there should be… and the rift is still glowing green above the Tower. Otters manages to save the concealed turret and HMG but the rest is a wash, either wrecked or already picked over. She heads back, the mule dragging the expensive turret and gun. When she gets back she reports the weird missing corpses, and CG and some others go out to investigate, grabbing a few corpses they do find to analyze.

With Ringmaster’s support, CG gets some space to do a ritual of bones, and finds that all the corpses were touched by some kind of corrupting energy, not strongly enough to have an effect, but strongly enough to leave traces. The thing it feels most similar to is Shadow magic. Examining the Quicksilver plates, they also see a massive Scar through Downtown, centered on the blast, that seems to be a powerful mana ebb or dead zone. When the team talks to their ghoul friends (yay functional matrix!) the ghouls report that Downtown is kind of a no-go zone for the dual-natured right now- bad vibes. Dig also calls Freddy Bales to thank him for his assistance during the magical order meeting, which Bales is his usual affable self about.

They decide that first off, they want to hire some assistance and go after the Shadow spirit farm and get their Tarot back (if they can), and then maybe help Ringmaster with all his new investigation needs, as he seems worried about the rift, which reminds him of the Watergate incident that brought Shedim to our place, as well as interested in what happened to III Corps. Also maybe help Biyu against the mafia, maybe help the ghouls against Fear The Dark, etc. Many jobs available, and maybe the city is finally free of bugs and checkpoints! It definitely seems like, for now, ARES is defending their HQ and licking their wounds. However, with all the bug tunnels, sinkholes and collapses are common, so travelling the city is far from “safe”.

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Tabasco
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective

The team spends a bit more time going back and forth on the bounty question at the Platinum Zone while also putting together their gear needs list to fight the Shadow spirits who stole their Tarot. They get another call from Carol and finally answer. He tells them he knows they’ve been dodging his calls and have been in touch with Ellis, but that he has a 3-4 part offer for them from Vogel, who he says is finally positioned to make his move. They agree to hear him out, and he says first off, Vogel has a message to pass to Ellis- essentially, offering amnesty for her faction if she gets on-side ASAP and answers a few basic questions satisfactorily. The team agrees to pass to along, at least.

Next, Vogel has two jobs for them, the first is to pick up a large device that it being air-dropped in shortly, stash it somewhere where it would be difficult to access or track magically, and leave it there with Carol. An optional stage 2, which they also accept, is to pick Carol and the device up from this location and get them into the center of the ARES vs Bugs fight Downtown at the moment of Vogel’s choosing, he thinks it will only be a few days from now. The team negotiates pay, and gets all the relevant info.

2nd job, Carol doesn’t know any details, but Vogel has prepped an info packet they can examine before negotiating pay, though they have to agree to the job before they can see it. They do so, and he passes them an encrypted file that MAMA has the key to decode. It seems they are meant to use Carol’s brother, Michael as a trojan horse of sorts to get a toxin attack in range of Damien Knight. Further assistance incoming via drone once they agree to terms. They negotiate with Carol for a major payday, and he takes off.

The Detective calls Ellis and passes along the message/warning, as well as Carol’s current contact info, she thanks them for it and says she’ll ponder it, quickly, and decide what to do. The team decides to use the van to conceal the device (and Carol) in the radioactive zone on Vendor’s Row, and head to Triple R to get radiation shielding upgraded, as well as add a concealed turret for the upcoming Downtown run. While they upgrade, Otters flies Tabasco in the VTOL, along with bird-form Dig over to the drop site, way on the west side in some farm country near Livonia.

They arrive and spot a half-size shipping container dropping down with 4 small corner chutes deployed a short while later. Unfortunately, they also spot an incongruous swarm of bats hanging out in the area, seemingly keeping an eye on them and the crate. Otters flies Creep over as well while they debate what to do. After some attempts to influence the swarm with spirit powers are counter-acted, Tabasco decides to take action, and shoots a bat. He is then quickly felled by a massive spell, and fall out of the tree he was perched in.

Creep tosses him in the VTOL and Otters zips him back to the Plat Zone for healing, as Creep pops some smoke grenades before nearly getting felled by another spell. Dig finally spots the caster- a powerful high level initiate is in bat form amidst the swarm, and with that Dig and Creep retreat inside the crate. Unfortunately this lets off a tiny moment of astral visibility to the strange and powerful magical device within. It looks similar to an ARES portal closer from Project: Bottleneck, but significantly modified. Dig analyzes it with his magic a bit, and gets spooked again.

They hear a voice with a Germanic accent outside the door, as Creep welds it shut from the inside and Dig holds it closed with magic fingers. The voice offers them power and safety if they hand over the device, which they refuse. Creep threatens to set it off rather than give it up, which the voice seems to believe. It asks where they are taking it and on who’s behalf, and Creep answers honestly, without explicitly identifying Vogel. The voice seems satisfied and says so long as they don’t deviate from their plan, he will merely watch, but that if they try to pull a fast one, they will have an issue.

The van finally arrives to find Creep and Dig still hiding inside (the crate seems EM shielded and they have lost comms inside), and they get the device loaded into the van and head out of there. They park it in the rad zone, fine-tuning their placement to maximize the effect while ensuring Carol and the van will survive without too much effect. Carol arrives, and Otters passes backup control to him in case of a comms loss. They then head back to the Plat Zone on foot, and start working on the next job.

Step one- they need an intact pheromone gland from an original ALPHA. They spend some time monitoring comms frequencies until they hear a promising alert for ALPHAS nearby from a spotter. They call out as “engaging”, and head out, using some tactics to proceed quietly and set an ambush. It works surprisingly well with The Detective providing some critical leadership. They take down the new ALPHAs before they even can respond, though the lone original ALPHA nearly kills Dig with a burst from their Excalibur. The team manages to finish them all off, and Creep and The Detective start burning the other corpses, while CG and Dig carefully extract the gland, Dig once again using esoteric magic to perform skills he doesn’t seem to possess, and declaring himself a surgeon.

They head back to the Plat Zone and debate whether to try the next step themselves or not, eventually deciding to contract it out to Stanli the Candyman. Dig flies over with the gland, and passes it off. Stanli takes a look at the instructions, and seems legit surprised. The team pays him extra to tell them what they are crafting, as they are also paying him to forget the whole thing after. He explains that essentially he will be able to extract and refine some pheromones from the gland to make a targeted toxin, so that when whoever they inject it into comes into smell-range of the target gene markers they will emit the tailored toxin.

Once they have the toxin, Dig flies back, as Stanli smokes some läes to forget. A drone delivery arrives, with a business card with Michael Turpentine’s number on it, and a small fancy box. Opening the box, they find a black chess king piece. Creep and Dig manage to put together that likely is the piece given to Aurelius, the ARES founder, in Big D’ Will, with the rest of the set given to Knight. Supposedly Knight has been seeking to acquire the piece in the years since the last of Aurelius’ line died, but has not succeeded. Putting it all together, they realize that giving this piece to Michael will allow them to get close enough to dose him with the tailored toxin, and that this piece will ensure Michael a meeting with Knight shortly thereafter.

They remember that Hendricks controlled the ALPHA breeding lab for some time, and ponder if he altered their genes to specifically want to target Knight if they encountered him, or if someone else did… regardless, they have their job to do. The Detective calls Michael’s private line, and arranges a meeting in the fancy Downtown hotel that he and some other corp higher-ups seem to be living in during the fighting. The Detective goes alone, smuggling in a flyspy that is being hot rigged by Otters, and with others on remote backup, watching through the Avatars linked tattoo that CG possesses.

Michael already seems hyped and a little drunk when The Detective arrives, and Otters manages to slip the drone past the observant corpsec onsite. The Detective goes along with Michael’s bro-y vibe, and gives him a big backslap just as Otters tags him with the drone’s injector, which seems to have been the perfect distraction, though Michael seems to be coming down with something a bit as they continue drinking. The Detective passes over the piece, and the team is a bit horrified to hear on the comms how desperate Michael still is for the approval and corporate success that has destroyed his family, especially as he casually reveals Damien Knight’s human-centric metaracism- mistaking him for his brother, etc.

Regardless, Michael seems well-satisfied, believing that this will ensure Knight remembers who he is and trusts him, and he tells The Detective he won’t forget them and what they’ve done for him. The Detective feels a little bad, as they know how this is likely to end, so gets out of there quickly, with Otters managing to sneak the drone back out as well. With that done, they just need to amass personal gear and wait for Vogel’s call to deliver Carol and the device….

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Tabasco
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective

Upon emerging from the tunnels and regrouping, the team finds that the Desolation Angels had managed to hold back a larger ALPHA assault, though a few got past, and they suffered some casualties. The injured and unconscious on the team get hauled to the triage center in the basement and treated, while the rest merely rest up. When everyone awakens, Praxis offers Tabasco the chance to join up with Ellis and them as a full time bug hunter but he turns it down for now. The team then gathers and begins discussing what to do with the info they have. Lacking some situational context, they report in to Ringmaster and Rifleman.

Rifleman thanks them for the mapping data and tells them that the Irregulars were able to make some good raids with it, though in response the tunnels have been flooded with some kind of modified Seven-7, making it very dangerous to operate underground for the moment. Which has also made the ghouls and BETAS/Deso Angels even more valuable allies. He leaves them with Ringmaster to discuss how to get paid.

Ringmaster tells them that there’s a large bounty for proof of Hendricks’ death, but it is through ARES, so he’d have to use a series for cutouts to get it, which would eat into the payday. They could also go to Vogel, though the pay would likely be less, but it would allow him to make some moves ahead of ARES knowing of the power vacuum underground. In the end, the team fills Ringmaster in, and then sells the info to Ellis, in order to let her make some moves herself for her new faction. They get significantly less pay but tighten their bonds with Ellis.

They then try to call home to make sure Iva is ready for incoming repair work, but noone picks up at the safehouse! Otters flies Tabasco up there in the VTOL and does some surveillance on the way- looks like bugs are falling back to Downtown fully, as are ARES forces as mercs and Irregulars try to kill ALPHAS and save civilians- the big battle may be reaching a finale! On reaching the safehouse, they find the entrances covered with magical vines, but no other obvious issues, though they can’t get in.

Dig flies up in bird form to join Tabasco as Otters drives the rest up in the van, carefully, to avoid combat encounters. Tabasco inquires with Zennia, but she says part of what they pay for is privacy, plus the neighborhood seems kind of edgy and post-combat themselves. Chatting further, it turns out there were some desperate bug breakouts, followed by the poison gas, and though they were contained, there were some local casualties and noone has seen Jaga- unusual but she keeps odd hours and wanders a lot.

The team, recognizing Jaga’s green magic as the source of the vines, manages to communicate their good intents and is allowed in past the magic barrier, after CG slips through and reports it looks like a major brawl took place inside. There is a lot of blood, Dig’s golem is shattered, and CG’s lodge has been desecrated, seemingly by shadow magic. They find a badly injured Jaga in a seed pod that seems to have preserved her, and Dig manages to heal her with a massive spell.

Questioning her, they find out that Iva seems to have been mind-controlled into letting the Hands of Fate into the safehouse and guiding them to the Tarot cards. By the time Jaga realized what was happening, they were already fighting the golem- they came in concealed and under a large area silence effect, making it extra creepy, but she says there were multiple metahumans and at least two massive shadow spirits in the astral. Quickly analyzing the scene before fleeing, they see at least 5 distinct blood traces- likely Iva (who is missing), Jaga, and 3 others.

Most of the blood seems to have come from one individual who looks to have been sacrificed to ruin CG’s lodge. The team flees back to the Platinum Zone, since Dig and Tabasco are both still badly injured, and they pay to get their armor fixed there. They rest again, and discussing next steps decide to hire Smoach and Myrryr to look into this further, and also make sure they didn’t get attacked too. S&M seem glad to hear from the team, their office was ransacked but they had taken precautions and their card is safe. They agree to investigate, and suggest that based on HOF SOP, Iva may still be slowly dying somewhere, if it isn’t already too late. While starting their investigation at the safehouse, they find a sketch of the 10 of Blades in Iva’s area, altered to have her face, and suggest the team think of places she might be. They head north to check the spot where they found Roderick.

It occurs to the team that they haven’t checked the bolthole, and they call into the radio there, hearing what sounds like knife actions and blood dripping. Tabasco insists on being flown down there immediately, with Dig accompanying in bird form, masking himself as best he can, worried about a trap. Tabasco rushes in, but unfortunately seems to have fallen under a dark influence and finds himself compelled to shoot the suspended and badly cut up Iva with a white phosphorous arrow, surely killing her. He still tries to apply a trauma patch, but lights himself on fire in the process. The team triggers the narcoject in his auto-injector, which they had added in case of mind control, and Otters rigs his body out of there back into the VTOL.

They call the landlord and have another humorous convo where she seems fine with their misadventures so long as they pay for the damage, as the rental market is in a current slump due to the crisis. They say they’ll get back to her but arrange for ghoul-based body disposal once the fire goes out. Knowing that Tabasco won’t be able to handle what he did (even though it wasn’t his fault), the team comes up with a lie- Iva was already dead, and Tabasco lit the unit on fire in anger, and asked to have his memory (and the footage) erased.

Otters calls up Howell, who helped her forget some of her past in Florida, and he provides an intro to a local dealer/info broker named Stanli the Candyman. Howell warns Dig that Stanli is forgetful but loves setting traps. Dig approaches carefully, avoiding various dangerous and deadly traps, and has an odd convo with Stanli, who seems to have started smoking some of the laës while waiting for Dig to arrive. He sells him a vial of the injectible variety and also some other drugs, and they does Tabasco, back at the Plat Zone for now til they figure out what to do re: safehouses.

Dig proposes that they can’t let themselves be bullied, and keeps almost giving up the lie to Tabasco, but Tabasco seems willing enough to go along with it that they all manage to keep it together. Eventually, everyone gets talked into Dig’s plan, which is to hunt down the Hands of Fate/shadow spirit and get their Tarot cards back. Jaga, Dig and CG do a massive ritual to track them down, with The Detective being flown around Detroit in the VTOL as the spotter. They eventually track them to a dilapidated farmhouse way outside of town near Ypsilanti.

Not wanting to rush into an incredibly dangerous situation, they start making lists of necessary gear and the like. Meanwhile, Tabasco heads out to Metal Maniacs where he gets hand razors installed and pays one of the gangers there to buff him like Iva used to. They accidentally trigger his orgasm switch while doing so, which is a weird experience for him. Creep hides the remaining 2 tarot cards (sealed up) in his leg waste compartment, and heads up north to try to get his parachute back from the jailbreak mission.

When he arrives, he sees that new go-gangers have taken over the whole area around the Blight, and the jail is badly burnt down. He chats with some Ancients, including the 2 the team rescued, and they confirm that anything flammable at the jail is long destroyed. Oh well. One of the Ancients, who seems magical, warns Creep that some kind of dark spirit is pursuing him, and gives him some tips on how to ditch it. He accepts a ride from them back to the north edge of the NGZ, and hides out near the nuke detonation site for a while to ditch astral tracing, then sneaks back to the Plat Zone, where he gets a biopocket installed to hide their remaining few major arcana from astral sight.

The team continues to go back and forth on whether to cash the ARES bounty before it’s too late, since CG gathered some bio-samples of Hendricks’ exploded corpse, with Dig adamantly for it, Tabasco adamantly opposed (ARES killed his parents, as he says) and the rest of the crew vacillating between. However, they need to gear up for this shadow spirit raid….

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Tabasco
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective

Tabasco returns after helping protect the Platinum Zone from bug assault, which also further cemented their alliance with Ellis and Praxis. The team debriefs a bit and talks Dig out of making a potentially sketchy deal with Grandmother Biyu to get a much better deck than he can afford in exchange for having a constant info channel open to the Triad. Dig instead borrows money from many on the team and gets a decent deck. Tabasco upgrades one of his arms, going obvious to get more capacity for mods.

After doing a few more assorted sabotage and magic fly-by’s to keep pressure on the Mafia at the port, the team decides to head into the tunnels and deal with Otto Hendricks once and for all. Given that bugs are locked in combat with the newly arrived MET2000 reinforcements, along with all the previous combatants, and that this is luring far flung ALPHAS back to the city center, the team figures noone will be looking for an alpha strike on the Henricks himself, so they hope to sneak in.

They decide to use the tunnel that emerged near the Plat Zone as an entry point, and spend a while training and gearing up for the mission as sounds of heavy combat continue all around them. They head down, and using drones and spirits, manage to bypass a few initial traps, including tunneling around an alarm ward by magically reshaping concrete in an old subway station. Otters reports back to the Plat Zone on progress until her drone doesn’t return one time, and they worry they are surrounded. Dig, in wolf form, is doing an impressive job astrally tracking Hendricks based on his and CG’s ritual prep.

As they enter a large multi-chamber area, seemingly a major old underground station, a massive magical barrier drops down behind them- a trap! 4 massive spirits manifest and attack the team, with the team managing to avoid taking serious damage and felling 2 of the spirits before coming under attack from Hendricks and his bodyguards, wielding Gauss rifles, which shred Tabasco’s armor badly. They get in a brutal throwdown fight, but are making progress when some ALPHA’s. lured by the strong bug magic being thrown around, breech through the magical barriers since Hendricks is distracted with the battle.

Hendricks’ bodyguards appear suicidally loyal, and keep taking hits for him, though they manage to fell Tabasco with their railguns. CG and Dig’s spirits manage to keep the rest of the team reasonably safe, and the ALPHAs make quick work of the surviving bug spirit, though they also shoot Otters’ prone body as they enter, not bothering to stop and confirm their kill, luckily for her she had upgraded her armor before this mission. CG snaps the small bone charm he was given by Li Wei, which summons a Blood Spirit, and he and Dig send a spirit each after Hendricks.

He quickly banishes the blood spirit and destroys Dig’s spirit with astral combat, and the ALPHAs destroy both of CG’s necro spirits, a bad day for spirit rep for both of them. Dig and CG flee the ALPHAs further in, chasing Hendricks and his lone remaining guard further underground. The team fells one ALPHA up top as CG takes out the final bodyguard, and Dig manages to trap Hendricks with an embarassing/overcast magic fingers grapple. DIg holds Hendricks prone, while Otters’ drone, Creep and the ALPHA all attack him.

Unfortunately, it seems like he had one final plan and detonates a mine he has built into his armor, nearly killing Creep and Dig, damaging the ALPHA, and destroying the drone. Creep and CG manage to take down the ALPHA as it tries to KO and infest Dig, who barely survives. Otters salvages what she can from the mule, and CG distros some Buffout so that the team can haul Tabasco out. They race back up the tunnel as quick as they can, hoping the flyspys that Otters sent back ahead would have reported any obstructions.

They get lucky, and safely reach the Platinum Zone, where Tabasco is revived, though he looks much the worse for wear, and the rest of the team heals up a bit, before debriefing.

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Tabasco
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective

With the Blight still hot and aggressively guarded post-prison break, the team heals up for a few days, and the contractors for the job go their separate ways. After everyone is basically back to normal, they decide to pay Kong to keep the van safe til they can get it out, and pay the Maulers to smuggle them out through the McKenzie Arcology, which goes smoothly. They travel back to the safehouse on foot, except for Dig who goes in bird form, and manage to gun down two fresh, hungry alphas who attack them on the way, without any significant damage to themselves.

Dig insists on solving the mystery of one of the 6WT greater arcana: the Avatars. He does decipher how to resolve it, but tries to participate in bird form and misses out on the boon. The other 3 participants (Chew Gum, The Detective and Otters) all gain a visual only shared sensory connection with the other 2 that, after some experimentation, seems able to bypass magical defenses with ease. They experiment a bit more and plan to use it for recon until it runs out. Unfortunately, it does magically link them also and makes them a bit more astrally visible.

The team does some planning and recon for the heist for Howell;s mysterious Johnson, and finds that the artifact in question is a Tzuri Group Janus statue of some sort, a recent loan to the private museum in Grosse Pointe’s ritzy Casa Aurelius gated neighborhood. The Detective uses their good SIN to gain access and tours the museum, under the effect of a catalog spell ritual from Dig and Chew Gum, though they are forced to let the spell go when they trigger some passive museum security and are confronted by guards. Overall, the place seems quite chill however, and they quickly make a plan to sneak, bypass the detected security features, and replace the artifact with a well-made copy, hopefully leaving noone any the wiser for at least some amount of time.

In other news about town, ARES has apparently dug deep in their remaining coffers and secured the services of MET2000, one of the world’s largest merc corps. They are expected to arrive within the week, which may dramatically change the situation on the ground. Otters, on behalf of the team, also shares some intel and info with Ringmaster – specifically discussing Ellis and her trustworthiness, given her altered status. The Irregulars are debating an offer to unite or at least collab with the BETAs and Desolation Angels, and seem to legit value the team’s input.

They also warn that Carol and Vogel are very much still looking for Ellis, so the team should expect contact at some point. They discuss Kensington and the Comeadai network, and Ringmaster fills them in on the Black Lodge’s likely involvement- from what he could tell, Kensington was a former member of the Seer’s Guild, a powerful Euro foretelling org, which is heavily infiltrated by the BL. What was done to him also seems like a classic BL punishment/experiment, and they are definitely invested in the secrets of the Seelie Court, so it feels feasible.

Armed with knowledge and a plan, the team prepares to make the imitation artifact and get the heist down before the arrival of MET2000 changes the situation on the ground. The heist goes pretty well, with the team first making contact with the small local Seoul’Pa presence via Chew Gum in order to upgrade some SINs. Creep gets his good enough to get into Casa Aurelius, and heads in carrying Dig’s hacking rig. He stashes it in a tree near the museum, where Dig flies in in bird form, and puts on his custom animal form trodes with his magic fingers.

Dig manages to hack the cameras on the museum and make it look like Creep left, while Creep actually hides in a utility closet. Once the museum closes, Creep sneaks around and lets Otter’s mule drone in, after Otters drops it off with the VTOL. The mule drone sneaks to the third floor and disables the automatic security shutter, while Creep carefully bypasses the physical and digital security, and swaps out the near exact replica that CG crafted, also swapping the digital sensors and trackers attached.

Unfortunately, Dig doesn’t really understand the matrix, and GOD comes down on him, destroying his deck and badly injuring him. He leaves the area, and Creep and the drone hide inside overnight while the team figures out a plan. The next day, the Detective returns to the museum at opening while Dig, in bird form, uses a spirit of beasts to control animals from around the neighborhood to rush dozens of cats, dogs, rats etc into the museum , causing some chaos, during which Creep and the drone sneak off, with Otters flying the drone and artifact away in the VTOL.

Otters makes the drop off to Howell after flying through some toxic zones to ditch magical traces. The team then connects with Grandmother Biyu so Dig can learn some new spells and try to get a new deck. The rest of the team quickly determines that she is a high ranking Triad, and they get down to biz. She wants to take turf from the mafia while ARES is on their back foot, and offers the team whatever level of involvement they want. After some debate, they agree, and begin planning a disinformation and sabotage campaign.

While that happens, Ellis warns of a major upcoming bug assault, and Tabasco manages to help fend off a direct attack on the Platinum Zone, while the rest of the team helps prep defenses in Hamtramck. After multiple ARES positions collapse, some under shelling from their own command Downtown, MET2000 dramatically drops in with gravjets and starts pushing the bugs back and holding the line. Luckily, ARES has had to also call in all backup, so Otters finally gets the team van back from the Blight, and notices that there seem to be some incipient go-gangers starting to build up bikes and war rigs and preparing to leave the Blight as well….

Runners
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Tabasco
Otters aka Roadkill
The Detective
and some assistance from: Leonid Svaja and The Brokenheart

Leonid, having come to town for bonus pay with the Irregulars and looking for some side work now that some of the funding has dried up, gets recommended by Kong as a freelancer in look of work to help with the prison break. Noticing the team’s imperfect grasp of social skills, he also suggests hiring on the washed-up boy band star/face/adept The Brokenheart, Kamizan 0 to fill those gaps. Brokenheart got stuck in town after a con appearance got crashed by Horizon hired goons and he had to lay low with a fan for a bit and got stuck inside the wall during Latvian Gambit, and he’s out of drug money so he’s desperate for work.

Dig heads out to meet up with Grandmother Biyu to learn some spells, and finds what looks like a small Triad setup to cook and feed people during the crisis. They seem to be operating pretty freely in the dangerous Vendor’s Row so that implies some power at least. They have a slightly esoteric conversation as Dig realizes that Biyu is teaching him the spells as she makes him help cook. She also says she has some work for him- she needs to acquire some territory in town which is currently possessed by others. Dig agrees and says he’ll circle back soon.

The team all links up, arranges pay with Praxis, and gets access to a Desolation Angels bus they can beef up and use for the prisoner rescue. They add run flats and a ram plate, and get Leonid and Otters hooked into the rigger interface. Chew Gum does some astral surveillance on the prison while the 2 riggers do some drone flybys and Creep and Tabasco scout the neighborhood. The team has to remind Tabasco to cover all his extensively buffed and shiny cyber to avoid detection. Otters heads to Run and Sollars and gets some info on the building- an old and not very updated structure. They make an initial plan for entry and start acquiring the necessary gear.

They get a rocket launcher and a bunch of EMP’s from The Trading Post, and fly to the Plat Zone to acquire some C4. Dig turns into a mouse and rides in Creep’s pocket, along with most of the EMP’s, 7 flyspys and a miniwelder, while Creep gets dropped on the roof of the prison by the VTOL and infiltrates the old vents. They spend a night sneaking around and surveilling, and manage to use the mouse and flyspy’s to get messages to the prisoners they need to break out, hoping they can also get a few more if they get the chance. In the morning, Creep sets the C4 (which Leonid had pre-shaped) above the facility spider’s rigger cocoon, and tells the team it’s go time.

Leonid, having mounted the rocket launcher on his roto-drone, and waits while Tabasco climbs up the side of the toxic Chrysler Valley to cut the perimeter fence. Brokenheart heads up to the front gate and starts performing and jumping around to magically distract the guards. He pulls 3 of the patrollers off, which gives Tabasco enough time to cut the fence, though he attracts the attention of 4 exterior rail drones and 1 remaining patroller. Creep falls back in the vents and detonates the C4 as Leonid launches the rocket. They blow open the side of the admin wing and take out the spider in one go, and then Tabasco comes under heavy fire.

He retreats into the building with Chew Gum getting flown in by the VTOL and dropped inside also. Otters sends the bus over to back up Brokenheart with it’s newly mounted LMG, as the guards out front are coming back to their senses. Creep drops down from the vent as Dig summons a spirit, and they quickly take out the 2 on shift security mages. They get in a gun, magic, and EMP battle with the drones and sec guards, and the bus almost gets wrecked before Otters can pull it back. Leonid hot swaps back to an assault rifle on his roto-drone to provide cover fire, while CG uses his corpse spirit for long distance powers on exterior guards and Otters starts heading over in the mule drone.

With some massive pulse spells and lightning bolts, followed up by prodigious gunfire and arrows, the team manages to take out all the surrounding guards, thinking there are likely only a few deeper in. Tabasco is nearly killed and is hopped up on slap patches to keep going. Otters gets into the detention wings with the mule drone, which is nearly destroyed in an ambush. The team manages to take out the two guards firing from cover while Dig uses his new mind probe spell to learn the secrets of the facility from the lone living captured guard, as well as his deep personal feelings, before killing him.

Brokenheart heads in, talks the last guard into surrendering, and walks him out as CG’s spirit further compels him to flee and not call backup. He does. They start cutting through the locked down cell bolts, as they fried the spider’s controls so can’t digitally open doors. Otters and Leonid get drones airborne, and spot KE reinforcement coming their way, so they have to hustle. They just manage to free the 6 Desolation Angels, 3 Razorboyz Edge runners, 2 Ancients, and assassinate the one First Union member before the backup arrives, and Otters and Leonid race towards the Blight, laying down suppressive fire in front and behind.

They smash through the border gate, destroying the bus, and tell the people aboard to flee into the Blight as they team cover them. Otters then drives deeper in, hiding the van, as KE forms up at the entrance but seems reluctant to pursue. The team has really burned themselves with ARES but gained a lot of good rep with locals and gangers, and makes a good chunk of cash as well! Onto the next job!

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

With the disturbing news about the disappearance (or at least the disappearance from sensors) of the UCAS Army III Corps, as well as the nearby town of Dutchville, PA, the team has a mildly fraught morning discussing possibilities, exit strategies, and survival plans. Otters is glad she got her reflex augment surgery in beforehand as this is likely to make things even scarcer and more expensive. Chew Gum returns from learning a new necromantic ritual from Li Wei, who seems a bit creepier than the team file had previously suggested. He also buys a Mortis Optigram off of Smoach and Myrryr who say that they just kept it around on the off-chance and can’t actually use it.

Meanwhile, across town, The Detective finally emerges from their depressive state/bath after grieving Locke’s death for a week. Absent their protege and source of street intel, they feel it is perhaps finally time to get back out there themselves, work the angles. Having also caught the radio broadcast about the III Corps mystery, The Detective is hooked and on the case. They can only think of one obvious place to turn initially- the team Locke was running with before their death. The Detective chooses Tabasco to reach out to, based on the limited psych workup they have done on the crew from Locke’s reports.

Tabasco, quickly feeling a bit out of his depth, brings most of the rest of the team in on the call, absent Dig who is sealing the mafia hole up and currently unreachable. They all agree to meet The Detective and suggest the Tin Can bar, which Locke seems to have not told The Detective is right in front of their safehouse (score one for team norms). They debrief a bit back and forth, commiserate about Locke’s untimely passing, and discuss some ongoing mysteries: Tarot, Fear The Dark, III Corps. Most of the crew claims to not be in the world saving business so The Detective pays them a decent consulting fee for the info share.

An urgent call to a meeting at the Platinum Zone comes over the bar’s radio setup, and Marv manages to punch a message through to The Detective with an invite as well, so they all load into the team van and then drive down. Otters does some impressive sneaky driving while the others keep lookout- they see that the 77th Independent Rangers are policing their zone as well so they have their Irregulars transponder ready to broadcast if needed, but don’t get spotted. It looks like the large pack of ALPHAS on the north edge of Downtown have been driven off or moved on, also, leaving devastation in their wake.

They reach the Plat Zone with no trouble and start to head inside but get halted by security who recognize Chew Gum’s corpse spirit host as one of the would-be assassins from the last big meeting. They go to tackle the spirit and luckily Tabasco intervenes and explains before CG is able to try to use mental manipulation powers on the guards, as Tabasco remembers there is constant magical surveillance as well. They check their corpse spirit at the door and head in. They get ushered over into the Brickhouse side through knocked in interior passages along the block, it seems increasingly fortified every time they visit.

Waiting there are the Irregular command: Ringmaster, setting up an AR projector deck, Ravenheart looking calm and collected, and Rifleman, all keyed up, Marv greets The Detective as they enter but is otherwise hanging back for this. Once enough Irregulars have arrived, Ringmaster starts the presentation. Bad news: not only has III Corps vanished or dropped off sensors (both worrying), Jackpoint, The Nexus, Frozen Shadows, and Asgard Data Haven all appear to have been taken down. They present the last batch of messages that Electric Blue was able to pull before getting badly dump shocked, and it looks bad- a coordinated attack shortly after the III Corps news came through.

Without easy outside access to funding, recruitment, and buyers, Ringmaster warns that Irregulars will be seeing reduced support and pay, though they will continue to do what they can. Most of the mercs grumble but hang with it- this was a volunteer position after all. Some of the locals and some of the out of towners bail, resigning their commissions, but most stay. Although they can’t really afford even those losses, Ringmaster sells it as a further loyalty test: now everyone knows that the ones who remain are there for the right reasons and will have each other’s backs, whatever comes next.

Tabasco tries to broach some speculations about what caused all this, and gets shut down on doing it publically, but Ringmaster tells everyone to share any intel with leadership- they need to be on their toes and not engaging in wild speculation at the moment. Still, plenty of rumors are circulating the room, from the plausible to the truly outlandish. The team also notices there are more ghouls mixed into the Irregulars than previous- more arrivals from Chicago perhaps? They head to the back to share their suspicions with the leadership.

When in the back, Ringmaster seals it up and tells them it’s a newly installed Faraday cage. He also runs a white noise machine and scans everyone for bugs, as well as instructing everyone to disable recording and comms. They all do, and the team suggests that the attack on the boards was likely the fault of the Null Sect. They hardwire a copy of the Null Doc to Ringmaster, who confirms that he has heard of the NS, though the team has more specific info on them than he does. The Detective sits in the corner taking frantic notes: another mystery! The rest of leadership is unfamiliar, but gets brought quickly up to speed, with Ringmaster reinforcing the team’s dire warning about ANY digital transmission involving the NS.

They get some more intel than was shared publicly as well, and are given a month-long codebook, to go old school with radio encryption. Creep secrets it away on his person, and they are told to destroy it if they look likely to be captured or killed.Most of the other Irregular units will just get daily code books with their assignments for the day, but some of the more specialist crews and farther flung operators are getting longer term ones to reduce travel risk. While the team is driving back they have an internal discussion about what to do with The Detective, since they already know so much.

They sit down at the Tin Can and gets some drinks, with Tabasco getting Iva to fashion him a drinking pipe/horn to get around his junkyard jaw “drinking problems” (i.e. cutting up glasses and mugs). After some further interviewing, they pass The Detective the team norms, which they eagerly sign, and the team adds them to the team file, with a warning that they can’t just instantly rabbit hole on all the info and need to also do some work. The Detective agrees, and seems to think they just won’t sleep for a while maybe. On the night’s RFD broadcast, they hear that ARES has cut loose The Cutters, after their leader refused to throw a bunch of her people into a meat grinder suicide mission in the Downtown tunnels. They’ve pulled back from positions around the city and taken over a large old bank Downtown as an HQ. Tabasco tries to call his “uncle” Don Michaels, and finds out that he’s too late- Michaels was killed in the fighting.

They all crash at the safehouse, and awaken to a meeting request from Ellis. Heading north, they sneak out of the No-Go-Zone, with Otters once again showing off her skills. They reach the Mackenzie Arcology overlooking the Blight, and enter. The Maulers look to have taken back their turf after the Cutters pulled back. Otters exchanges brief nods and chat with them, confirming that the smuggling tunnels under the Arcology into the Blight are still open if needed. They use the access codes Ellis provided to head up a few floors and head into the unit they were told.

They find Ellis there, along with Praxis, who noone on the team had seen since late Chicago, and who is the only Desolation Angel present. Also there are Pretty and Needles from Long Pig Farms and a few more ghouls the team doesn’t know, who look like heavy hitters. Everyone is armed and armored but not showing any aggression. Ellis invites them to sit and they do. She asks that they hear her out, and then if they’re willing to work together, Praxis will offer them a job. She begins.

Ellis explains that she has found an alternate path forward for both metahumanity and insect spirits: the true voluntary merge. She says that as it can only be entered willingly by both sides, it differs from any other previous merges, though she modeled the concept off of the Desolation Angel mantid merges, which are voluntary but still largely consume the original host, leaving some memories, personality etc intact and present but not exactly in charge. Ellis says she is terming the new process the “BETA” to counter the macho/destructive ALPHA program.

Chew Gum gets suspicious and assenses both Ellis and Praxis, and sees that their auras look weirdly similar, though in Praxis’ case the bug aspect seems dominant, whereas in Elli’s case both seem equal. CG also notices Ellis drop her impressive aura making to let him see this. Inquiring what exactly she did, she explains that she was forced to merge with the nymph sample that previous team members secured for her in Chicago, when her lab was raided and the current team wasn’t able to get her out in time. She explains that she had planned to appeal to Vogel for continued funding and protection while she kept investigating her “alternate path”, but that now she has moved completely beyond that and believes ARES has nothing to offer her.

Also, while she trusts Vogel more than anyone else who might end up in charge, she doesn’t think he really has what it takes to cleanse the corp of it’s internal evils to the extent necessary. She does explain that she can replicate the BETA process on others, and plans to, though she reiterates that it requires willingness on both ends- ALPHAS were willing humans with forced bugs, initially, and now are something else, and worse, with their ability to breed, which she admit was a terrible feature to include. And standard bug is an unwilling host with a willing bug. She compares it to being more similar to Monad-ism, in terms of synergistically merging personalities. CG concedes that this does appear to be astrally accurate, but the team has some intense internal discussion about what to do.

Deciding that even if they wanted to (which most don’t but some do), they couldn’t take out Ellis and survive, they decide to take Praxis’ job for now and discuss more later. Pretty also explains that Ellis is continuing to help develop sustainable ghoul food in her free time, and the ghouls seems to treat her a bit reverently, as she also tipped them off to ALPHA edibility. Praxis explains that with the Cutters pulled back, ARES’ private prisons are notably understaffed- there’s one main facility they brought the gangers they rounded up to, and have been recruiting out of for tunnel rat missions. Praxis wants the other Desolation Angels out, and suggests the team could make some new friends by freeing others as well, if they want.

She also explains that she has no desire to kill Ellis, even as a dedicated bug hunter who needs to consume bugs to breed. She seems to be of her right mind and speaking freely as far as the team can tell, and seems to have fully bough into Ellis’ plan. Tabasco also asks the ghouls if there are ghoul gourmands who would like to feast on specific ALPHA parts and they seem interested. So for now, the team leaves, and starts planning a prison break!

Runners
Creep
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill

Otters rejoins the crew, having gotten Moreau sufficiently set up at the Bloomfield biodrone reserve for the time being. Tabasco needs to spend some time prowling the city and getting a feel for the vibes again, so takes off for a bit. Chew Gum continues to help out the local area and communities that he and Jaga have connected with. Dig and Creep convince Otters to make an appointment at the Run and Sollars Private Library to look for some tunnel maps. Otters, having used their resources before, does so, careful not to mention his connection to the 3 who were there the day prior, when they trashed the place a bit and killed some Shifting Pyre guys who were legit clients.

Otters VTOLs over, and sees that the library is still being defended by the steampunk-y runner crew, who he recognizes as a hacker gang called The Coquillards. They’re loosely French-Canadian nationalists, which explains why they didn’t come to the big meeting at the Plat Zone, as they believe Windsor should split back off from Detroit. Luckily, this means they aren’t familiar with Otters’ new crew, so she doesn’t run into any trouble there. She does share some intel with their leader Prospero about the UCAS Army III Corps headed their way, which they appreciate.

Then Otters spends a while researching and finds an old KE training map about Detroit Down Below navigation, as well as some intel suggesting that ghoul communities might be good to reach out to. She also finds the name of a library volunteer “Daiyana Dimeeko” who seems to have annotated some of these files most recently. Dig keeps working on re-building his ritual circle in the long storage bolt hole, while Creep catches up on some flatvid reruns off his hard drive.

They link back up and decide to reach out to some of the ghouls they know, and radio over to Smee at Neverland Candy Shoppe. Smee tracks down Rains for them and a few hours later they chat on the radio, and make an agreement to trade the ghouls for updated DDB/tunnel maps in exchange for helping the ghouls deal with whoever is behind Fear The Dark locally, and with pushing out good PR about the ghoul community here.

Rains puts them in touch with a Chicago ghoul named Pretty who is in town looking to see if Long Pig Farms could take advantage of the chaos and move up here, and the team arranges to meet her at the Plat Zone that evening. While travelling around the city the team notices that a merc corp, the 77th Independent Rangers, seems to be significantly bolstering ARES forces in Zones 1 and 5, but combat seems to have settled down a bit in both areas.

They arrive for the meet at the Plat Zone, and find the area further expanded and fortified. Pretty is waiting for them with a small mixed group of local and Chicago ghouls who they don’t know, and is made up to appear as “baseline human” as possible- more effective at a distance than up close where it gets a little uncanny valley, but she explains that it helps her be a point of contacts with local normies and civilians who aren’t necessarily used to dealing with ghouls, ARES having kept the large underground community fairly secret.

She shares a PR doc that previous team members had helped write in Chicago with the current team, some of whom recognize it from the team file. She says it helped a lot in the Bug City wrap up times, but without the bugs as a unifying threat, those in power in Chicago are using fear of infection (and FTD) to make ghouls and vamps the new bogeymen to justify their crackdowns in the CZ as the corps continue to rebuild and reclaim there. It’s still a good party, but maybe not for the Infected anymore.

She tells the team to feel free to share that doc around, but that they have a few more specific jobs in mind to trade for the underground maps. She suggests looking for wealthy vamps or other secret cabals who would benefit from using Fear the Dark as a fearmongering tool- since a lot of lone wolves claim the name, they’ll likely never be able to stop them entirely, but if they can cut off the head of the org, locally, it should go a long way.

She also wants them to track down Ellis- apparently Ellis had a dead man’s switch which sent a message to the Chicago ghouls about the viability of eating ALPHA flesh, and Pretty wants to return the favor, especially as Ellis had hinted at possible further ghoul food developments she was working on in her free time. As far as Pretty can tell, Ellis was grabbed by the mafia, then grabbed by some organleggers and stashed at the port and then captured by maggots when they breached the stacked human smuggling cargo containers from underground.

Dig’s been getting some looks from various people at the Plat Zone as he is only wearing illusory clothes to make his animal form transitions easier, so he mods his illusion so that his shirt reads “Choose to Believe.” People seem to have larger concerns but Otters gets a little worried about how this would go over in more polite company in the future. Regardless, the team agrees to the job, and Pretty says the ghouls will have some transports ready for any other hostages the team can rescue from the maggots, to bring them to the Plat Zone to get checked out for Inhabitation and generally healed up.

The team heads over to the port and finds it fully and openly under mafia control. Dig goes up to talk to them and they seem weirded out by him and his nakedness but intrigued by his proposal, til Otters jumps in and uses her good rep to get the Mancino family fixer Mr. Friday to intervene. He seems to recognize Dig and Creep from a previous bad run-in with the mob, but Otters is solid enough and the plan seems to their benefit so he agrees. The team agrees to seal the hole after they’re done (with magic) and track down the traitorous infiltrators that Friday says were involved in the initial collapse. He charges the team a bit of money on principle but they pay up, and repel down the large crater in the midst of the piled stacks of isontainer in The Yards. The mafia has it ringed with autoguns and sensors, which they don’t turn off as the team rappels down, an eerie feeling.

They find the wreckage of 2 stacks of isotainers that dropped into the large hole, and evidence that it was blown open rather than tunneled. Looking inside the containers, they find evidence of longterm people holding/smuggling- racks of cheap bunks with restraints and IV’s. Dig, in dog form, plus a spirit he summons, plus all the drones manage to sense a few trails, and correctly ID which one the hostages were brought down, while Creep uses his navigation implants to orient them while travelling in the pitch black tunnels, a mix of man-made and bug dug.

They eventually track their way to a massive old storm overflow cistern, filled with about 100 captives, who are overseen by 4 ant workers who are slowly walking through the crowd feeding them some kind of goop. The captives seems more sedated than restrained. As they watch, 2 beetle warriors emerge from the opposite tunnel and grab 2 of the captives and lead them off somewhere- likely for inhabitation. They make a quick plan, and Otters doubles back with the spirit guarding him to set up 2 C4 charges, while Creep sneaks through the crowd of captives to place the 3rd.

The team sneaks past another worker spirit in the tunnels while doing so, lines up their shots, and then hits the detonators and triggers their ambush. They manage to drop all 4 worker spirits before they can respond, and successfully fully or partially collapse all 3 tunnels they were aiming to. They debate trying to winch the captive back up through the mafia-guarded hole, but hearing some angry digging sounds from beyond the collapsed tunnel areas, decide to take a faster but more dangerous route. Otters zips down the new tunnel under the water, which looks like a recent bug connection to Otto Hendricks’ old turf in North Windsor, and though it is leaking it isn’t collapsed yet.

She pauses to plant some explosives at a weak point while Dig throws up some concrete spells to further hold back bug pursuer and the spirit and Creep get the captives moving. They seem quite docile so once they start going it isn’t too hard to get them all going along, though the team is only able to save 80 out of 100. They blow the tunnel just behind another concrete spell and fell a terrible water pressure rush in, washing away the pursuing bugs and eventually shooting a little geyser of water out of the concealed basement exit they find in Windsor.

They call up the ghouls to pick up the survivors for medical care, and one of the survivors comes over and removes a magical diguise- it’s Ellis! She thanks the team for the rescue and says she’ll go with the ghouls for now and debrief them later. They ask her what happened to the nymph and she tells them not to worry about it. The team, having previously committed to letting her make her own choice between ghouls and Vogel, and with Dig unable to read her aura, let her go.

Pretty and Rains seems satisfied, and send the updated maps, with the promise from the team that they will continue to help with the FTD and PR issues. Now they just need to track down and kill Otto Hendricks! On a few nights worth of Radio Free Detroit, they hear a couple updates: it seems like the local situation has entered a kind of stalemate, with ARES (Knight) vs. Irregulars vs. Bugs (+ Hendricks’ ARES assets) vs. ALPHAS, where ALPHAS are the terrifying wildcard who prefer to fight bugs but will fight anyone. There are reports that Zones 1 and 5 are relatively safe for Irregulars as long as they are running ID, as the 77th Independent Rangers have repeatedly refused ARES orders to fire on fellow mercs, so long as they aren’t firing at them first.

Dig calls around looking for someone to teach him the Mind Probe spell, which Myrryr seems to regard as deeply unethical. Smoach agrees to help though, and gets him a contact from someone in Vendors Row, if she’s still alive, named Grandmother Biyu. The team is awoken by an unscheduled update on the radio- the UCAS Army III Corps, as well as a town in western PA that they were near, appear to have vanished. Jackpoint, Nexus, Asgard etc are all freaking out trying to figure out if it’s a new camo system or something more sinister, but it seems something is definitely afoot…..

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Dig

After Locke’s tragic death, Chew Gum takes some time to compose an epic poem in their memory, and also reports to the team the body of the Hands of Fate assassin in their safehouse has some weird magical traces that could use a closer look. Otters heads out to clear her head as well, and gets busy helping Moreau get all the rescued biodrones settled and rehoused. The remainder of the team starts looking into what’s up with this assassin, and enlist the assistance of the PPI’s Smoach and Myrryr, uncovering that as well as Myrryr’s skills at using bird messengers, Smoach is a technomancer, so they have some unique comms abilities in the present crisis. They convince S&M to come to the Tin Can, since the team’s group mobility is limited in Otters’ absence.

They trade notes with S&M about Hands of Fate, Roderick Kensington, and the Tarot, with Tabasco semi-accidentally revealing waaay too much info about the team’s knowledge, involvement, and possession of the Tarot. S&M are totally hooked by the mystery, however, and agree to help out. The team loans them one card to help their investigation while S&M try to track down Kensington, who they fear may be dead. The team give S&M one of their remaining radios.

Meanwhile, Creep checks in (awkwardly) with the radio operator at the Plat Zone, and hears that the Windsor runner crew lead by Rose left a message for them- they have something they think the team will want, and told them to get in touch when possible. Knowing that Rose is also a TM, Tabasco figures they can get ahold of them once in Windsor, and Dig wants to head to his magical lodge at the Bolthole there anyway to try to use a ritual to track down the Hands of Fate.

Dig flies down there in bird form, while Tabasco is piloted down in the VTOL, setting up one more radio at the Bolthole as well to keep comms up with Creep in Otter’s absence. Creep joins them, also via VTOL after finishing his comms checkins. Dig casts the ritual with Tabasco as the focus, with a spirit assisting. They quickly spot 4 individuals, fairly close by, thinking about the Eclipse card, that they know Kensington possessed. They scout the rough area the thoughts popped up from, and with some intel from S&M over the radio, find out that it is an obscure physical documents collection/private library called Run and Sollars.

Tabasco also calls up the Windsor crew, and they trade them the final radio for the items they found that they thought the team would want- maps of new bug tunnels recovered from Hendrick’s former north Windsor stronghold! The Windsor crew says they’re looking to set something up on Belle Isle proper once the fires go out from the wrecked ARES airbase, and is doing some preliminary scouting. They once again affirm that they prefer to get paid, but thought this was too important of intel not to share, and trust the team more than the Irregulars at the moment, as a somewhat known quantity.

S&M also report back that they found Roderick Kensington murdered deep in some toxic woods in the Auburn Blight. He had been strung up between 2 trees, and repeatedly shallowly cut, and likely bled to death over hours, though whoever did it didn’t stick around. A bloody handprint is smeared on his chest, likely in his own blood, and his stuff is trashed. No sing of his Tarot card or his notes on the Tarot (or the team), also. They say they need to do more analysis at a lab, away from the toxic magic zone.

The team then heads over to scout the private library, and Creep sneaks into the massive vents on the old building. He spots 4 individuals consulting documents, with 2 librarians occasionally bringing more over. He ID’s one of them as the leader, though their insignia, such as it is, is subtle and not obviously corp, merc or gang. Dig bribes one of the librarians to let him in the front door, but the leader of the group of 4 sees through his illusory clothing, as do some of the others- and wondering why a naked old man with an eyepatch, collar, and rocky deposits projecting from his skin just wandered in, decide to take a closer look.

The leader flips down some goggles, and tells the other 3 that Dig “has some traces on him” and to grab him. The 3 rush over to dog pile Dig, which they do, but he shifts to a cockroach and escapes before they can inject him with…. something. Creep takes out the leader with a couple shots, but not before the leader uses some enchanted knucks to badly hurt Dig’s spirit. The other 3 flee after Tabasco badly injures one of them, after breaking down the front door with a crowbar. Tabasco manages to slip a tracker on the injured guy as they flee, and follows at a distance.

The dwarf librarian is very upset by all this, and berates Creep and Dig, who shifts backs to human form to loot the leaders corpse, and grab a bunch of the documents they were looking at. The dwarf seems to be calling in backup, so they leave a little money for the damage caused, and flee. Tabasco tracks the fleeing 3 back to the same building that the Bolthole is in (Yong-Dundas Long Storage), and finds they have a smaller unit a few floors up from the team’s garage- popular safehouse spot apparently. The 3 zap his bug before dashing into the safehouse, seemingly just as a precaution, not because they were aware of it, so it’s good he also kept eyes on. Creep hangs back and spots a team of steampunk-looking runners who show up to secure the library. He hasn’t seen them before, meaning they weren’t at the big Plat Zone meeting, so who are they?

Creep and Dig rejoin him, and Dig magically looks inside. They seem to be packing up their op, and discussing next steps. They say that the intel from “Fivecoats” was right, and that more than just the Eclipse card is in play locally. One of them is packing maps and other material from the walls into a hard case while the other treats the wounded 3rd man. Unfortunately, they have a glowmoss strip over the door, which Dig’s spell activates, and they go into overdrive since they know someone is onto them.

Creep shoots through the door, but misses, and almost gets tagged with both barrels of a shotgun in response, before killing the wounded guy who was using it. Tabasco dodges a full auto burst and stuns one guy with a narcoject arrow, while Dig’s spirit tries to put out the fire the 3rd guy starts to destroy their documents inside. That guy starts Dig’s spirit on fire with a phosphorous grenade , so Dig dismisses the spirit, not wanting it to suffer, and kills that guy with a massive lightning bolt.

Tabasco makes a quick choice and hauls the KO’ed survivor out, letting all the doc’s burn, and the team vacates the hall as some fire protection shutters slam down and heavy duty ventilation kicks in. They head a massive lightning bolt crack down out of the sky somewhere to the west- it doesn’t seem related to them at the moment but does seem odd. They retreat to their unit with the captive, and wake him back up after restraining him. Tabasco tries to intimidate him and totally fails. Creep and Dig have a much better time just having a pretty normal convo with him, and trading some intel after promising to let him go. It turns out these guys are from a group called the Shifting Pyre, who are trying to destroy the Tarot, as an evil outside influence from the metaplanes.

They seem to view spirits and everything else metaplanar as a threat to the sanctity of Earth, though not opposed to magic in and of itself. This guy is just a street level “Dealer”, the leader who they killed at the library was a “Cutter” (mid-management) and this guy doesn’t know who gives the Cutters their intel, outside of whoever “Fivecoats” is. However, it seems like Shifting Pyre doesn’t like Hands of Fate either, and says they’re some kind of dark possession spirit who want the cards for themselves- exactly the kind of danger that means the cards should be destroyed.

Deciding this guy knows too much, Creep shoots him in the head and kills him with no warning. They decide they better clear out of the Bolthole just in case, and Dig dismantles his magical lodge as Creep sprays C-squared all around. Tabasco then thinks to maybe just call the landlord and see if they’re cool or not.A static-y image of a woman called Rutledge answers, and charges them extra for the damage but otherwise doesn’t seem too bothered, explaining that the team is lucky they did this in a low demand time. She seems like she might be an AI. Dig starts setting his lodge back up, bummed that he wasted 8 days by taking it down….

The team all returns to the main safehouse after resting one night in the Bolthole and not healing very well there. They take the next day off, mostly just conferring with S&M about the nature of the Hands of Fate (Shadow spirits? something worse?), and getting the autopsy results from Roderick Kensington: someone had used some kind of magic to wipe his mind, and turn him into a Coimeidiai, or something similar, which is what caused his burnout, and likely his prophetic ability and mental instability as well. Interesting….. Dig examines the documents that the Shifting Pyre were examining, and finds that they were looking into possible magical intersections and power sites, as well as any rumors to lost collections of arcana that might have disappeared in Crash 2.0. He then return the docs to the library, anonymously, along with a further payment in way of apology.

On a few nights of Radio Free Detroit, they hear that an engineering PHD named Ronnie Griggs has shared some vibration sensing tech to help warn people of bugs tunneling, after hearing of the deadly assault on the Second Chance enclave. The Plat Zone, Tin Can, and elsewhere are building and distro-ing as many as they can to try to keep people safe, as well as trying to get them down to an easy mobile scale so less of their patrols while disappear into bug tunnels. With this new tech coming out, and more (deeply unpopular) “tunnel rat” missions occurring, the bugs seems to be pulling back a bit to the central hive under Dowtown, with the ALPHAS more of an above ground threat, day to day.

Also, that huge lightning bolt apparently fried a UCAS Spec Ops mage who was trying to lift the magical cloud cover to get intel out, and perhaps in response, the UCAS government has announced that the Army III Corps has been fully mobilized and is head to Detroit to pacify the local situation “by any means necessary”…. eep!

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
and a sad goodbye to:Locke

The team checks in on Tabasco’s healing process, and finds him mostly conscious at least, but still in bad shape. He plans to stay in touch via comms relay from the VTOL while the team checks out the ARES biodrone facility for Moreau. They get in touch and head over to Moreau’s position, and see what looks obviously like 2 shod and 2 unshod Alpha footprints leading into the facility, where they seem to have basically kool-aid-manned through the fence and wall. Moreau equips them all with dart guns to try to capture and rescue any animals they can, and says he has plans for the building if they can maintain it’s integrity.

They head in, worried about what they might find. Otters stays back with the van and accompanies via drone. They find some wrecked sec drones outside, and some bloody smears and drag marks inside. A perimeter hall wraps around a central core, which when they enter, they find filled with cages and enclosures, with various animals in various states of modification within. It looks like the Alphas tried to Infest some of them, but the animals (perhaps thankfully?) did not survive the transformation, leaving horrifying mutated corpses, and an awful smell, though the industrial extractors seem to still be working well so it only registers up close.

Worse yet, they spot a ritual circle carved into the ceiling, centered on an elevator shaft which seems to have a lot of unnecessary components attached. While exploring they are surprised when an unarmored Alpha bursts forth from under a pile of animal corpses in one of the cages and assaults them. They manage to take it out, and Otters runs in with some white phosphorous grenades provided by Moreau to burn the corpse and stop the regeneration. They continue exploring the top level of the facility, worried that the elevator is an obvious place for a trap. Astral space definitely seems buggy in a way they couldn’t detect from the exterior, also.

As they find a corpse pile (some of the metahuman guards, but definitely not all), they come under heavy fire from outside, through the loading dock. 2 more Alphas charge them, one armored, one unarmored. The unarmored ones, being more visible, are even more horrifying somehow, with their misshapen and mutating flesh pulsing and bulging, various bits of different bugs visible across the surface mixed with the once human features. They get in a brutal fight in which much of the team is badly injured, and Locke is felled and stabbed with an ovipositor. Chew Gum, acting quickly, blows the downed Locke’s head off with his shotgun before they can transform, a sad and sudden end for the talented investigator.

The team pauses briefly to mourn once they finish the Alphas off, and burn all the bodies, inclduing Locke’s.They head outside and see where these Alphas tunneled up from below, on an angle that looks to intersect with the base of the elevator shaft. They tranq as many animals as they can inside, and get Moreau to start hauling them out, deciding they’ll likely need to do some mega-damage to whatever lurks below. Creep heads down the tunnel, with the drone swarm. Creep hangs back a bit while the drones make a first pass, and uncover a scene of true horror.

The remaining armored Alpha is standing guard as the newly mutated facility staff feasts on various animals and metahuman corpses, seemingly fueling their transformation. More upsettingly, there is what looks like a stable portal, likely to Vhortas, that seems very similar to the team file notes on the portal on the space station that ARES had previously been using to instantiate the Alphas. They also see surgical bays, staff housing, and another tunnel leading off towards Downtown.

Panicked, Otters sends the VTOL to the Platinum Zone with a report on what they found, and Rifleman loads up a hard case with Ravenheart’s approval, when it arrives back, it contains one of the mini nukes that the Irregulars seems to have salvaged from one of the ARES APC’s that were carrying them. Creep sneaks it down to the basement, and gets it tucked in behind the portal, arming it and leaving a few smoke grenades to go off to add confusion to cover his exit, and then legs it. Luckily it wasn’t set to an immediate detonation, and he gets clear in time.

Dig seals up the tunnel exit with concrete, and the team all hauls out as many tranq-ed animals as they can. The massive explosion rumbles the earth, pancakes the building, and launches Dig’s concrete tunnel plug flying far away. Luckily, this all seems to have severely curtailed the radioactive spread, and likely amplified the explosion. Briefly checking astral space, Dig and CG confirm that the buggy vibe seems gone, annihilated by an overwhelming radioactive shredding that has destroyed the local mana sphere. Portal closed, but at a cost….

Luckily Dig and CG got a good look at the ritual circle in astral space, and think they could perhaps ID the caster. Otters sends a report in to the Plat Zone and they get paid. They also call the Detective to report on Locke’s death, which greatly saddens them. Dig and CG both contribute some funds to the Keepers, who Locke had just begun to hire and befriend, and also compose a memorial poem, which Otters also forwards to the Plat Zone.

Dig, in bird form and CG, in the VTOL, travel over to the bolthole safehouse in the storage facility and do a lengthy ritual to locate the caster of the insect portal ritual. They confirm that it was either Hendricks himself or a close associate based on where traces crop up around town, but he seems to be underground and likely behind some sort of magical defense. They think they could track him using this, however. They report this into the Plat Zone as well, and get paid. The rest of the team rests, heals, and repairs gear, with Iva frantically patching their armor.

They hear on the night’s Radio Free Detroit broadcast about Locke’s heroic death, and also some even worse news: there’s been an Alpha breakout to the West as well as the North. Some bugs tunneled up into a mostly SINless survivor enclave, and Alphas followed them in, slaughtering everyone inside. Also, Julia “Deadline” Pesina continues her reportage on the ghoul situation locally, and finally is able to ID the ghouls working to use the ferals to nefarious ends: Fear the Dark is in town! The slogan “Eat Locals, Fuck You” has been found at multiple bloody feeding sites, where they preyed on civvies trapped at home. This is a perversion of the popular Irregulars slogan “Eat Local, Kill Fucks!”, originally popularized by the neo-anarchist chef Castiron.

Otters also checks in with Howell about the completion of the job for Moreau and they settle up for that. Howell has another job, not a rush this time, to pull a museum heist amidst the chaos. Otters runs it by the team and they agree to get to it when they can. Disturbingly, as they all return to the safehouse on their rest day, they find that Dig’s golem has torn the arms off an intruder. Worried who it might be, they flip the body over but don’t recognize them. A scrap of paper falls out of their pocket as they shift the body though, and they find one of Roderick Kensignton’s journal entries, about the team and their possession of Tarot cards.

They decide they better look further into this, and add it to the list. Tabasco, finally not dangerously radioactive, gets flown over to the Metal Maniacs clinic and ushered quickly back into the surgical suite, where Leanna Octave once again tries to convince him to become a Monad, but settles for doing some radical implants, including a full cyberskull with junkyard jaw and some orthoskin to replace what’s absent. The team is collectively a bit horrified upon his return to the safehouse, aside from Otters, who is her usual chipper self.

Having gone for a stylized skull, Tabasco has a weird moment looking in a mirror when he realizes he can no longer take off his mask and cowl. The sharpened scrap metal jaw is also pretty extreme, to be fair. However, he’s feeling the post-surgery high and is excited to be back on his feet and ready to rumble. The team takes a moment to figure out which task to prioritize next…

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Locke

The team kits out with the rad-resistant gear as best they can, with Tabasco and Otters’ mule drone getting the upgrades. Chew Gum plans to accompany them as near as possible to the hole to provide support and overwatch, while the rest of the crew secures a spot for Tabasco to hang out away from others when he emerges as he will be radioactive for some time. They head over to Grosse Pointe and Creep remembers a promising, poorly guarded lockup, where they steal a kayak with an outrigger and put out to sea in it. Creep and Locke hang out and chat while Dig flies above, keeping an eye out. He sees the wreckage of some watercraft that have tried to run the ARES cordon, unsuccessfully, and warns the boaters to stay well inside the perimeter.

CG holds back on the north edge of Zone 1, as his spirits are unwilling to go further- even astrally examining the irradiated Zone 3 causes them all light nausea, but they shake it off. They provide concealment as long as possible, and CG covers with his rifle. Otters, circling high above in the Dustoff guides in the mule drone, while Tabasco sneaks alongside. They find an old rusted car with a camo tarp over it parked right up next to the hole, and some tracks suggesting that between 2-4 people dragged one or more heavy items from the car into the hole. Tabasco becomes instantly fixated and abandons the primary mission to focus on this.

They descend into the hole, spotting the 3 ruined but not fully destroyed APC’s, still stuck in their side tunnels. Otters has to stop at the edge of her effective range before reaching the blast center due to rad damage and bad signal, but Tabasco, boosted by Stitches’ drug cocktail, pushes on. He stats experiencing some very disturbing side effects- hair falling out, skin blistering, hallucinations, but reaches the epicenter, and finds the wrecked bits of the other 3 APC’s. A path has been pushed through and the tracks continue.

He loses his astral sense of taste and feels blood pouring out of his gums, but he pushes through, and spots which tunnel the tracks head down, seemingly due south, before turning back. All of his teeth fall off and his skin begins to slough off as he begins to enter cellular death. He starts running for the exit as fast as he can, his cyberlimbs carrying him most of the way, with Otters (via the mule drone) getting him the rest of the way, and jumping into Tabasco’s cyberlimbs using previously granted permissions to use his grapple hand to get out.

Fortunately, while hanging back, Otters remembered to complete the primary mission, and retrieved a damaged data core from one of the command group APC’s for the Plat Zone to dig into. Otters drags Tabasco free of the high danger zone with the mule, then zips down in the Dustoff, loads Tabasco in, and manages to stabilize him through some miraculous medical checks with the Valkyrie module, and Tabasco’s strong natural resistances. However, all of his skin and external organs have sloughed off and he is in bad shape. The drone covers him in medical gel, as Otters heads back to the safehouse, leaving the mule a ways away from everyone for a day or two til it’s safe to fix.

CG stays behind to keep an eye on the mysterious car, but fails to spot when someone moves it, and decides toxic mages must be involved, if they were able to get both in and out of that terrible area. The Dustoff drops Tabasco in the kayak, and Dig tries to magically heal him but fails. The Dustoff circles at a safe ditsance to not take more damage from the rads, stopping in once an hour to maintain treatment. The rest of the team decides to chill at the safehouse for the night, and Dig shows off some cool illusions. Upsettingly, there is another earth shaking explosion from the south, but no mushroom cloud this time at least.

Creep goes on a solo recon to check it out, while Locke befriends some street kids who call themselves The Keepers and seem to collect mangy strays. From Creep’s recon, supported by a Watcher spirit from Dig, they determine that what they likely witnessed at the hold was evidence of toxic mages allied with Otto Hendricks using explosives salvaged from the downed ARES bombers to blow open a new front in the bug vs. ARES fight downtown. Luckily, this doesn’t seem to have pulled in the Plat Zone, so no worries there at least. The team reports all their intel in, and gets paid a decent amount, with a hazard bonus for Tabasco,

While relaxing after everyone is back, they get a frantic call from Jaga, who says that a new group of refugee arrivals to the area came in with one suspicious member, who apparently got lightly grazed by an ALPHA but seemingly escaped serious harm. After carefully examine, they confirm Jaga’s worry that the person was infested by the ALPHA in the same way they tried to do to Tabasco, and that the process seems to work incredibly fast. Jaga has contained the patient in a mana bubble, and Dig enters and lethally lightning bolts. This does seem to halt the transformation, so that’s good.

After confirming that this also took care of any astral traces, they send the body to the Plat Zone for some additional pay. They also call Carol to warn about Hendricks having gone full toxie/bug, and get some more cash, as well as a reminder that Weathernight wants them to look into dangerous infiltrators in ARES corporate. The team rests after listening to the nightly Radio Free Detroit broadcast, and hearing some more propaganda in favor of pro-social ghoul factions, including the surprising news that ALPHAS, as opposed to most bugs, make good eating!

The next day, Otters checks in with her fixer Howell, who is also her BTL-A sponsor. They check in about how that is going, and then Howell hires the crew for a mission on behalf of Moreau, the strange man at the zoo who wanted to join Dig’s Order but wasn’t magical. There is a secret ARES biodrone research facility outside of the No-Go Zone that Moreau has eyes on that was recently breached, and he wants to save any animals they can. They accept the gig, and Otters calls up Moreau, who is keeping an eye on things at the facility for now.

He tells them it looks like something broke in, not out, and it looks likely to be ALPHAS. Having already been worried that there could be a bug portal somewhere locally, and knowing this facility was likely one of Hendrick’s, the team decides they better hurry over there and shut down whatever is going on. Tabasco regains consciousness, but seems likely to be in for a long recovery, so he bows out of the next mission, and punches in a call to the Metal Maniacs, which luckily is close to the water in Grosse Pointe, so he plans to paddle over when he regains enough strength.

They hear the night’s Radio Free Detroit as they prep to head out, and apparently a lot of Chicago ghouls are answering the call, and requesting sanctuary if they help deal with the bug threat, with Presbitero’s “anti-infected” campaign apparently gaining enough steam in Chicago to make in untenable to remain there. With the recent influx of Neo-A’s as well, it seems like a lot of the weirder elements of Chicago are being forced out as the rebuilding corporatizes, though the spirit of the dance is still strong there…

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Locke

First thing, the team decide they need their van back, and that the increasingly chaotic fight may have created the opportunity they needed. Otters does overwatch from the Dustoff while Creep and Locke head over on foot. Unfortunately, Locke gets spotted by an alert ARES gunner holed up in a ruined building, and nearly felled with an auto burst. Creep manages to chuck some smoke grenades out and they make their escape, with Otters providing some pathfinding for them and hot pickup via the van once she gets the drone close enough to leapfrog in and hot-rig it out.

They get back to the base, and convince Zennia to set up a radio at the Tin Can, but convince them not to use it too much to avoid attracting unwanted attention. Zennia brings them a little further into her circle of trust, showing them up to where she keeps her birds on the roof and revealing that they are messenger birds! She says the team can bring them with on missions when needed to send offline messages back to get relayed, but says that Myrryr (a Pidgeon shaman) is one of the few in town who can get birds to flew to destinations as well as back from.

The team head north to Vendor’s Row to finally see what happened with that nuke, with most of them doing overwatch while Creep sneaks up to the blast site accompanied by the fly-spys.Radioactivity is real bad, as is astral space- Dig and CG have to hold way back, and the Wealth vibe that had previously dominated the area is now overlaid with a nasty toxic aspect. Creep hangs back at the edge of the blast site after getting some visuals, and acts as a comms relay to the drones until Otters gets the Dustoff positioned high up over the blast zone. From what they can tell, something tunneled up from underneath the reserve line, and one or more APC’s entered/fell into the tunnels.

Otters pushes the drones further in, having to max out her signal strength on her RCC to counteract the bad interference.She finds blasted wrecks of 3 APC’s down some side tunnels, and the team recognizes these as part of the command group of the reserve force from previous recon- seems like a targeted tunneling attack! She pushes the drone a little further and finds the blast’s epicenter, getting some data before it fries. It is likely the worst background count area any of them have seen, and it looks like 3 more APC’s got stuck in the main tunnel further in and detonated as either a failsafe or desperate last resort.

The team surmises that the Alphas up here, already amped up from the pheromones let loose by other Alphas in combat, likely fully broke loose after the tunnel break out and nuke detonation, as the ARES reserve line seems to have totally crumpled and fighting seems rampant throughout the district. Not having any ability to get better data currently due to the high rads, they head back to the safehouse to regroup. Iva is still working on patching up the van armor, after having needed a long sleep following a long day patching up Tabasco and Locke’s armor. CG heads over the Magic Bean, has a weird convo with the new age proprietor Penelope Bean, and orders a summoning focus.

Otters then flies in the Dustoff down to Windsor, surveying the extensive damage to Hendrick’s former position on the north shore, and drops another radio off with the ghouls at Neverland, who seem eager to dispose of more bodies the team may come across. Otters return with this info, but decides to swing by the Plat Zone on the way to get paid, and gets some followups and further intel while there. She also sees that a bunch of Neo-A’s from Berlin and Boston have answered the call and come to town, and a big crew of radical bug fighters/Black Star/Midway vets from Chicago have rolled in as well. They’re setting up heavy duty anti-air defenses on/around the Plat Zone, and Otters also spots some merc patrols headed out- the leadership seems to be trying to integrate mercs and runners into small squads with perhaps mixed results.

Otters reports in, gets paid, and hears that they need a tunnel rat to physically head into the tunnels off Vendor’s Row and try to pull any surviving data from the not fully obliterated APC’s- the command group might have useful intel. Also, some toxies or possibly members of Hendrick’s force have been spotted trying to salvage explosives from the various downed bombers, and Otters get the impression that Vogel/Carol managed to get a message through to the bomber wing commander to get aloft just before the attack, which was ignored by the main base command, to their extreme detriment.

Tabasco, overhearing all this, volunteers for tunnel rat duty, surprising many, and Stitches and Rifleman send Otters home with some equipment to help Tabasco and Otters’ new Mule drone get into the radioactive zone while minimizing risk and exposure.Otters flies back with all that and starts modding the Mule while Iva tunes up Tabasco’s armor. Tabasco gets flown over to the Metal Maniacs clinic and gets a few mods that Creep reco’s for navigating an underground tunnel system, and also snags a MM bandana for Iva, a gang memorabilia collector, as the local implant junkies seem to have formed a street gang around the clinic.

Otters starts flying herslef over for some mods as well, but overhearing the bizarro transhumanist banter dominant at MM decides better of it and turns back, which gets a chuckle from MAMA, which also worries Otters a bit. With Tabasco loaded up and ready to go , the team rest up and prep for another mission north, while listening on the radio to the day’s broadcast- Julia Pesina, using her new street named “Deadline”, on “Radio Free Detroit”, giving the threats and recon update to any and all listeners. It seems ARES forces have been ordered to hunker down and hold position, so most of the civilian rescuing and bug fighting is falling to the Irregulars so far. There’s been some cooperation from ARES forces in a few Zones, especially the ones with heavier casualties and more command level losses, so the team gets some good ideas of where to distro the next few radios. However, a few other Zones, including Downtown, have gotten extra fascist and paranoid, with summary executions common, so travelers beware….

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Locke

Locke rejoins the group after the chaotic shadow meeting, and they all split off to socialize a bit and make new contacts. They see Carol rush out after exchanging info with some of the movers and shakers. Tabasco tries to make friends with Rose from the Windsor crew, which initially goes well until he loudly announces that she is a technomancer, which she would prefer is kept on the DL. The Windsor crew leaves soon after this, and seems a little skeptical about the top down command style proposed, but overall on board for co-oping.

Dig starts speculating to some of the waitstaff about what it will be like for future archaeologists to excavate the nuclear ruins of Detroit, freaking everyone out, until Otters notices and distracts him for a bit. They both hang out with Tofu the dog and Walker, the blind adept staff fighter, and chat a bit about the situation. CG claims one of the bodies of the dead assassins for his future spirit needs, and talks to Ringmaster about the value of allying with ghouls, specifically the Skins, who helped them out. Ringmaster seems amenable and asks the team to set up a meeting. They are told they can recruit others to the cause as well, but they’ll need vetting at HQ.

Creep and Otters both notice a surprising lack of gangers present, which both enquire about. Walker tells Otters about the major roundups recently, and the Cutters weren’t invited for the obvious reasons. Creep also gets some info that they were mostly reaching out to pro’s when setting up the meeting, so if the team has useful gang contacts in the Blight or elsewhere, they should use them to bring more people in for the cause. Otters also helps Electric Blue set up a comms station with spare parts salvaged from the Numbers Station, to cut down on the young TM’s massive work load.

Locke chats with Julia Pesina, who seems hopped up on pain meds but amped on her reportage plans. She offers to pay for scoops and hot tips, and thanks the team for saving her, and says she will have to thank the Skins as well after Locke hypes up their role in the rescue as well. CG links up with Castiron and trades him some odd plants and ingredients that Jaga helped him find for some freezer access for the other corpses, and Locke calls the ghouls to tell them to come get them when they get a chance.

Otters quickly buys a mule transport drone, CG straps his claimed corpse to it, and the team heads out on foot (or wing, in Dig’s case) for the safehouse. They aim to bypass the loose Alphas they saw on the way down, but Otters botches it and gets spotted. They get in a brutal firefight, but due to Tabasco’s incredible armor, manage to avoid taking any damage and get some great data and some alpha samples. Tabasco licks one of the Alpha corpses to try to get some astral info, which works, but he almost gets stabbed with a post-mortem ovipositor and is covered with eggs which quickly hatch and start crawling into the seams of his cyber limbs.

Thinking quick, Dig fries Tabasco and the bugs with a lightning bolt, which luckily grounds out through Tabasco’s cyberlegs, not doing major internal damage. Still, he’s pretty hurt, but seems to be free of infestation. Otters flies Tabasco back to the Plat Zone in the Dustoff drone while the team keeps watch for more trouble and burns the bodies. Tabasco gets ushered into a decontamination unit and drops off the samples. Otters then flies herself back to the Plat Zone as well, and gets pay from Ringmaster, and then reverses the process to fly Tabasco and herself up the safehouse.

The rest of the team hoofs it up there and rests up, repairs armor, restocks ammo and the like. Locke fills everyone in on The Detective’s investigation into 2 Tarot cults that may have gotten operatives into town. Jaga helps CG do his corpse ritual. Iva patches up Tabasco once he’s back, and Otters finally gets into the guts of the med-drone (very impressive) and sets it about providing medical assistance to everyone resting. Otters and Locke, not otherwise occupied, head up the roof when they hear more explosions to the southwest.

Otters panics and thinks it’s for sure the Plat Zone, but makes contact with them and confirms it isn’t. She gets drones up and follows Locke’s fears, finding that Damien Knight Int’l has extensively exploded as well. It looks similar but larger scale to what happened on Belle Isle to the airbase there. Otters follows the airports bomber wing, who look to have gotten airborne just ahead of the attack, as they make a bombing run over Otto Hendrick’s position in Windsor, devastating the North part of the area along the river. Some anti-aircraft fire responds along with some spellcraft, but the bombs look very effective.

Lacking long enough landing strips, the bombers split, with some ditching into the water while the pilots eject, some flying over the town seemingly looking for clear stretches of road, and a few trying to flee the cordon around Detroit. Otters watches in shock and terror as the ones trying to escape are cut down by an orbital laser as they reach the edge of the magical cloud cover, leaving surely no survivors. Otters live streams this all to Ringmaster, who as usual requests follow-up’s and more info. She also sells the data to Carol, who once again proves the stronger negotiator but doesn’t aggressively take advantage.

The team all wakes up/finishes healing and reconnects- time to figure out what to do next, lots of opportunities for work!

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill

Locke announces they’ll be sitting this one out to make contact with some local allies, look further into the Tarot and Prophecies, and similar. They stay behind at the Platinum Zone to make use of their comms. The rest of the team prepares to head out, though Marv tells them to return by the next evening, as they’re planning a “big meeting” of some sort that the team should be at. They head out after debating what to look into first.

They cut around the main battle sites successfully, swinging out into Dearborn and finding only isolated bug outbreaks nearby. Luckily for the team, this means the underequipped KE troops guarding the Zone perimeters have their hands full, so the team easily bypasses them. Noticing a ton of air traffic at Knight Int’l Aerospaceport, they make a brief diversion to surveil. it looks like since that massive detonation at the FOB on Belle Isle, ARES has rerouted their air support, refueling and resupply here. The ground crews seem understaffed and frantic, and it looks like they’re running midair refueling flights as well to try to keep their drones in the air.

Useful intel! But back to the task at hand, the team continues South, and cuts over Grosse Isle into Windsor, swinging southeast to the park area where Otters instructed the sub to drop Julia Pesina off. Otters gets some pings from sub equipment but can’t make a direct connection, and when they arrive, Dig (as a dolphin) finds some of the sub’s armor and sensors have been blown off and are floating nearby. No sign of the vessel itself, so they hope it survived whatever happened here. Looking around, Creep and Otters piece together that Pesina seems to have crawled ashore and then been grabbed by what looks to be 2 shoeless ghouls.

The team tracks the ghouls back to a necropolis in central Windsor, and while surveilling from the perimeter see that the place is crawling with ghouls, with a high proportion of ferals. This is a recent change, as the team had scoped this place out for threats a few weeks back before renting their bolthole garage space nearby. They spot one friendly seeming ghoul approaching them, and Creep makes awkward contact. The ghoul, dressed as a pirate, introduces himself as Smee, and says that he saw a woman get carried, semi-conscious, into the cemetery, and offers to help. The team accepts.

Smee explains that he is a “Topsider”, one of the rare ghouls tolerated by ARES to live above the surface. He says most residents of Detroit are unaware of the quite large ghoul population that exists underground (who he calls “Downsiders”). Tabasco gets hung up on the Top vs Down distinction, convinced there are better linguistic options. Smee continues: the Topsiders want to ensure that the local populace doesn’t view ghouls universally as a threat (though some certainly are), so if the team will agree to put in a good word with their allies, he will introduce them to a ghoul gang called the Skins. The team agrees.

Creep and Otters sneak into the cemetery, though Otters quickly falls back when she notices some of the ferals sniffing around after her. Creep follows Smee to a mausoleum where they find some decently armed and armored ghouls waiting. Creep is introduced to their leader, Rains, and notices that they all seem equipped with a mishmash of KE gear and some seemingly prototype weaponry. He doesn’t enquire further, but the team has heard rumors of the KE tradition of needing to get a ghoul skin in the underground to join Firewatch, so presumably this is the other side of how that can go.

Rains agrees to the deal that Smee made, and the Skins and Creep head over to where the ferals are preparing to feast. Otters pilots the VTOL in for a quick rescue and some medical attention. The Skins breach through the back wall, grab Pesina, and chuck her in the VTOL, while Creep blasts a feral trying to grab hold of it as well. He sneaks back out of the cemetery and Smee tells them where they can contact him again if needed.

Otters checks on Pesina via the drone’s internal medical feeds, and finds that she is injured, but luckily not infected with HMHVV. She seems pretty drugged and out of it, so they have a brief convo and then he sends her to the Platinum Zone, giving Marv a heads up that she’s inbound. The team continues North to figure out what happened on Belle Isle, but come under attack from some of Otto’s troops, who are guarding their Southern perimeter as well as the Northern side. Otters almost eats a Gauss round, but Tabasco dives in the way and takes the hit, before the team retreats while CG’s spirits cause trouble for the soldiers shooting at them.

They do a bit more recon, and determine that roughly half of the visible forces in Otto’s area seem to be illusory, so they find a better place to sneak through, ditching the spirits for now since they are too magically obvious. They reach the bridge to Belle Isle and find it bombed out, though still barely crossable by pedestrians. CG barely dodges a sniper round before the team makes it the relative safety of the Isle.They find it a smoking ruin- the ARES air base seems to have been fully ignited- fuel, weapons, etc burning at such an extreme heat as to destroy the structures on hand and effectively cremate the personnel caught in the blast.

Doing some magical investigation, Dig finds that some number of personnel were killed before the explosion and piled up, and that much of the damage was done with Gauss rifles and other bizarro science weapons, so they suspect Otto’s troops were behind this- the illusion would be good cover for secret troop movements! They also find that the explosions were triggered by planted charges and not aerial bombardment, so it doesn’t seem likely that the forces here were overrun, especially given the lack of any sign of bugs. The eastern half of the isle seems in better shape, with some park buildings, wilderness areas, and water treatment facilities still largely intact, though currently seemingly unoccupied due to the toxic smoke from the chemicals still burning at the temporary airbase.

The team sneaks north again, finding the bridge once again too damaged for vehicles but traversable by pedestrians- seemingly designed to helped bugs and/or special ops more so than ARES military with their reliance on groundcraft. They cut around the main battle site Downtown, which seems to have contracted a bit, and find the other Zones have kind of sprawled out into multiple small/scattered engagements, some of which are quite mobile. They also barely avoid some loose Alphas rampaging around south Oakland/North Downtown before finally reaching the Platinum Zone.

Heading inside, they find the place filling up for the “big meeting”. They spot Carol, and grab a booth to catch up. They sell him the Malakim info as promised, and he shares some of Vogel’s plans, as well as giving the team another job- to look into some high level infiltrators in ARES known as “68G”- could these two things be connected? Creep also accidentally gives up the info about Otto being behind the destruction on Belle Isle, and Dig has to remind him about info exclusivity etc. Carol gives them a hefty payout, and they head over to talk to Ringmaster, giving him the recon report from the day. He doesn’t seem overly distressed that Carol knows about Belle Isle, but the team gets the impression that may not always be the case.

He also pays up, and gives them a few follow ups and updates, and is impressed by their extra recon re: ghouls, the airport, Otto’s illusions, etc. The team also sees Pesina up and about, quietly narrating events to a cam drone while stomping around in a medical boot. She gives them the “let’s talk after” look. Everyone starts to hush up as the meeting begins. Locke and Otters are a little surprised to recognize the woman they smuggled in, now out of disguise, as Colonel Anne Ravenheart, the former head of Firewatch, now leader of the Freewatch bug fighting org, last seen in Chicago under attack from ARES. She is accompanied by Li Wei, the man they smuggled in with her, who is wearing a red crystal cybereye, which Tabasco thinks is likely a blood crystal, a new addition since Chicago.

She introduces herself, as well as Ringmaster, Rifleman, and Marv, as the leaders of this meeting, and gives her spiel- they need to unite against the bugs, and defend this city and it’s people against them and against ARES/Knight’s foolishness. Dig and Creep notice a dog one of the other attending runners brought with is growling at a sweaty, bearded street sam, and Creep goes to tackle him, luckily giving the dog just enough time to prevent him chucking a vial he had concealed in his hand. Tabasco and CG leap to action just in time to prevent another street sam from opening up on Ravenheart with an implant cybergun, and (via inhabited dire rat) chomp down on the arms of a mob hitman looking guy as he tries to pull the pin on a grenade.

All hell momentarily breaks loose- the woman who brought the dog chucks her staff straight through the bearder sam’s head as Creep tussles with him, Rifleman quick draws and drills the cybergunner right between the eyes, and the mob hitman manages to pull the pin, but the explosion is contained inside CG"s spirit, though it is destroyed in the process. Everyone else has weapons out and is in a massive standoff, til Dig does a thought recognize and spots two more potential assassins who are headed for the door. He alerts the crowd who quickly gun them down as well, before Creep tries to get everyone to chill, fails, and then Marv does the same, successfully. He tells them that this is what their enemies want: everyone so busy fighting each other they can’t unite for the common good!

Ravenheart continues her spiel and explains that she understands that many runners won’t be used to working under a command structure but that it’s the best way to run something like this, and that no this is not the Shadow Chapters, which people are right to be suspicious of given the news out of Seattle. One of the street docs from downstairs stabilizes the mob hitman, who is missing his forearms, and after some quick drug and magical questioning, Rifleman reports that Otto Hendricks has taken out a contract on himself, Marv and Anne Ravenheart. Ringmaster doesn’t look upset to have been excluded.

The team makes some new contacts, including Walker, the blind staff fighter, and her dog Tofu, and also sees a few more members of the Belle Isle crew that they’ve worked with a few times. They prepare to chat with Pesina and figure out next steps.

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Locke

The team, pausing to allow for Jazz crash to wear off, plot out their route to the next numbers station. While waiting, Otters and Locke do some analysis on the data Otters scraped while jamming the last stations and drones, and confirm that it looks like the drones were being used as a back channel/off-matrix comms relay to allow the stations to communicate indirectly without blowing their cover/being directly traceable. Worried that this will have blown their chance to find another station intact, they plan to rush along. Otters convinces Tabasco to carry her so she can stay hot in the VTOL and do some route mapping and then some long distance surveillance on what the explosions in the distance are….

Otters spots some ARES military deployments seemingly surrounding and slaughtering bugs pouring out of the craters that the explosions have opened. It looks like the the Alpha deployments are working well so far, with what appears to be a high kill to casualty ratio. Their support teams seem to be taking minimal casualties, and the Alphas appear uniquely destructive, almost frenzied. From what Otters can gather from the VTOL, it looks like the ARES detachments in the outer zones are looking to push the bugs back into the tunnels they’ve opened into the underground and follow them in, forcing them all to emerge from the major bombing site downtown, where the main (and most elite) ARES forces are. Interestingly, they don’t spot any Firewatch members anywhere, and given that the Alphas are all wearing modded Bug Stompers, it looks like the entire elite corps has been transformed into these merge monstrosities.

The team swings wide of the major engagement sites in the outer zones, heading south, and manage to avoid the poorly equipped KE patrols holding the outer perimeter. Unfortunately, Dig is unable to get his tech locator spell to work- either the gear is gone, or he’s too beat. Otters also is unable to find the expected broadcasts, so it seems like the Numbers Stations have switched protocols or gone dark in response to the team’s attacks. Feeling pretty tired after pulling an all-nighter, they head back to the safehouse. Unfortunately, Chew Gum gets spotted by a KE patrol, who open up with a machine gun mounted in their back seat. Creep manages to chuck some smoke grenades in the way and the team escapes, eventually, finally returning to the safehouse.

Dig instantly crashes while Otters does further drone recon, and the rest of the team pushes North to do some more recon on foot. Otters sees similar engagements in the rest of the zones, ARES forces looking successful so far at holding the line, and starting to push the bugs back into their tunnels, as the Downtown meat grinder continues. South of the river, bizarro science soldiers, seemingly Otto Hendricks loyalists from the R&D division, wielding modded Excalibur magitech guns, look to be ready for any breakouts that direction, though it looks like the bugs are fully north of the river at this time. The other zones all seem to be in a similar state as Otters does a quick flyby.

To the north, the on foot recon team gets a vantage at the Vendor’s Row area and gets some good intel- this looks to be the reserve force, deployable via VTOL’s, but they look to be bored and waiting for the most part at the moment. Many of the businesses (restaurants, brothels, etc) on Vendor’s Row look to have been allowed to remain open to keep the waiting reserve forces fed and entertained. The team does get a better look at the loadouts- it looks like squads of 6 in modded APC’s, with a containment chamber for the Alpha’s taking up half the space in the troop compartment. The reservists at least look to have one portal closer/tacnuke per squad as well- a distressing amount of explosive power!

Creep and Tabasco also sneak closer while Locke and CG provide overwatch and manage to overhear some chatter- getting some important stats updates on how the battle is going etc. CG also notices an astral aspect towards Wealth here, and Tabasco feels quite comfortable in the area. They head back to the safehouse, and Otters pulses a data packet to the Platinum Zone before they all crash. Waking first, Dig heads over to the Zoo in case anyone shows for his Red Magic Order meeting. He sees that Moreau seems to have taken charge of keeping the animals safe/fed during this crisis, with the minimal staff who remained onhand. After a short wait, a Watcher spirit shows up to excuse Norman from attendance, saying the University is locked down, while Marjo-Lin dashes in shortly after.

They schedule the next meeting, then send the Watcher back, and Dig teaches Marjo-Lin to shapeshift, though she makes Dig transform out of bird form first, as she says that Lion will only allow her to take feline forms. She cracks some jokes about Dig being naked etc which mostly confuse him. She seems to know Moreau and says she’s gonna stay at the Zoo for a while and study the big cats, so Dig heads out and flies back to the safehouse as a bird. The rest of the team is just starting to get moving as he returns. They check their messages and find that a few updates have made it- Chessick sent a retainer to help a colleague, assuming she can get into town, a journo who wants to try to document the situation on the ground.

More upsettingly, they get some major updates from the Plat Zone- apparently things have taken a turn for the worse for ARES in two major ways. First, the desperate bugs seems to have tunneled faster and farther than ARES expected and there have been breakouts behind their main lines, leading some of their forces to be attacked from flanks and rear if not fully enveloped. Second, the Alphas seem to be unable to leave their combat rage, which in areas where ARES has been successful, means that they turned on their support crews and handlers, seemingly content to rip through whatever is at hand. The pheromones from this have lead to Alpha attacks amongst the reserves as well, and there is apparently active combat up on Vendor’s Row.

The team decides to head in to the Plat Zone, get some on the ground recon, and figure out next steps. They check in with Zennia at the bar, and find many locals having a lock-in “end of the world” party. The team convinces them to all conserve some water, and head up to the roof to help Zennia start filling some tanks, just in time to see the distinct mushroom cloud of a tacnuke going off to the North. Rushing inside they all take some iodine that Zennia had stashed, but she explains that the explosive will have limited range and spread, giving the infantry size charges and the still weather. When the team looks overheard, it seems ARES has pulled something similar to Boston and pulled in some cloud cover, keeping it magically in place to conceal what happens here.

The team heads out and quickly encounters some Children of Loxley, who have fought off a small bug breakout. They heal up the wounded and send the dire cases back to Jaga at the safehouse for more attention, and then head in to check out where the bugs broke out. They find a slaughtered family, a 3rd dead bug, and a small tunnel chiseled up through the basement’s slab. Dig seals it with magic, and they report to Zennia and the CoL to tell people to guard and seal off basements and tunnels. They see Sikh Burn and some others going house to house to check for other breakouts, and no sign of KE locally.

Otters also gets ahold of someone behind the CoL to talk strategy, and chats a bit with someone named Alfredo, agreeing on an info trade. Alfredo seems to have some former ARES ties but seems quite bitter towards the corp so seems safe. Otters inquires about the Numbers Stations, and gets the feel that Alfredo isn’t involved but has some ideas who might be- some old-timers with a grudge, former corp special forces for CAT, a megacorp almost ran that ARES (and some other corps) devoured between the two Crashes. Locke calls The Detective, and gets some distressing talk about bugs and cities dying, but also passes along the Numbers Station info and finally gets a name for the mysterious fourth faction: The Malakim, having renamed themselves after dark angels from their former named, The Seraphim.

They head to the Plat Zone, and find Marv collecting intel from locals who are reporting in, Rifleman trying to keep on top of the tactical situation on a digital map spread over multiple shoved together pool tables, and Ringmaster eager to chat. The secretive dwarf hints that the Null Sect are behind the intense matrix blockade, though Dig massively misunderstands so Ringmaster has to clarify a bit. Using a way over-taxed onsite technomancer, he manages to get a data packet out with the team’s info, brokering a sale and getting them a sizeable chunk of change. He also arranges for them to train some small unit tactics, and offers them a few more jobs.

While training, Locke recognizes one of the instructors as the Asian man they helped smuggled in, who introduces himself as Li Wei. Tabasco also gets offered the opportunity to do some training himself, as he seems to know the ropes pretty well. The rest of the crew trains with Mama Dot, who Creep knows from Seattle, and who seems to have answered Rifleman’s call for aid, leaving her store in her son’s hands. All a bit better educated, they head back upstairs (having also seen a large, well-equipped clinic in the formerly secret basement) and get the latest from Ringmaster: they are to find out what happened with that nuke up north, and they are to find out who is behind the latest upsetting update.

Someone, just now, has bombed the ARES forward operating airbase on Belle Isle, with massive explosions taking out much of the ground fleet of planes and drones there, plus destroying infrastructure, fuel and weapons depots, and killing personnel. As this will significantly advantage the bugs, Ringmaster needs to know who’s behind it and what their next play is. Otters then uses one of the favors they took as partial payment to get access to the team’s sub’s feeds and controls via the TM, Electric Blue. EB says they’ll have to make it quick, as the matrix security keeping Detroit locked down is no joke. Otters manages to punch into the sub, but finds an unexpected passenger: Julia Pesina, the journo Chessick paid them to help.

Otters talks through the sub speakers to Pesina, and makes a plan to run her ashore a park peninsula in Windsor, that Otters and Locke have used as a smuggling spot before. However, she will have to trust to autopilot to manage to job since direct piloting for that long will prove impossible. Pesina provides some encouragement based on Chessick’s reco, and says worse case, she swam in college. Feeling bolstered, Otters does her best to quickly input the requisite commands before getting dumped, to find an even more fried looking Electric Blue saying he kept it open as long as he could. So another job: rescue to journo from the landing site! Luckily she said she still had a few days food and water, and it’s warm and muggy out but not deadly hot so in the tree cover should be fine so long as she can keep her head down…

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Locke

The team gets the debrief on the situation and what’s needed from Marv, Rifleman, and Ringmaster- basically, reliable comms and recon. After consulting with The Detective, the team shares their numbers station suspicions, and get the go-ahead to try to gain the use of them through whatever means. Intel on ARES movements, positions, and activities is also quite useful. They stay for the concert, which closes with a duet with a holo of Jonny Silver, symbolically giving ARES the finger by celebrating the victory of the anti-corp forces in Denver who saved the Nexus back in the day. However, 2 members of Glock .50 are absent, either unable to make it cause of checkpoints and curfew or something worse, including Marjo-Lin, from Dig’s new magical order.

The team heads out, with Dig flying off in bird form to start using magic to look for a numbers station in the next zone scheduled to broadcast. The team swings by their safehouse to restock on arrows from Iva and crosses the last checkpoints with moments to spare. They camo their van as a delivery vehicle, and park outside an affiliated business, laying low for a bit while triangulating the broadcast as it goes out, and avoiding KE entanglements. Once the KE patrols move away/die down a little, Otters does some fancy sneaky driving to link up with Dig at the target location.

They do some drone and astral recon, and Tabasco sneaks up onto the roof. They spot some well-concealed hardwired sensors and antennae, and Dig decides to disable one as a bird, getting a bad shock for his trouble, and attracting the attention of a stealth drone which grabs him and pulls him into it’s body. He uses an lightning spell inside it to break free, but takes more damage and retreats. Meanwhile, Otters rigs Tabasco’s arms to use her superior tech knowledge to bypass the other sensors without tripping their electrical defenses, though not being a hacker, if anyone is watching the feeds they’ll know they are down.

Tabasco carefully creeps down to one window of the target unit, but since he and Otters (via flyspy) both spot turret HMG’s inside both windows, is reluctant to go in. Dig lightning bolts the window to get things going, as Otters can also see a human sized heat source inside blowing the tech. Dig zooms in as a bird and flies between one of the guns and the heat source, as Tabasco drops from the roof, fires an arrow while falling (taking out the other gun), and lands unharmed due to cyber-legs.

Dig avoids getting hit, but the turret gun shoots the shit out of the older man who was inside, as well as the last bit of tech he hadn’t fried yet. He then quickly explodes, seemingly some kind of failsafe or last ditch defense. Dig fires the last turret and leaves again, while Tabasco, Creep and Locke enter to investigate. They find a strange scene- the front door of the apartment is wired to blow with a massive outward facing shaped charge, and there are 6 months worth of rations on-hand, it looks like they set up early in the month.

They find a calendar with the current date marked (the start of Latvian Gambit?), and manage to salvage enough tech bits from all the fried station to make one radio from parts. There are three broadcasting stations, one receiver, and two code machines running in parallel- a decrypter and encrypter, seemingly how they are passing the messages around. They salvage what they can, but between their delayed entry, machine gun fire, and explosions, it’s not a lot- mostly deductions.

They decide to skip the next broadcast zone and try and beat the schedule to get to the 3rd station in the broadcast order before it’s time to broadcast, hoping to catch the messages mid-stream. Knowing what they know now, they have an easier time finding the place, which has a similar setup. They plan it out a little more carefully this time, and using Tabasco and Otters (via drones) use radar feeds to the TacNet as targeting info for Locke and ChewGum to blast the 2 turrets with their sniper rifles.

CG and Dig’s spirits both zoom in and try to disable the somewhat older man they find inside, successfully confusing and nauseating him. Creep slips in and finishes off the one turret that survived the sniper barrage, and Tabasco races in and restrains him, but unfortunately doesn’t listen to the others’ advice to get him out of the room, as he quickly explodes. Creep is nearly killed, Tabasco is badly damaged, as is Dig’s spirit, who he dismisses out of respect. They also once again lost the code machine, where the guy was standing.

They do however salvage all 4 radios this time, find another similar calendar, and a similar amount of rations etc. These operators all seem to be barricaded in, and both used a stylized angel wing icon. Locke and Otters think back and realize they’ve seen these around town occasionally, associated with anti-ARES graffiti, all of which is quickly sprayed over or washed off. They get out of there before the KE cars making sweeps can respond to the explosion and head out. Dig and Otters try to convince everyone to go back to their safehouse (in their current zone), but Tabasco makes a compelling argument that they need to hit the next station before they have time to find out what’s going on and respond.

Seeing as the team spotted two more stealthed drones watching them (before jamming and shooting them), whoever this is may already be onto them, but Tabasco convinces everyone to go along by suggesting they just try and talk to the occupant of the next one rather than busting in, and all agree to flee any combat, as they are not well-equipped for a fight at this point. Dig fixes up Creep magically as best he can, and they wait for the Jazz crash to wear off of Tabasco from the fight before heading out. As they push south on foot, sneaking around in the dark, they see a glimmer of light on the horizon and hear some loud explosions, sounding like demolitions or artillery from the direction of Downtown….

Runners
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig
Otters aka Roadkill
Locke
and goodbye to:
Carol
and Creature

The team spends a while trying to figure out what to do about Ellis. Dig attempts to use his new “hacking box” to investigate the drive that Creature found in Ellis’ lab, but fails to cast the spell he needs to do so and decides to go to sleep instead. Tabasco gets Iva to patch up his shredded cyber-armor while the team discusses next steps. They scan the drive as best they can, and finding nothing worrying, check out the files within. They find a text note that says “sorry, they’re breaching, can’t wait” and an attached video file. The video file shows Ellis seemingly disabling the facility security to give the team access, while also preparing the pod in her lab to get rolled out. She gets overridden when the hit squad shows up and starts gunning down security, and starts trying to figure out next steps.

As a cutting torch from the hit squad starts piercing her lab’s bulkhead door, she looks to the camera and says that she doesn’t trust either Otto or Knight’s plans, and thinks she found a different path, before flipping a bunch of switches, and crawling into the pod alongside what looks to be a bug nymph spirit. They embrace each other as the pod closes again, tilts towards the wall, and a retrofit rocket blasts it out through the side of the facility. The feed cuts when Creature comes in and yanks the drive.

They decide to get in the sub, hope to avoid FAB, and get down into the river, though hours have passed as this point. CG manages to use assensing both to avoid the FAB and follow the pod’s path down to the river bottom, where it looks to have plowed in pretty hard and shed some plating and exterior bits. Following some drag marks, they track it to where it appears to have been winched out of the river into some woods. Carefully heading ashore, they find the pod itself camo’ed with some tree branches and debris, and some evidence that fight took place. However was involved used a liberal amount of Cleaner-Cleaner, and seems to have had a mage do some cleanup on the astral as well.

They report in to Ringmaster, and are told to gather what info they can and continue, but that if Ellis merged with the bug this is now a termination contract. CG uses his spirits to search out her last known location, and finds that however encountered her on the river bank took her over water to the large Docklands port area. They head there and Creep sneaks around a bit, finding that her last known location was a loading area for cargo containers, with mechanized cranes and huge stacks of isotainer all around, as well as ship and truck loading zones. So she could be nearly anywhere, and whatever she is in seems to be blocking further attempts to astrally track her.

Tabasco calls up Remo, who reports that there is something bad afoot in the Detroit matrix: lots of killer ICE, etc, so Remo refuses to help hack the port, and warns the team to be careful. Lacking a hacker, they decide to report in first to Weathernight, hoping Vogel might be able to salvage something out of this, before reporting their failure to Ringmaster. Weathernight convinces Carol to finally come in out of the cold (not that it took much doing), and he tells the team he’s stepping back to more a fixer role, and buys them a new van as a parting gift. Carol also calls RIngmaster and explains that they failed, but that he passed the info along to the “3rd faction” who he confirms he works for, without ID-ing Vogel, though Ringmaster as usual seems to know a bit more than he lets on. He agrees to an info-sharing agreement on this one particular gig, as a possible avenue to a future alliance. He also gets the remaining team members some fake merc SINs to allow them to continue to move about town, in exchange for the info gathered.

When they get back to the safehouse from the port, Creature also announces xe is leaving, along with Shan and Shun, to help maintain the Sea Dragon’s gains in Chicago amidst the corporate push back into the former CZ there. They take the sub and head off, with Tabasco briefly debating going along with as both he and Creep ponder what exactly they’re still doing in Detroit. CG and Dig have made some more local connections they’re invested in, and Creep is learning his way around the city, so they decide to stay. Creature seems more likely to return in a “day-to-day” capacity than Carol, though xe will be more geographically distant in the interim.

Dig, waking up from his nap, hears all this and informs the team he recently met a driver at the Zoo, who seems to do some shadow work on the side. They call up Otters and get her to come take the van for a test drive, very much impressing them. In Tabasco’s best attempt at OpSec, this all takes place in front of the Tin Can, instead of out back, directly at the safehouse. They sell Zennia the FAB suit they found in Ellis’ lab, but Creep proves to be a poor negotiator, so they quickly realize they’ll be neeeding a face. Luckily, Otters just met one, the face/sniper Locke, doing some smuggling jobs, and has actually just gotten a call from Locke to look into a mystery for The Detective, Locke’s mentor.

There are some strange broadcasts occurring around town, and The Detective thinks it might be a numbers station or similar, and wants it looked into. They’re too deep into a Zen binge to do it themself, so has enlisted Locke’s assistance. The team agrees to help Locke with this job in exchange for their help with a job they need a face for: getting the local rap collective Glock .50 to agree to sing to Johnny Silver’s “Silversound” imprint on Perianwyr’s label. Otters calls her Keepers contact Arda, who passes along the number for another Keeper who is also part of the loose G50 collective: Marjo-Lin. Recognizing her as one of his new magical order members, Dig makes contact, and after allaying her initial suspicions, she listens to Locke’s pitch and passes it onto the rest of the group.

They get back in touch shortly, agreeing to the terms with two addendums: they want a celebratory gig at the Brickhouse, and they want a meet and greet with Silver himself. The team gets the gig set up easily via Locke’s connections with Marv, who seems to view it as a good opportunity for a secret meeting that he invites the team to. For the meet and greet, the best they can get through Zennia is an agreement that it will happen sometime, when Silver is available, as he is still on the run from the Wild Hunt at the moment. G50 agrees, so job done! Zennia pays the team the signing bonus and seems to have taken a shine to her new safehouse renters, as they are proving adept at closing contracts for her.

They next all head out to check out the numbers station mission, as an exchange for Locke’s help. The team kinda fumbles around for a while before semi-accidentally revealing to Otters and Locke the existence of MAMA. the RCC/TacNet CCOB hidden in the van’s smuggling compartment, and a few other big/expensive secrets. However, once they give Otters access to the RCC, the mission goes a lot faster, though Dig did manage his spell this time and got some good data from it as well. They find 7 broadcast points on different frequencies, and spending some time on it over the day, figure out the schedule as well. However, Locke is unable to decipher the code, so they might be using a one time pad or similar, which would make decoding incredibly difficult. CG also harvests some interesting toxic-adjacent plants up in the Blight that Jaga had recommended as interesting culinary additions for Castiron.

As they all link back up with the van to compare notes, they spot and hear a number of KE drones and cars travelling the city, as well as receive matrix broadcasts, that there is a shelter in place order starting at midnight for the duration of an ARES “special military operation” training period (an unspecified duration). Remo manages to get a message through to Tabasco with a screenshot of Jackpoint post telling users there to “keep an eye on Detroit in the next few days”, as well as a linked video what looks to be a hacked weather satellite that JP was using to do just that getting shot down by a ship coated in Void Black.

In a bit of a panic, the team decides to quickly bring Otters and Locke into the team norms, files, and secret knowledge, and after they both agree, do so. Locke quickly disappears into a Tarot and secrets hole, and is almost non-responsive while sponging up info. The rest of the team decides to head for the Brickhouse for the G50 show ahead of the curfew, and see what this secret meeting is about. They are unable to get any matrix comms out of the city, though comms inside still seem to be working. Otters is very stressed about an AI with self-editing capabilities living on the teams TacNet but otherwise is very excited to be included.

Reaching the club, they are ushered into a back room, with some stairs leading underground, into the warded area CG had previously spotted from outside. Marv, Ringmaster and Rifleman, as well as some other mercs and runners, are poring over screens and info, and Marv ID’s a technomancer in a hacker’s crash couch, hooked up to IV drip, as their current means of getting info in and out. He says they have a lot to talk about, and invites them to grab what seats they can amidst the chaos and get down to biz, then enjoy the show, then head out to get to work…

RUNNERS:
Chessick Allens-Whitehill
and introducing:
Otters aka Roadkill
and Locke

Chessick, having learned some lessons from the reopening of Boston, where the corps crashed back in and undid a lot of the good work that runners had done building communities during the Lockdown (at least aboveground) has been working to keep the same from happening in Chicago. He has also as usual been documenting the casualties and losses suffered by the civilian populace, as well as the various figures who live along societies edges. With some Neo-Anarchist contacts in town he has also been trying to help runners, gangers and others in Detroit to survive the ARES crackdown there. Having lost connection to the city as ARES tightens their hold, he is looking to make some new contacts there and set up a new smuggling pipeline.

He takes a contract to bring a package in, assured that Detroit fixers have found some runners to meet him and get him safely to the delivery point Meanwhile, in Detroit, Howell has called up Otters and told her he has a transpo job for preem pay, and The Detective has instructed Locke to assist with this task as well. Both fixers were contacted by the PPI duo Smoach and Myrryr on behalf of an outside third party, and both runners are told that if they pull it off, this could be the start of a hot new smuggling pipeline, much needed in these tight times, especially for those who don’t want to live fully under ARES’ thumb.

Chessick hires some smuggler contacts to take him across Lake Erie from Toledo over near the ARES cordon, and waits there for contact. Locke and Otters meet up and do some scouting to choose an ideal spot to get him to shore, and choose a nature reserve in South Windsor. Otters uses a delivery drone to get a biofiber bag and wetsuit out to Chessick, and also to help him ashore after he proves to be a truly shit swimmer. Locke times all the patrols out and figures their patterns, but with the delay due to Chessick’s bad swimming has to take out a drone with their sniper rifle.

Chessick and Otters do some quick thinking, and use a burner comm for a distraction for pursuers, while using the ambient life in the nature preserve to try to lose any magical trackers, while Locke watches their backs and leads them out. Using the van provided by Howell, Otters impresses the other 2 with some quality sneaky driving over to the Green Groves water treatment plant, while Chessick makes sure cameras and other sensors don’t pick them up on the way, and Locke provides studied encouragement.

They deliver the mystery package to a gender-fluid eco-shaman named The Walker In Ways, who says some cryptic things about maintaining and balancing the local manasphere, and bids them well. They all crash at their safehouses, and get contacted by their fixers again the next day for a followup gig. It seems the first delivery was a test run for this, the true mission. They are to use similar tactics to get 2 people ashore with noone spotting them, and making sure to lose any magical pursuit as best they can. These two need delivering to a runner bar called the Razorboyz Edge in The Blight.

They pass along a message for the sub dropping the two off to park outside the ARES cordon in Lake St. Clair and wait for them to make contact. Chessick and Otters team up to boost Otters’ signal, and she takes over piloting of the sub to steer it in, while Locke provides thorough updates on ARES patrol patterns, and Chessick hacks some nearby stores and signs to create some distractions. They get the 2 passenger hustled into the van, and Otters once again does some impressive sneak driving, with Locke on lookout and Chessick keeping them off feeds and sensors.

They reach the Oakland County Zoo and Locke puts her specialty skills to use, taking the group near, through, and around a series of animals and enclosures to obscure their astral traces, especially via some access tunnels under the aquarium. Thoroughly “greenwashed”, they load back in the van after Chessick checks it for trackers, and head to McKenzie Arcology bordering The Blight. Chessick and Locke manage to negotiate a better deal than Otters has ever managed on her own to use the tunnels underneath, though luckily Otters knows the tunnels well as she manages to navigate them around some traps set by The Cutters, who seem to have taken over much of the turf from the Maulers, the traditional gang in charge.

They safely sneak the two passengers over the bar and drop them off. The Asian man seems very dangerous and tightly coiled, and the Dakota woman seems calmer but also quite powerful, or used to command at least. They refuse to ID themselves but say the team impressed them, and they may be in touch in future if they need their skills again. They also hint they’ve heard of Chessick and tell him to keep up the good work. They tell him the sub is available for him to return to Chicago, and he heads out, confident they can at least get supplies to their Detroit allies in a pinch. Locke notices that the 2 passengers are wearing subtle disguises, likely enough to fool AI facial recognition, but thinks they could recognize them again if they seem either of the 2 out of disguise.

The other 2 go their separate ways for now, but feeling they have a good thing going, vow to work together again soon….

Runners
Carol
Creature
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig

Chew Gum and Jaga make some friends in Hamtramck with the People of the Book Burial Society and others, and CG uses this as an excuse to get a little more intel on the mysterious Children of Loxley. Carol receives a “condolences” message from Vogel, at some risk, who also suggests it might be time for Carol to come work for him directly since things are heating up. Carol wants to do this one last job with the team and then plans to make his exit. Creature, having given Shan and Shun the tour, also seems to be planning to leave to return with them to Chicago and focus on cementing the Sea Dragon’s position there, as Detroit already has too many dragons looking at it:Ghostwalker has agents on the ground looking to push for a Free City, Arleesh has an agent in town stirring up trouble, and Lung is apparently looking to make some moves into town from Toronto via the Triad. Plus, the bad bug vibes everywhere….

Shan and Shun arrange to rent the sub from the team for a few days in order to transport themselves to Chicago and then send it back. Dig hears back from a few more promising people about his Red Magic post, and manages to found a 3-person Order based out of the Oakland County Zoo room he rented from the rigger Roadkill. The two acolytes are a street-smart tough kid and a strict hermiticist academic, so an interesting combo so far. Creep scopes out “lay low” spots around town, and he and Tabasco head over to an unlisted cyber clinic after getting some names from Smoach and Myrryr. They find the former Probe/DeeCee transhumanist Leonna Octave running the spot, called the Metal Maniacs Clinic, which has amassed a small crew of aesthetic enthusiasts. Creep talks to them, planning to make fun of them, but actually has a nice convo about esoteric implants.

They both get some surgeries scheduled, with Creep adding a few more survival-focussed mods, and Tabasco clearing up some essence hole room to fit in some combat mods. Octave tries to sell them on more extreme mods and embracing maximum implant culture, but they demure, for now. Dig and Jaga help CG replenish one of his spirits, making a new rotting plant matter mass to twine about himself. Tabasco and Carol get a call from Ibn Hassan, offering work if they happen to indeed be in Detroit. They accept, and get a gig to drive the mafia loansharks out of Hamtramck in order to let the Hawala networks there fill the gap.

CG arranges a meeting with a local runner named Sikh Burn, a combat mage who fights with a flaming zulfiqar, and who maybe used to run with the CoL. After feeling him out a bit, SB agrees to put CG in touch with a man named Alfredo who he says is the tactical coordinator for the CoL. CG and Carol set up a deal with Alfredo to smuggle in a bunch of guns, armor, explosives, and other materiel in exchange for them working to drive the mafia off, a goal they already believe in. They seem to look more favorably on the team being in “their” neighborhood after this.

Having passed a few days and given Carol time to process his dead dad feelings a bit, they decide to crack down on the Ellis job. They look into Ringmaster’s dossier, and seeing no better option, decide to riskily contact Ellis directly, though in code. Carol uses his knowledge from the ARES space station to send her a message posing as her former lover, and she responds in a way suggesting that she knows what’s up and will help them help her. They roll over to the facility where she works (and seemingly can’t leave), and use their ARES SINs and van electrochromic coating to get into the lot. Spotting some passive magical security, Dig and CG stay in the van.

The rest of the team sneaks in through a side door, which unlocks, just as they approach. They find the drone guards inside temporarily disabled, with a map to Ellis flashing on their ARO projectors. They proceed further in, losing comms with those outside. The team outside spots another runner van similar to the hit crew they went up against on the Zoo/Jones extraction, and CG does some astral recon- it seems like they learned their lesson from last time, and left a guard and spirit with the rigger this time. The guard opens fire on the team van with a minigun, damaging it badly. Dig starts magically driving, as CG uses spirit powers to befuddle the rigger and gunner, but comes under attack from the spirit.

After some magical speed control and dramatic crashes, Dig and CG emerge victorious but the team van is almost wrecked in the process. Meanwhile, inside, the team gets into an intense fight with some sec drones camouflaged as vending machines, taking them out, but hearing what sounds like another team breaching into the facility along a parallel path to theirs. They continue in, getting into a running gun battle with facility security. They manage to turn building security on the other team, and loop around back behind them to try to get the drop. Unfortunately, amidst all the chaos, something triggers Ellis to decide to take her chances and trigger her own escape plane.

The team is surprised to see a large capsule blast through the facility walls and start sinking into the river outside, trailing various fluids. Creature sneaks into the lab it exploded out of, and finds no sign of Ellis, but does recover a hard drive that says “README” and one of the FAB suits before escaping before the goons in the next room can recover from the phosphorous arrows and lube grenade combo and start shooting again. Tabasco and Creep dive into the river to follow the capsule, but Creep can’t swim and starts drowning, so Tabasco has to save him instead. Creature debates following but doesn’t want to get the drive wet, and and head spotted a leaking FAB pipe in the lab and so is worried about that too.

Carol races back out to take over driving the van and get out of there as Dig runs to the river and leaps in, turning into a dolphin. He luckily also spots some leaking FAB trailing the capsule and abandons pursuit, not wanting to risk it. He swims to shore, and sneaks back to ground, meeting up with the drone he purchased to carry his belonging when in animal form. Tabasco and Creep also get to shore and sneak back to the safehouse using some of Creep’s new knowledge, worried their ARES SINs might be burned.

Carol picks up Creature with the drive, and races off with CG in the van as well. Unfortunately, he feels he didn’t drive fast enough and is worried about fast response tracking them, so they find an obscure spot to ditch and split up, also sneaking back to the safehouse on foot. It turns out it was good they did- when they are all about a block away a drone detonates the van with a missile, they can feel the heat even from where they are. Close call! With everyone reunited, it’s time to analyze the data, sell that suit, and figure out how/if they can get to that capsule….

Runners
Carol
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig

With Jones in the VTOL asserting that she’s been running “comms off” since DeeCee, the team decides to still not take any chances, and links up with her on the roadside, jamming her just in case, before heading to the Kiss Me Quick. Carol and Creep decide to stay there overnight and continue to examine Roderick Kensington’s lunatic manuscript to stay awake, while the rest of the team heads back to the Tin Can safehouse to rest up. CG convinces everyone to swap the walk-in freezer for a permanent ritual space, and gives them all the debrief about what’s he learned about the area and who he’s made connections with.

Carol and Creep find an illustration of what looks to be a Tarot card in Kensington’s notes, and the team spends a while speculating what it might mean. In the morning, the same crew of local runners (Smaug, Lunatech, and SINder) show up to collect Jones on behalf of Weathernight, and Carol negotiates for some pay. She says she’ll be in touch next time they have another job for them, and Carol and Creep head back to the safehouse, deciding to rest a bit during the day while the rest of the team figures out some logistics and personal agendas.

For one thing, the sub has arrived from Seattle. The team decides not to offer Shan and Shun space at their safehouse, so Creature volunteers to show them around and give them the lay of the land. Iva has a SIN from Vogel, and Dig purchases a license for his construct, so the only one they have to smuggle in is Jaga, and the van is well-equipped for that. CG puts in a call to Rubberhead and pays for access to a quiet dock that night out near the airport in Windsor. They pick everyone up and get them back to the safehouse with no trouble- Iva is excited to get to work in her new dev lab, and Jaga begins setting up the greenhouse.

Meanwhile, Tabasco and CG decide to go investigate the Platinum Joytrolls club, with Tabasco heading straight in (after being stripped of weapons) and CG investigating outside. Tabasco quickly gets made by the owner Marv, who seems to know an uncomfortable amount about him, and tells him to return the next night with whoever he wants to bring from his crew for a longer convo. CG gets spotted and also spots a neo-anarchist German gnome named Castiron, who after being impressed by his ogre belly provides some info about the area- the whole block is owned by Marv and informally referred to as “the Platinum Zone”, composed of the titular strip club (trolls of all genders and body types!), to the Brickhouse (a legendary venue), to some restaurants, cafes, and apartments. CG spots some warded underground areas as well but doesn’t get any info about those.

Dig has headed to the Oakland County Zoo to seek out Red Mages, but finds none. However, the area would be a great power center for such an order, so Dig decides to try to build one up. He makes some awkward matrix posts, and rejects the first response from someone who seems like the wrong sort of animal enthusiast, and awaits further replies. He does meet a Zoo employee named Roadkill who seems quite enthusiastic and helpful, though not very knowledgeable about magic. She implies she could help move product or other things if Dig needs, and they trade contact info. She also agrees to rent Dig time in a rarely used loading dock once a week for his magic order, assuming anyone else ever shows up.

They head back, agreeing to return tomorrow, and everyone awakens the next day wuith CG, Dig, and Jaga all having had weird shared dreams again. Dig is not sure if this was enhanced by the strange crystal his talismonger insisted on selling him, which he insisted wouldn’t do anything. This time, the dreams show two different underground cities, one teaming with bugs (and as Roderick had said, too many shamans and not enough Queens), and one seemingly a massive, lovingly-tended to ossuary, including bones appearing to be from bug hybrids. Disturbing! They decide to use the hair they acquired to track down Roderick and ask more questions. With the help of a massive spirit from Dig, they find him and discover that he has a Tarot card in his possession.

They show him a few of theirs, but it isn’t until Dig describes the shared dream that Roderick is willing to show them his. It’s a card they haven’t before: The Eclipse! This also seems to be the same card illustrated in his notes. He claims the card gives him visions. The team briefly debates taking it by force, knowing how valuable it is, especially on the Seelie Court, and Creep once again speculates that this guy might be a former Coimiediai, based on some various info in the team file. For now they decide to leave him be, after he starts getting suspicious of their lengthy, silent convo.

They head back south and pick up CG, who had split off for the morning to do some Grave Binding for the People of the Book interfaith burial society. This will justify his presence, and the presence of his magical lodge, in Hamtramck, if the team needs that cover story. They all head back to Platinum Zone for the meeting, except for Creature, who is still off with Shan and Shun discussing what the Sea Dragon might want to get into/out of Detroit.

The team is once again disarmed and ushered back to a meeting room by a Boston survivor with a strong accent. They find Marv waiting for them casually carrying an old autocannon- Carol tries on some jibes about the old model and Marv mostly plays along. He is accompanied by a wiry and somewhat tense human man dressed in specifically unmemorable casual wear, and a very nattily dressed Black dwarf who is fully bald. Marv says there’s no need or introductions until they clear a few things up, and that the team isn’t leaving til they have this convo. Creep blusters a bit and Marv says everyone can still leave as friends but it’s cards on the table time.

The trio quickly reveal that they know a good bit about the team- the dwarf seems like the intel guy of the 3, and knows Tabasco, Creep, and Carol’s history reasonably well, he seems less familiar with CG and Dig, though he’s aware of their Tzuri Group ties. After the team all confirms that they are aware of multiple ARES factions and the infighting therein, and that they aren’t loyal to either Knight or Otto’s factions, the dwarf seems to suggest that he’s aware that Carol at least is working for another faction, though it’s unclear if he knows about Vogel or not. The team seems to pass whatever kind of test this was, and the trio agree to share some info and hire the team on for a job.

The wiry human introduces himself as Rifleman, who Tabasco had previously messaged on Jackpoint about the mysterious gathering of mercs in NW Ohio. He explains that he and some other like-minded individuals are trying to field a small force in town to try to limit the damage of Latvian Gambit, which is bound to be a total clusterfuck, especially for the civilians in town. It seems like the team knows a bit more, specifics-wise, about what ARES has planned, overall. The dwarf intro’s himself as Ringmaster, and after some back and forth, suggests that he is working for/with Arleesh, which gets the team on-side a bit more. He explains that their theory is that Otto never stopped being a bug shaman and has managed to effectively turn a significant portion of the corp towards the bug agenda from the inside, slowly and over years, only now openly moving to take control.

The job they want the team to do is to extract one Dr. Ellis! Only Carol has met her, but the others are familiar from the team file. Ellis has apparently been integral to Otto’s plans and would be a valuable intel asset, but they assume she’ll be well-protected and that Knight will likely be after her as well. The team agrees, and Ringmaster sends over a dossier with her location details and the intel they’ve been able to gather. Before they can discuss anything further, the server knocks at the door and passes Rifleman in an infochip. He slides it onto the screen in the corner, and the team watches the breaking news.

A massive explosion shook ARES HQ tower in Downtown moments ago, reportedly killing the entire Board of Directors except for Damien Knight himself, who has now assumed total control of the corp, saying that in honor of their memories, he will not appoint a new board, merely an emergency advisory group (which seems like it will have no real power). Listed amongst the dead in the bombing is Carol’s dad, Michael Turpentine II. Tabasco tries to offer some comfort, but too quickly, and Carol dashes off to be alone in the bathroom for a bit, where he turns off the TacNet and does some novacoke. Adding confusion, Michael III, his brother, was named to the advisory board, a major promotion.

Ringmaster buys some drinks for the team, and tells them to try to get Ellis soon. Although ARES PR has labelled this as a terror attack, he thinks it was almost certainly Knight deciding to take the shackles off and begin operating with no real oversight, which implies things are about to get bad in Detroit. They also get a message from Vogel offering condolences to Carol and telling them that things will be accelerating quickly from here, with Knight apparently increasingly paranoid and prone to outbursts.

Runners
Carol
Creature
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig

The team, flush with their payday from Weathernight, decides to focus on making some connections and finding one or more safehouses. After debating for quite a while, they decide to go all in with Smoach and Myrryr, PPI, and call them up. They have a fruitful convo, and trade some info. First off, S&M tell them they got some initial results from the sample from the strange Underground critters the team encountered while stealing the dragon egg. These seem to be Petrophages, rare deep metaplanar beasts that transform their prey to stone before crushing and consuming them with their wide teeth. They prefer magically active targets, which explains why they focused on Chew Gum. S&M ask to send off the sample for further analysis, saying they have some contacts at a privately funded lab who can probably get more data. The team agrees, and Tabasco makes a quiet note to dig further: could this be Toast’s mysterious “ex-corp scientists” lab that he read so much about on the shadowboards?

Carol carefully warns S&M about the forthcoming bug threat, without providing specifics, and okays them to quietly warn their networks to keep an eye out four trouble. S&M seem surprised that based on Carol’s info, a wandering street preacher in the Blight seems to have predicted some portion of what’s coming. The team decides to track him down after finding safehouses. They get a rundown from the PPI’s on safehouses by style and district, and choose two: a climate-controlled garage unit in Windsor out near the airport, and a spot behind the Tin Can blues bar in Hamtramck. They rent the Windsor unit through the limited AI that runs the facility, and drive over to give it a quick once over. Dig plans to set up a ritual circle there.

They head to Hamtramck, and find the pink-bedecked dwarf fixer Zennia expecting them. She orders shots (seems like a hard party-er), and reveals that Myrryr is a pigeon shaman, who keeps some birds on the roof, along with some of Zennia’s. She says with all the sweeps ARES has been conducting and the difficulty of getting into town, there haven’t been a lot of runners needing her services of late, but the team agrees to talk business the next day after resting up. They put in their “build to suit” requests for the space, and for now just rent a double wide trailer in a fenced in lot out back of the bar, where Dig quickly passes out from Long Haul, having looked progressively more and more haggard.

They all luxuriously rest, and wake up the next day (absent Dig who is still passed out). Chew Gum wanders around Hamtramck, making contact with the People of the Book Joint Faith Burial Society, where he has to spend some social cred to get them to trust him as his magic looks pretty creepy at first. Once he explains that he can help with the Grave Binding ritual to allow them to bury their dead intact, instead of following ARES’ cremation requirements, they seem much more enthused, and he makes a few new friends there, as well as getting some further info on the area and the city.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team meets with Zennia over breakfast, a few of them getting rare real eggs from the barkeep, who makes them promise to keep quiet about the chickens he keeps on the roof- for tenants and trusted patrons only. Zennia fills them in on a few open contracts she has, but seems to be trying to stay out of the ARES infighting, perhaps correctly fearing the high lethality incumbent to those runs. They agree to look into her jobs if they get the opportunity, and head up to the Blight to track down the street preacher. Finding a local clinic and making a donation, they get some intel on a recent sighting, and manage to track the guy down near the toxic-smelling Black Creek.

He seems pretty out of it, but after they awkwardly pay him too much money, he shares his “thesis” with Carol (mad scrawlings on a variety of surfaces, in various directions and languages), and also delivers some worrying prophecy, predicting that something lies beneath them which will soon devour them all, and also reciting Hansu Prophecy 9 verbatim. So they aren’t sure how much of his “prophecy” is original, or where he’s getting it from, but eventually they ask one too many questions and he scarpers. Luckily he agreed to provide a piece of hair in case they need to track him down again, after they promise not to do “anything creepy” with it, as Tabasco has confirmed that though the man himself is not magical, there is something magical on or about him….

They head back to Hamtramck, and get a call on the way: Weathernight has another job! She fills them in on a DeeCee fixer who got mixed up in the ARES internal war and apparently fled town, headed for Detroit, just ahead of some assassins who took out her boss as well as the senator she had blackmailed. Weathernight expects this fixer, Sahara Jones, to arrive in town the next day, but doesn’t know via what means or where exactly, and explains that everyone wants her and what she might know: if the team can’t take her alive, they are to make sure she doesn’t survive for someone else to acquire.

The team spends a few hours researching the strange thesis they got from the street preacher, but it seems quite discordant and not overly useful, so they head to bed. Dig finally wakes up the next day, and the team fills him in. They seem very fixated on the thesis still, but Dig decides it’s the ravings of a madman, and that they should focus on the job, and gets the team on track. Chew Gum is still off on his wandering and helping the people adventure, so they proceed without him. After some research into the target and some recent political intrigue in DeeCee (including a threat to rescind the Business Recognition Accords as a power play against ARES’ extraterritoriality), they check the old team files, and find that some former members actually had some run-in’s with Sahara Jones when they were running in DeeCee.

Based on this, and some factional analysis, they determine that she is likely under Otto Hendricks’ sway, willingly or not, and is heading for his protection, which means she will likely be coming in under mafia protection, as they have a rep for safe people-moving (the local Mancino family doesn’t traffic, as a rule). From the docks, the quickest and easiest spot to stash her would be an ARES parazoological facility that Hendricks controls via his R&D department, so the team decides to head over and scope it out. Tabasco, deciding any tiger cage is as a good as another, also brings the rest of his mom’s ashes. He heads in to the public part of the zoo to scatter them, and does so successfully this time, though some excited kids quickly run through and kneel in them to get their faces right up on the plexi window into the enclosure.

Meanwhile, Dig has down a thought recognition spell with the image of Jones, and found 4 hitmen thinking about her in a “closed” nocturnal mammmals wing of the zoo with a good sightline to the parazoological facility dock. Tabasco and Creep prepare to sneak in and take out the hitmen, while Carol hangs back to pilot van and VTOL, and Creature and Dig (now in muscular dolphin form) wait underwater near the docks. They put in a call the CG that things are about to go down, ping their location, and wait for Jones to arrive….

CG rolls up to the parking lot on his bike and sidecar just as everything kicks off- the mafia smuggler boat is approaching the docks, and the kill team is setting up weapons in the closed exhibit. Creep and Tabasco sneak up on the snipers through some employee-access passages, but don’t quite get there in time to stop them taking out most of the mafiosos as they exit the boat. The snipers are prevented from taking out Jones by a large water spirit allied with the mafiosos. CG and Dig send their spirits to start attacking that spirit, while Tabasco and Creep fell 3 of the snipers with non-lethal rounds.

Dig, in dolphin form, keeps trying to sink the mafia boat to prevent escape but repeatedly fails, and it is sunk by some holes shot in it by the snipers. Creature takes out one of the 2 remaining mafiosos in water drake form, and Carol knocks the other one into the water with the VTOL, where Dig savages him with his huge dolphin muscles. Carol convinces Jones to climb into the VTOL over the speaker and zips her out of there, as CG goes over to deal with the sniper’s getaway van that Carol spotted in the parking lot. CG decides to skip the non-lethal option, and uses a terrifying combo if spirit powers and shotgun to befuddle the rigger inside and then silently blow his head off.

Tabasco and Creep exfil under fire as the sniper team wakes back up from stim patches etc, and begins rallying. However, with some slick driving from Carol and all the useful stealth features on the van they manage to get out of there without any further trouble. Creature and Dig leave via water, with Dig turning into a bird a little ways away to link up with the team, and Creature taking public transit back to the safehouse.

Runners
Carol
Creature
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig

The team begins the day by checking the local feeds, and find them very throttled under ARES control. There doesn’t seem to be an independent media other than some freelance bloggers, and the local shadownet is pretty anemic- mostly missing persons posts and tips on how to avoid getting caught up in the sweeps. However, the team still catches wind that their high profile extraction yesterday has gotten ARES interested in them, so they decide to get an electrochromic coating on the van, and keep Carol out of sight for now, since he was the only one the ARES corpsec saw.

Tabasco calls up Smoach and Myrryr, PPI, and dropping Vermont’s name makes a new connection in town. They provide the name of a repair shop/parts emporium that can fix up the van, and a rigger named Rubberhead who they can make contact with there. Chew Gum heads over to do so, fearing he’s too disturbing and memorable for a subtle recon mission. S&M also agree to analyze the sample CG got from the strange critters the team encountered underground that had the petrification powers. Tabasco, wanting to make new friends, warns them about the Seattle area dragon danger, but they seem snagged by the mystery are onboard.

CG wanders Rigs, Rims and Ratchets (“The Triple”) for a bit before paying off a local tout to show him to Rubberhead, who quickly agrees to work with him. and seems to be a smuggler by trade, affiliated with the Technicolor Wings syndicate, who Kit had worked with a bit on CarBoxing in Seattle. They get the van sorted, and CG buys a new small vehicle with sidecar for himself and his spirits. The rest of the team is doing recon on the Golden Microchip club- based on Nyssa Hallas’ intel the spot some high end security, but it seems like magic is their weak point (an ARES classic). Dig gives Carol a clairvoyance ritual which allows them to scope out the inside of the club, and also does some astral recon while still at the Kiss Me Quick monitoring the extractee and his dogs.

There is a single watcher spirit observing the club, only 2 entrance/exits (one of which is emergency only), good fire suppression systems, and modern, small/efficient vents. So the team decides on an unconventional plan, and aims to execute this evening upon the target’s arrival. They buy some injectable laxatives from a medical supply store on the way back to the safehouse, and meet up with CG. They take the van and Dig, while CG wards the safehouse and keeps an eye on things. Scoping out the ARES Orchard housing complex, it essentially looks like an arcology-sized sprawling campus. Tabasco heads in using his fresh ARES ID and scopes out the public areas with a visitor pass. No easy way to get to the target via that means, but Dig has an idea.

They summon the stealthed VTOL, and Creature rigs up a multi-part explosive: one high ex, one frag, and one chloroform, all daisy-chained. Xe also shows Dig how to start the short timer on it. Carol pilots the VTOL up to the target’s window and crashes it through, with Dig inside. Dig crawls out, naked, and tells the surprised woman he is here to get her out for Vogel while running a jammer to foil surveillance. He hands her a knife and tells her to leave a bio-sample and then sets the timer. She stoically cuts off a finger and then climbs in the VTOL. Dig transforms himself into a shrew and climbs in as well, and Carol pilots them back out as the room explodes behind them. The chloroform seems to have possibly ignited and a noxious cloud is spewing forth, without looking like they did much damage outside the room- right on target. THey hope this “biohazard” plus some DNA left behind will confuse and slow pursuit efforts.

Still jammed, Dig and the target climb into the smuggling compartment, and Carol slowly drives away. They get pulled over by KE, but Carol manages to talk his way out of it by playing the “good corp citizen”, and all their ID’s scan, so they are on their way. They get back to Kiss Me Quick, and this extractee seems to know the drill- she points the jammer at herself, bandages up her missing finger, and climbs into one of the body bags, zipping it up to her face. She says she’ll keep an eye on the dogs while the team heads out on the next leg of the job, and DIg leaves some old flatvids playing to keep her entertained.

They head back to the club, and execute. Creature gets in line, well-disguised, and Carol and CG wait nearby in the van to spot the target. Creep, Tabasco and Dig (in bird form) wait out back. After a few VIP arrivals, they finally spot their target exiting an air cab with his security detail. Creature manages to do a brush pass and inject him with the laxative, while playing it off as if xe were just drunk and stumbling. Xe manages to talk xyr way away from security and loops back around to the van. Meanwhile, out back, Tabasco is scanning back and forth with another clairvoyance from Dig, and quickly spots the target rushing into one of the bathrooms.

Dig begins shaping concrete to open the wall up, while Creep prepares to grab the target. Unfortunately, a woman barges in to the bathroom, seemingly thinking that the target has something planned. He’s totally confused, but the team decides not to investigate further, and Tabasco knocks her out with an arrow as soon as the wall opens enough, surprising both the people inside. Creep grabs the target and tranqs him, stuffing him into the VTOL while he’s still shitting himself. DIg, in bird form still, flies back to the safehouse. Tabasco takes public transit back, and Carol drives the van crew. Seeing that she hit her head in the fall, Creep slaps a trauma patch on the woman in the bathroom, and then sneaks off himself.

Tabasco, Dig and CG stay at the Kiss Me Quick with the 3 extractees, keeping the first and last slabbed and zipped up, and leaving the 2nd one conscious since she is very hepful (and was the only one who knew she was going to be extracted ahead of time and was onboard). The rest of the team heads back to the Black Creek coffin motel, but are woken in the middle of the night by some suspicious sounds, and manage to bail just ahead of a raid on the building. While sneaking off, they spots what looks to be Cutters out of their colors, with a small crew of Desolation Angels seemingly on the lookout for mages and bugs amongst those the Cutters are rounding up and scanning.

Meanwhile, Weathernight has called the KMQ crew and told them to expect a team of 3 runners to manage the pickup, who quickly arrive- an ork named Lunatech is driving, while an elf mage named SINder and a dwarf with draconic cyber-theme named Mr. Smaug handle the physical end. Tabasco, CG and DIg help run jammers and haul the extractees to the waiting van, and are excited to meet some other runners in town. This crew also seems excited about some new talent in town and they exchange contacts. The pickup crew rolls out, and both halves of the team link back up. Tabasco debates whether to contact Don Michaels and try to find out what the Cutters are up to and if the team is a specific target or not, but for now they get paid, and need to make some more local contacts and find a new safehouse.

Weathernight says to take a day or two to get settled and she’ll have more work for them soon.

Runners
Carol
Creature
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig

The team peruses the dossier from Vogel on the drive in, and sees an impressively militarized city before them. ARES troops, many in what looks to be nearly brand new armor, guard checkpoints through the 8 meter high border wall (lined with bio-fiber), and a state of (soft) martial law has been declared- by entering the city, they are told they are agreeing to be subject to immediate corporate corporal punishment at any security forces discretion. However, once they enter the city itself the mood seems less dire. The populace seems to (mostly) be accepting that this is merely a criminal round-up and sweep and ARES joint forces training exercise.

The team drives around a bit to get a feel for the city- their new SINs seem to work just fine, though they do get thoroughly checked at the Zone crossings near the city core, which seems to be where ARES is preparing to launch and contain Operation: Latvian Gambit. Creature, Tabasco and Creep leverage their memberships on Jackpoint and ShadowSea to get invites to d.matrix and Frozen Shadows, the two more local boards, and get some additional insight into the various neighborhoods and where to find some safehouse options. They head to Vendor’s Row and meet Weathernight at an excessively generic sandwich shop that disconcertingly only sells noodles.

She’s doing a remarkable job at a light disguise to make her look like she could plausibly be working for a different corp, without being so obvious as to attract attention. Once they are in the restaurant, she shoos the cook away (after he delivers some mediocre food to Chew Gum), and gets down to business. Vogel has determined that as well as himself, Otto Hendricks also appears to be vying with Damien Knight for power within ARES. Worse yet, Vogel has detected the working of a secret 4th faction, but has no idea who they are, or what their agenda is. Given this, he needs the team to extract certain promising executives, to make sure they remain safe and intact during the transition and his ascent to power.

Weathernight gives the team the first 3 names, and limited dossiers on each, as well as her take on where each should be extracted for maximum chance of success. She offers a large payday given the difficulty of the task as well as the short timeline. The team agrees, gets some money upfront on Carol’s suggestion, and heads out. They scope out the safehouse that Weathernight suggested be used as a stash spot for the 3, and plan to get their own personal safehouse in the Blight. They decide to do the targets in reverse order of expected difficulty, and go after the one they need to grab on the go first.

They head over to Grosse Pointe to check out his house- a decent shoreside mini-mansion. Spotting a groundskeeper walking the dogs, they decide to kidnap the pets as a way in, while Creep sneaks into the house to retrieve a ritual sample of the target. Creature buys some raw meat, and Dig, in bird form, flies by the dogs to rile them up while CG uses control animals to get them running full tilt. CG also uses a powerful confusion on the groundskeeper, causing them to drop the leashes as they stop understanding gravity. The dogs continue racing after the meat/bird and leap into the waiting van, where Dig transforms back into human form and eats the meat while staring the dogs in the eyes to cow them into submission, which he succeeds at.

Meanwhile, avoiding cameras and alarms, Creep has carefully snuck into the house. He finds evidence of a recent divorce or split of some sort, and also retrieves a solid ritual sample from the main bathroom sink drain. He slips back out and into the van, and the team heads for Hamtramck, having heard there is a good pawn shop there which will sell illicit gear to those in the know. Reaching the Trading Post, Creep uses the appropriate password from d.matrix, and gets the drone attendant to get him a directional jammer, some longhaul, and a few other supplies. They drop Dig off at Kiss Me Quick (the stash spot), and head Downtown to wait for the target to get off work.

Dig makes a ritual circle and uses the ritual sample Creep got to locate the target, which is good since Carol and Creature were fooled by a disguise that ARES was using to try to trick any observers. Carol posts a well-composed “found dogs” message, and quickly gets a call back from the target. With some confusing hinting back and forth, the target signals cooperation with the extraction on the promise of his dogs being returned to him unharmed. With the correct target info, Carol frantically tries to keep up with the target’s convoy amidst heavy Downtown traffic. They lose them for a tense moment, but regain them just after the Zone crossing checkpoint. Pulling up alongside, they trigger their planned ambush near the port, figuring they won’t get a better chance, as it’s the lowest security area along the route.

CG causes the KE officer on the lead bike to have an accident while massively magically accelerating the first car behind him, which crushes both officer and bike, while the engine whines and the car slews out of control. Creature hits car 3 with a lube grenade, which causes it to crash into car 2 (carrying the target) when car 2 slows to avoid car 1. All three end up colliding. Creep pops smoke and thermal smoke grenades, as Carol rushes out of the team van to car 2. He pulls the target out and chucks a flashbang in, closing the door, as the slightly stunned guards struggle to respond. Creature launches a chloroform grenade at the guards as they all exit their vehicles, and CG uses accident on them now that they are visible, effectively preventing them from returning fire.

Carol races them out of there, while Creep flips the plate and false transponder chip to new ID’s. They swing back by Hamtramck, and grab some body bags and slab, finding the target and his dogs all pretty annoying. They drop the target off with Dig, and Tabasco stays at Kiss Me Quick as well to keep an eye on things. They slab the target and put him in the bag, with another jammer pointed at him as well, and keep him inside DIg’s ritual circle to block magic tracking. Dig takes some longhaul to keep this going for a few days while the rest of the team grabs the other targets.

CG calls in a favor with the Seoul’Pa fixer Sung Yi to do some hacking subterfuge, and she pings a few times at various locales in Chicago with a spoofed ID meant to look like the target, hopefully pulling ARES’ attention that direction. Dig and CG both ask around a little about potential contacts in the Red/Necro magic fields and don’t find much initially but get some good leads. Tabasco considers lurking around town as he likes to do to get the local crime scene report. But for now, the team (minus those at KMQ) head to the Blight and get a cheap/anonymous coffin for the night, with Creep staying in the van outside.

They wake up the next day, and plan to do some club recon, in prep for snatching the second target that night, while also looking into the corporate housing that they have to grab the 3rd target from.

Runners
Carol
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig

Tabasco gets a call from Emdachat Fahd, who tells him not to come by his condo- an anonymous caller warned tenants to vacate the building and then a dragon flew by and torched Tabasco’s unit. Other tenants who suffered losses are being compensated but Tabasco’s unit is to be left burnt and open to the elements “as a reminder”. Tabasco really wants to get out of town. Creature remains in hiding from KE for the time being, and Chew Gum and Dig dismantle all the ritual circles and lodges at CG’s Puyallup safehouse to get prepped to get out of town.

They decide to make some arrangements, and convince Shan and Shun to ride the team’s sub the long way around and meet them in Detroit. They try to convince a few others to come with as well, but only Iva Linus Hathaway takes them up on it after Vogel promises her funding for a weapons/armor dev lab and a job in his future ARES. Tommy Vermont also gives Tabasco contact info for a pair of paranormal PI’s in Detroit. Carol negotiates with Imaginary Annie for the final payout for calling Free Seattle correctly, and gets a big chunk of money- Annie seems to have leveraged the team’s info into a position of considerable power as a local fixer.

Dig decides to send his concrete construct along in the sub as well- it’ll be a little cramped but not too bad.The team hears from Miranda King, and gets the updates on her investigations into Spinrad’s assassination. Someone cleaned up thoroughly- the Feng Shui “construction team” turns out to be a high-end crew from GeMiTo, who were all found dead in their safehouse in Redmond, and the lawyer died of an unexpected stroke. Suspicious. She also provides a private number for Jonathon Blake to the team as a favor, the team doesn’t tell her what exactly it’s for.

Carol calls Blake, and they engage in a tense negotiation. Once Blake confirms that they already sold the data from the Journal, he says that’s unfortunate but that he has an idea for how they can still ensure their friend Maggie Magnusson’s freedom. He requires the team’s info on Dis (from the moon), and also requires all their data from their observation of the Entropy Circles- Aradia had told Aunt Clara about both of these and she had passed the info on to Blake. Carol reluctantly agrees, and the team preps for an evening of recon. Blake seems to know a lot about the team as well, so not much chance of running from this.

Dig makes a few watchers, and Carol sends over the drone swarm. Tabasco and Creep collab and determine that there are 3 possible locations for the next entropy circle, based on the pattern of the previous ones. The team finds Jaga waiting by the lake as well, causing some strange vines to grow out of the toxic lake. She agrees to help them with the evening’s activities, and the team splits into 3 pairs to also observe the 3 potential sites.

Carol and Jaga spot some furtive figures approaching their spot, and having seen noone at the other 2, the other 2 teams converge. Jaga conceals them while Carol observes and assembles his rifle. 7 toxic druids (who Tabasco recognizes as the fatberg harvesters from Redmond) start walking a ritual circle and burning toxic reagents, once ensuring they are unobserved (they don’t spot the team). Once the circle is mostly complete, a dark SUV pulls up, and a few people get out. 2 goons in suits emerge from the back with a drugged up person dragging between them, and another goon emerges from the front with a device- this looks to be one of the “portal devices” that the APEP Consortium rift jumpers have been using, but looks like it isn’t powered up right now. Creep notices it has a small orichalcum rod in it that they didn’t see in the last (used) one that they found.

As the team watches (and takes aim, and sneaks closer), the druids complete their circle and open a portal to what looks like the toxic plane of Miggon. Life is leached out of the area inside the circle by the poisonous miasma of that realm, and the drugged sacrificial victim dissolves in front of their eyes. The druids channel the power of the sacrifice into the waiting device, with the orichalcum rod seemingly storing the power. As the ritual closes, the team springs their trap. With judicious use of his spirits’ accident and concealment powers, CG is able to prevent the enemy from acting effectively, and the team makes quick work of slaughtering everyone.

They quickly flee the scene, and send Blake a nicely written summary with all the relevant feeds attached. They also hire a courier from ACE to deliver the quicksilver camera plates that CG took of the ritual (after taking photos of them for themselves). Blake reports that he finds their work satisfactory, and will release their friend once he receives the plates. The team decides it’s time to go, and picks up Creature from xyr hiding spot in Puyallup.

Creep insists on buying everyone Taco Temple on the way out of town, forgetting that he can’t eat. The team stops at a spot in Renton, planning to head out of town through a remote border crossing mostly used by hunters and loggers in the Tiger Mountain Wilderness area. Unfortunately, it seems the Puppet Master Killer somehow divined their location, and another Marry Me… fan/suicide bomber detonates after dashing into the van, shredding the team’s armor and coating the inside of the van with tacos and human flesh bits.

In a panic, the team heads for the border, and ends up having to bribe their way through due to the KE warrants out for Creature. However, the SSC border guards seem happy to fuck over KE and take some money for what are otherwise clean-looking SINs. They comment on the state of the van but Carol does his best to cover. They head out on I-90 at high speed, amidst the auto-haulers and long distance rigs. They notice a spirit following them, which swaps with another spirit at sunrise. Dig goes astral and questions it, and it seems like the border guards likely sent a spirit to keep an eye on them, since they pretty obviously seemed like runners.

They pause at a rest stop to let Dig use a water spirit to wash themselves and the van, leaving a horrifying pile of human remains and tacos mixed together in a slurry in a disused field at the edge of the rest stop- a fun investigation for whatever unfortunate someday discovers it. They head back out, wanting to reach the UCAS border before resting. Tabasco buys a second car, and gets ripped off, to see if they can trick the spirit that’s following them, but it just moves to a point between the 2 vehicles. They reach the Sioux Nation border, and the van clears easily with their good fake SINs. Tabasco and Creep get searched after telling the border guards that a spirit has been following them, which makes the guards suspicious. They totally destroy the interior of the car, but as they actually don’t have anything illegal, they just confiscate some of their drugs.

Both cars power on through another day and finally cross back into the UCAS, finding a motel in SW MN to rest up in. They take a full day to sleep and recover, and then head for Chicago, where Tabasco trades his (now shredded) Americar for van interior repair and armor repair to Goober, who seems excited to see Carol and Creature, though surprised at so many other new faces on the team. He shows them the Battle of Chicago Memorial and park, and tries to sell Tabasco a jetpack, but after a disastrous test flight, Tabasco decides not to buy. Goober also reports that the survivor support group he’s been doing with Lothan has been really helpful, and takes the team to Freaktown to replenish their drug supplies.

They see some exhausted party-ers there who seem to only be on their feet through extensive substance use and have a somewhat horrifying ecstatic visage- but, as Goober says, the dance must go on…. They also get some updates on the situation in Chicago. The CZ has been renamed the “Reformation Zone”, and the ASPS has been working to formalize the dance rituals and limit casualties. 3D and Hoodsville managed to drive Null seeding out of their host using some knowledge shared from Howard and Philips INC after their anti-Null work in Seattle, but the Chicago deckers took heavy casualties. Also, Mayor Presbitero has found a new target to use for his fear-mongering agenda now that the bugs are gone: the city’s Infected population, using Fear the Dark and other bogeymen as justification for cracking down on ghouls, vamps, and others as the city gets further rebuilt and corporatized- though the RZ still feels like a party.

With their van newly kitted out with a wide selection of mismatched interior panels, including some asorted carpeting, they load back up and head for Detroit. As they approach, they get sent the new ARES SINs that Vogel promised, and get some info packets from his agent on the ground, Gloria Weathernight, who gets them some updated maps and demographic details, and tells them to meet her at a cafe on Vendor’s Row. Seeing the 8 meter tall wall that encompasses the sprawl, the team prepares to head into ARES’ home town, hoping to wrest control of the corp over to Vogel and put an end to this bug nonsense.

Runners
Carol
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum

The team awakens to some happy news: Free Seattle has passed! So Stuck won’t kill them, and Annie is satisfied with their work. Tabasco sends Stuck some celebratory cupcakes and Stuck sends back a slightly creepy thank you note hinting that he knows that Carol is alive. But otherwise all seems well. In response to this, there’s a bunch of corporate maneuvering: Shiawase is officially approved to take over the ACHE, leaving Renraku scrambling to hold onto various other contracts around town, as they see this as a threat. They delete Takuto Nakagawa’s digital persona backup as punishment, since he failed his assignment. Karen King ends up in charge of the local ARES branch, as ARES enacts a major force pullback to Detroit from all around the UCAS. She attempts to begin pragmatically securing maintenance contracts on all the gear the UCAS military may leave behind if Seattle does indeed break free. Horizon and the PPG both benefit from local contracts, and much is made of the safe and exciting “new Matrix” that DelaMar will be launching soon.

It seem that between ARES causing trouble and Free Seattle, plus with DeeCee, Boston, and Chicago all still under the construction, the UCAS is a bit on the ropes and unsure which crisis to focus on. The team also hears of various other factions moving into/out of/around Seattle to take advantage. Telestrian gets some good contracts, and tightens their ties, a bunch of GreenWar operatives start massing around town, and the Sea Dragon dumps a literal ton of gold on the deck of Chuck Beale’s boat after summoning him to a meeting in the Sound, which almost swamps his small craft, and offers her Matronage to the Free City, seemingly deciding it is a done deal. Various corps and nations also publicly signal their backing, and Gov. Potter quickly dispatches “unofficial” Ambassadors to these and other locales, looking to leverage the momentum, and the UCAS’ distraction.

The team also hears that a lot of vets and mercs, especially old-timers and pro’s, have been leaving town, which makes some sense with the referendum done, but also not a lot of sense with all sorts of new contracts likely available in the chaos. They do some digging and find that a Jackpointer named “Rifleman” has been quietly recruiting trusted mercs to come to his/Bravo Company’s training facility in NW Ohio. Tabasco reaches out, but Rifleman says that due to the team’s corporate ties he can’t use them at the moment. The team assumes this means that these mercs are planning something against ARES or in Detroit, as their staging area is fairly nearby, and just across the Michigan border. They do a little research, and find out that Bravo Company has long been an enemy of the Headhunters (the Tan Robes’ mercs), and have actually worked with some past teammates, so they decide to keep this all to themselves for now.

Tabasco, having had his mother’s remains cremated, heads to the Ft. Lewis Zoo with Creep and tries to scatter her ashes in the tiger cage, as this is the last happy place he remembers going with her. However, zoo staff quickly intercepts him, and convinces him to pay a large amount of money for a memorial plaque on a bench nearby instead. He still has about half the ashes which he holds onto for now, but he spots some zoo staff vacuuming up the ashes he already scattered, as they seem worried about tigers consuming it and developing a taste for burnt human (or maybe just cause of the chemicals). They rejoin the rest of the team, and decide they should probably rescue Maggie. Creature tells them xe will be laying low for the moment at Chew Gum’s safehouse to get some protection from magical tracking, since KE is on xyr trail.

As the team has no leads, and no hackers, Dig offers to stay behind on the next job and do a tracking ritual to locate Maggie (or his last known location). The Coven of the Crypt delivers some ritual samples collected from his safehouse. The team also decides to hire Tauren to do some matrix digging and try to figure out where Maggie was grabbed and by whom. When they tell him they suspect Black Lodge involvement, he raises his fees to cover a mage summoning a spirit to watch his back while he hacks. With that out of their hands for a while until those 2 get results, the team decides to finally tackle Shan and Shun’s job in the Underground, which will also give them a chance to return the library book.

They meet up with Shan and Shun at the Big Rhino, and agree on payment before they’ll provide many details. What they need the team to do is head into the Underground, travel a ways into the Depths, and use the provided mule drone with a thermal lance to cut through a specific section of wall. Inside they will find an item (which they will not provide more info on) that the team will need to grab and carefully place in a large padded case (also provided). They will then transport the case to a warehouse at the Tacoma docks and hand it over and get paid. They agree, and all decide they don’t really want or need to know what the item is anyway.

CG and Creep head into the Ork Undergroud from Puyallup with their gear and weapons, and get to a meeting spot with no trouble, having hired a Sprawl Scouts guide and tipped well. Carol and Tabasco head in from the Big Rhino and retrieve the drone, case, and a hand drawn map from a stallkeeper at the far edge of the Tourist Highway market. They link up with the other 2 at the very edge of where the matrix signal reaches, all disguised as Evo construction workers in case they need an alibi. With some impressive navigation from Carol, they follow the loosely accurate map into the Depths.

After a while of descending shafts and squeezing through narrow tunnels, they encounter some Rutra smugglers, but Carol and Tabasco greet them in Or’zet which seems to satisfy them, and then they recognize CG, though they are disappointed not to meet his weird “dog” (since Dig stayed behind). The Rutra warn the team about a vampire trap that they think might be a Fear the Dark cell, and Carol manages to navigate them around it, reaching their destination. They find a dry stone archway in the wall, which looks quite ancient, and the air from inside it is considerably warmer and more humid than the cold, fetid air they’ve been travelling through, though it remains pitch black.

They head inside, and find themselves in a cavern whose height they are unable to determine, but they see the spot they are supposed to cut through across it. They head over, and find an ancient carving, which they do their best to document for Dig to examine later. It depicts some humanoid figures worshiping some sort of serpent. There are also two statues on either side, although on further examination, they don’t seem to be statues at all- they look to be vampires who have been turned to stone! As soon as Creep makes this realization, they come under attack from above, with many tentacles lashing out to attack CG and his spirits.

One of his spirits is instantly disapparated, and CG feels a disturbing paralytic effect creeping into his core but manages to shake it off. The team returns fire and spreads out, with Tabasco lighting one of the tentacle creatures on fire, helping with the illumination. There seem to be 3 of them, and the get in a pretty gnarly fight, though the creatures don’t seem to understand how guns work at first, to their detriment. The team eventually disposes of all 3, which curl up on themselves and turn to stone, though CG and Creep manage to collect a small core sample of one. They were strange blobs with a a large multi-level rotating maw filled with teeth that look designed to crush rock. None of the team have any idea what they are, so they document the best they can, and start the drone cutting through the wall.

The drone uses up it’s full battery doing so, but succeeds just as it powers down, and a smoking oval of the wall drops out and shatters (the ancient carving destroyed), and even warmer, more humid air rushes out. The team finds themselves stepping into a thoroughly modern vault, seemingly intentionally kept humid, and well lit with what look like grow lights. There are heaps of wealth and treasure stacked and piled along the walls, and a heavy security door on the far side from where they cut their way in. But the object they came for is obviously the large, dark egg sitting atop a pedestal in the center of the chamber, which Tabasco licks and distressingly confirms, is a dragon egg.

The team, now in a bit of a panic, carefully puts the egg in the provided case, and Creep sprays C-Squared all over the vault to eliminate bio-signs as best he can. Tabasco blows up the drone with an explosive arrow, and starts as much else as he can on fire in the cavern with white phosphorous. They flee as fast as they can, with MAMA assisting Carol in retracing their steps. They mange to avoid complications, and check that the case blocks assensing- it seems lined with bio-fiber, so working reasonably well, though the signature inside is powerful. They head back to the surface in Downtown, and rent a boat, taking the Sound down to Tacoma and meeting Shan and Shun on their warehouse dock. The two changelings don’t appear to be in a panic about the nature of the item, and Carol fails to renegotiate.

However, they say that they heard the team was planning to leave town soon, and they will happily help them relocate if they are so concerned. The team thinks this might be a good plan. They head back to Puyallup but then think better of it, and dismantle CG’s magical lodge to leave less of a trace, and leave Creature guarding Dig while he keeps seeking Maggie. They call up Eletheria, and get approval to sleep out on Blake Island tonight under the Sea Dragon’s protection, and find some reasonably comfortable Quonset huts set up for them to use. Menehune are still exploring the sea caves and Merrow and some free spirits are setting up their little areas, so it seems like the island is coming well along.

Carol and CG quickly duck back into the Underground and head to the Watering Hole, following ThinkTank’s instructions, and make connection with Ned Reardon, a Lorekeeper from the Vault of Lore. He takes them to the VoL via some secret tunnels, and shows them TT’s memorial bench (troll-sized). He accepts the book, and says that Mr. Bookbinder has been in touch from the Astral Library at Alexandria to set up a linked depository at the VoL. They seem to have been flourishing under the Sea Dragon’s patronage and Ned says they’ve been helping with the search for a lost city. He offers them both one opportunity to research in the VoL in thanks for completing TT’s task, so they both do some digging into topics of personal interest, and then head back to Blake Island.

The next morning, they get a few important pieces of news.First off, Tauren confirms that a very pro team seems to have grabbed Maggie in transit to his safehouse from the Uni, and that they look like unmarked Centurion Security. Which lines up well with Dig’s info: Maggie’s last astral trace is at the entrance to Jonathan Blake’s driveway in Bellevue. So they have an idea of where he might be at least, but it is a hard target…. Second, Kalanyr and Urubia, the two Redmond dragons, apparently went on a little bit of a rampage last night, and have promised to compensate those injured/those who lost property. Carol, worried, tries to check the safehouse feeds and finds nothing. He scans back to the last thing the Hunter-Killer drone saw, and it looks suspiciously like the shadow of a dragon. So his jet ski likely also got fried.

Kit calls them and asks what happened to the safehouse, and after they hint that they don’t really want to know, take over rent on the Puyallup safehouse at Squick’s Vaults and publicly cuts ties with the team- they say that they’ve gotten too dangerous to what Kit is trying to do with the Shadow Chapters and that Kit can’t afford the distraction amidst some complex negotiations. Kit says it was a good run but it’s time they fully parted ways, and wishes them well. Luckily, Creature and Dig were in Puyallup, and the team all had their mission gear on them and the van with them, so no major losses, other than the safehouse itself- onto Finn’s Safehouse #5 it seems.

Third, and most shocking: Johnny Spinrad was assassinated! The killer took a seemingly impossible blind shot through a solid wall, hitting and killing Spinrad instantly. The team digs in a bit, and finds out that Spinrad was closing on an acquisition of a local high end cyber boutique- on brand for his company. This was why he was in town, and showing them the good times with Aradia.The assassin was killed trying to escape, but shapeshifted and KE/Spinrad security haven’t been able to get an ID yet (according to the available info). However, the team recognizes the shapeshift as one of the Tarot images that ThinkTank had sold to a group of assassins some time ago. The sniper wasn’t magical, so Carol thinks they must have had someone on the inside to align their shot and make sure Spinrad was in the right spot.

They call up Aradia, who says she’s on the run, headed out of town: apparently security kicked her off of Spinrad luxury island almost immediately after his death, and she is still worried about the Black Lodge coming after her, especially with both safehouses gone. She says Spinrad seemed unhappy with his home life and was a known philanderer, but she didn’t see him get up to anything unusual while she was around him. She wishes the team luck and goes dark. They call up Miranda King, and Carole reveals that he is still alive, which she seems pleased by. After sharing some info and feeling each other out, they find that Spinrad “let King go” with a sizeable severance package two days before his death, she thinks he suspected something was up but she doubts he thought it would be lethal- he likely just wanted someone on his side outside the official realm of the corp. She’s putting together a team to look into his death from her new base in Bellevue.

The team does a bit more research, and call in a favor with Remo to get some hacking help. Tauren has gone into hiding also, as he is worried the Black Lodge may be chasing him after his previous investigation for the team. Remo gets them info on all the attendees of the meeting at which Spinrad died, and also some other building info. Conferring with King again, they agree to share info in equally, and King also hints at big paydays for solving the mystery. As best they can tell, a Spinrad “construction” team set up the meeting room, but seems to have also weakened the wall that was shot through, and placed a magical item to weaken the present wards. The corp that Spinrad was trying to acquire is really into Feng Shui and harmonic design, so the meeting room was very specifically laid out, so Spinrad’s position would have been known to anyone who knew the layout. And the lawyer present for Spinrad was a longtime consigliere of his wife, Gabrielle al’Thani’s family, and had apparently brought along a special pen, a gift from al’Thani, for Spinrad to use in the signing. There was also a Telestrian strawberry wine present, which may have some connection to the Tarot/Hansu prophecies.

As she inherited the bulk of the shares (many of the rest going to Spinrad’s daughter from a previous marriage), al’Thani seems like the likeliest perpetrator, but the team has no proof, which King would need to make any kind of move. She says she will keep digging, and asks the team to share any further info they find- this definitely all feels like a setup. Spinrad was lured into a false sense of security by a warded room with no windows, and left all his security outside, so this is feeling like a very elaborate, pro, and long-in-the-making plot. The assassin also seems to have undergone significant brain programming/modification. They also hear that a kidnapping attempt against Spinrad’s daughter was narrowly foiled by undercover security at her Swiss Alps boarding school- someone had foreknowledge of his death and was after the heir!

To add to the chaos a bit more, it seems Spinrad was acting as an informal bank and launderer for the international Mob, and with his death his widow seems to have disavowed any knowledge of the scheme, so a lot of mobsters are suddenly scrambling to withdraw any funds they can from casinos and other fronts in a panic. This, on top of the bug infiltration of the N’Drangheta, ARES’ dwindling support as they turn their focus to Detroit, and the mob’s losses in the recent Syndicate War have left the Seattle mafia significantly weakened, and the other syndicates in town are definitely taking advantage.

Carol checks in with Vogel to see if Spinrad’s death will change their plans at all, and Vogel says that between that and Free Seattle passing, it has likely only accelerated the timeline, so Carol should get his team to Detroit asap. Vogel will put him in touch with an on-the-ground operator who can pass along messages, as it will be dangerous and difficult to communicate directly once inside ARES’ hometown. But Vogel says he has some important work for Carol to tackle, starting with some extractions of some essential personnel he wants to make sure survive what is to come…. Which is perfect since the team needs an exit plan from Seattle, pronto. The plan to check out the entropy circles this evening, try to figure out how to help Maggie, and then bail!

Runners
Carol
Creature
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig

The team rests up after the stressful last minute last mission, secure in the knowledge that at least Stuck isn’t trying to kill them. They all decide to sleep at CG and Dig’s safehouse in Puyallup, and Carol has to try pretty hard to pretend that it is a cool, normal spot (boiling ash wastes, reagent harvesters, scrappers and rotting plants for neighbors). However, they figure that CG’s magic lodge might offer some protection from any further Black Lodge surveillance, so seems like the safest option. Carol manages to rally Tabasco a little bit from his panic/depression/confusion. Tabasco heads out early in the morning, having called in a favor with Tommy Vermont and Jimmy Kincaid, who use old KE connections to help get his mom’s body released to him. With Emdachat’s help he has a small ceremony and says his goodbye’s. Then, to pay Kincaid back, he informs the team he’ll be busy for a day or so helping him with a job, and will report back later.

The rest of the team checks comms and gets some news: Aradia has taken shelter on Spinrad’s Lux Resort Island in Lake Tapps to hide from the BL, after getting worried about the tail that Nyssa Hallas spotted. Spinrad has also curtailed his public appearances and upped his security after that. Kit is off working on Shadow Chaps business, and is trying to subtly encourage other cities to oust Dawkins Group-corrupted leadership and add at least one Monad to every leadership group, as they seem slightly harder to effect with the reprogramming due to the multiple/blended personalities they carry. Disturbingly, Maggie Magnusson has gone missing- Creep checks in with the Coven of the Crypt and Elijah, and both confirm that he’s missed planned meetings and not shown up at his usual haunts. Does the BL have him? The team plans to investigate further.

On top of that, Creature is contacted by the Alley Cat Express dispatcher, Wizard, and warned that KE has an arrest warrant out for xyr- the mage that assensed xyr recognized xyr as a drake, and xe has a pretty unique appearance, so ACE has to “officially” cut ties, but wanted to pass along the warning. As the team heads out to the van to start looking for Magnusson, CG, familiar with the environs, spots a small surveillance drone watching them. He uses animal control to find a nearby raptor, which dive-bombs the drone. When it makes contact, the drone explodes, blowing off the birds foot and causing it to inelegantly crash into the nearby building. Dig heals it and gets it airborne again, though missing a foot. He debates making a concrete replacement limb, but decides it’s probably best not to. He also rides his new concrete homunculus around a bit, delighting Creature.

Fearing that the drone was also the BL, the team uses a bunch of Creep’s C-Squared to scrub down the safehouse, and Carol and CG purchase Hunter-Killer drones to patrol both this and the Redmond safehouse to watch for (and destroy) future surveillance drones. Worried about what this all means, though, they decide to hold off on looking for Magnusson in case he’s revealed anything to his captors, and instead do one of their Underground jobs. CG also leaves another message inviting Jaga along to the investigation of the Entropy Circles in 2 days time. Carol convinces the team to do the book return job first, since then they can make a single trip to the Underground to return the book and do Shan and Shun’s job down there, whatever that entails.

They do a little research, and find out that the man, Tigran, who checked the overdue book out from the Astral Great Library of Alexandria is a known collector of esoterica on Anderson Island, an almost entirely private enclave of the extremely rich and elderly. They also find some creepy rumors about him, and contact another Anderson Island denizen, Kaden Becksworth, who has beef with him. Becksworth explains that he wishes to hire a team to investigate Tigran due to some connections to some missing persons, and that they can combine efforts. He says he will tell his cook to prepare dinner for 5 guests so that the team has an excuse to visit, but that they shouldn’y bring anything visibly alarming to the island as it will alert his various neighbors’ suspicions.

Wanting to have some options for carrying the magical book back safely, CG buys a bio-fiber bag, abd Dig suggests a detour to the Fort Lewis zoo so that he can learn to shapeshift into a kangaroo. Creature is thrilled, and everyone else agrees a trip to the zoo sounds fun. They strap the Zodiac to the roof of the van and head over, all wearing civvies or light armor, and with weapons concealed or broken down in the van. The enter through the MP-secured checkpoints, and find the zoo most pleasant. Dig learns what he needs about kangaroos, and Carol spots someone watching the team. He sneaks off and observes as the team leaves, but the watcher spots him so he decides to approach for a casual/pro “I see you seeing me” type chat. Unfortunately, it becomes apparent that someone is remote-rigging the watcher as Carol start to talk, and the watcher explodes, sending Carol flying and shredding his armor.

As a number of civilians were also caught in the blast and a rare turtle exhibit was damaged, much chaos ensues. Carol ditches his shredded armor, and tries to steal a zoo sweatshirt from the gift shop, but is spotted by an alert teen at the till who shouts “thief!”. Luckily CG intercedes and has a spirit conceal Carol while he uses his cyber legs to leap over the fence near the exit and sneak back to the van. The only thing of note he got from the watcher before they exploded was that they had on a “Marry Me…” shirt, so they do some MAMA research with the face image, and find that she was one of the more vociferous hardcore fans who were decrying the team for shutting down the servers (at Alice’s lab) and who believed this was sabotage/some kind of false flag by a competing game.

They decide to continue the mission, though Carol feels a little vulnerable with no armor at all. Luckily he brought his diving gear, just in case. They Zodiac out to Becksworth’s dock, setting the van to loop around on GridGuide till they return. Becksworth greets them with drinks, and they eat a nice dinner in his 3 season porch while they discuss the mission. He explains that he has sent the staff home early and that he has sufficient ECM running that they can talk freely, and tells the team how he is rich enough to live here, but moral enough not to like the culture- he tries to enforce some kind of pro-social code on the island, and has found runners to be the best tool to do so, since the local KE branch is regarded as the ultimate chill reward for desk jockeys to ride out their careers at. He doesn’t condone murder, but will edge up to the line in order to achieve his goals.

He provides the team intel on how to gain access to Tigran’s property and get into the mansion itself, though he says that the esoterica wing has been inaccessible to him. He explains that Tigran had a guest from out of town recently, and hosted a small dinner party with some close friends, and that the disappearances started soon after- staff and off-islanders, but still. He says that the debauched locals have been known to hunt runners and other for sport, engage in snuff parties, and other such heinous activity, so he assumes something bad is happening. He wants the team to document what is up and get him proof, while retrieving the book. They agree, and head out. Dig flies over in bird form to surveil, and spots 2 huge dogs patrolling the grounds. He uses animal control to get them away from the team’s planned entry points, and get them distracted digging for something.

CG and Creep approach on foot, sneaking through the island’s tastefully dense woods which separate the properties. They climb a try and hop over the spiked fence, using CG’s spirit concealment to avoid detection. Carol, using scuba gear, and Creature, a natrually good swimmer as a sea drake, take the water route, and sneak up from Tigran’s dock, using the code Becksworth provided to access the ornate gate at the top of the stairs up from the water into the yard. Disturbingly, they spot clawed drag marks heading into the property, and Creature confirms they are metahuman, and seem to have been buffed out/painted over a bit, but not well enough to fully conceal on close examination. They also find some massive dog turds in the yard. Carol starts to shove some in his pocket to analyze later before CG rushes over to suggest they just poke through it with a stick to see what they find.

They find some metahuman bone fragments, as well as what looks like chewed up cyberware screws/mounting plates etc. This explains why the dog’s are still so distracted with their digging and appear to be fighting over some large bones, perhaps. The team enters the mansion through the conservatory window that they were told was loose, and easily avoid the maintenance drone that is watering plants inside. Sneaking across the grand foyer, Creep spots that this whole place seems to be reassembled from disparate components of multiple other fancy structures- the owner’s rep as a collector is apparently accurate. Spotting a warded area, they assume this will be the collection they seek. Dig offers to sneak the team through, but isn’t super good at it, so CG stays outside to stand guard with his spirits.

The rest of the team enters a large, fancy library and collection room, and Dig uses his catalog spell to seek the Book of 9 Gates. He finds where it is supposed to be, but it and 5 other magical tomes are absent. Carol hears some faint chanting from below, and focusing in, identifies 6 chanting voices and also Tigran, seemingly chatting to a sacrificial victim about how it’s a shame they have to die, but immortality has a price! Creep, wanting more intel, looks around for a vent leading down, and finds one cleverly concealed in the fireplace. He sneaks down it and sees a real horror show: 7 cloaked figures consuming a sacrificial victim while a pile of bodies rots in the corner, and it quickly becomes a horrific orgy. He reverses the direction of the vent fan and heads back up.

Dig uses his new concrete spell to cover over the secret door to the basement that his catalog spell also found, and Creep starts a massive fire in the fireplace. With the vent fan reversed, this quickly floods the basement with smoke, and they team hears some panicked voices and coughing from below, as well as some rattling and banging from behind Dig’s concrete barrier. Carol notices 3 voices begging someone(s) else not to leave them, but the team is still surprised when 4 vampires snap out of mist form in the room with them. The vamps also seems surprised to find the team there, and a fight breaks out. Carol panic launches a lube grenade, splattering essentially the whole room, and Creature manages to catch 3 robed vamps in a web as well. The one remaining vamp levitates to get clear of the lube, and launches himself at Carol, pulling two memory blades to attack. Carol frantically dodges as he, Creep, and Creature all return fire.

The other 3 vamps all return to mist form and start to float away out the door to the foyer, where CG awaits them, and uses his Fear and Deathly Aura powers to send them fleeing further into the mansion. Dig begins to chase them with his huge wad of magical concrete, aiming to trap one. The flying vamp is eventually felled by a grenade from Creature, though this also destroys much of the room and injures the team in the confined space. Creep, noticing that the vamp seems to be regenerating, grabs one of his swords, and is badly shocked by a defensive system, before using it to decapitate the vamp, ending the regen. Carol puts on his respirator and rushes into the basement to grab the book. Weirdly, it is much less horrific than what Creep saw- some kind of illusion perhaps? There is only the one sacrificial victim, and they show evidence of 4 vamp bites but no cannibalism. The other 3 robed chanters all seem to have suffocated. Carol debates taking multiple books, but based on their size and weight decides to just grab the one.

Upstairs, CG kills one of the mist form vamps in astral combat, while Creature fries another in drake form with an elemental blast. Dig tries to capture the 3rd in concrete, but the vamp, seemingly misunderstanding his powers, frantically tries to shift back to human form and is bisected by the closing trap. Having killed everyone in the house, the team decides to leave. They control the dogs again, who merrily chase each other around, fighting over a human spine they dug up, and head for the exit. Creature, in drake form, swims back to Becksworth’s incredibly fast and grabs the Zodiac to pick everyone up, as they all hear some sirens approaching in response to the gunfire and explosions. Becksowrth asks what happened and Creature sends a video file, after which Becksworth will no longer make eye contact and seems disgusted.

They pilot the boat back towards Seattle proper, but spot some drones approaching from ahead and behind. Luckily CG’s powerful spirit is still concealing them, but the boat is fully visible. Dig turns into a bird and ditches them, and Creature decide to swim off on xyr on also. Carol frantically tries to get back into his diving gear but tips it all overboard and almost falls off himself. The remaining 3 decide to swim for it in a group with spirit assistance (plus silence and concealment), and they all manage to make their way to Ketron Island, where they eventually sneak aboard the ferry back to the mainland and get back to the van. A success (of sorts)! Now to return the book…

They also link back up with Tabasco, who reports that he provided some overwatch (along with other runners) for a meeting Kincaid brokered to end the syndicate wars. It seems that Urubia and the Triad were kind of behind the whole thing, using the chaos to bolster their own power, and in Urubia’s case build up a whole new multi-gang syndicate in Redmond and begin buying her way into Puyallup. Nobody seems fully happy with the outcome otherwise, but the killing had gotten out of control and was effecting bottom lines, so a tentative peace seems best for all parties, especially as everyone figures out the changing situation re: Free Seattle, with the Referendum outcome announcement coming tomorrow!!

Runners
Carol
Creature
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig

With Creep’s fresh memory of the Black Lodge mental cryptographic key, they head straight to the UW campus and meet up with Carol, Elijah and Maggie to begin cracking the journal. Tabasco takes up surveillance on the roof while Carol and Creep help decipher. The rest head back to Chew Gum’s safehouse to meet up with Jaga The Walking Witch, and Chew Gum brings her a UW colored bouquet from the botany department. Dig and Jaga verbally spar a bit as per usual, and Jaga and Creature talk some life philosophy. Dig heads to bed, but then wakes back up to get Jaga to teach him a spell. CG shows Jaga his small arboretum, and she gives some tips for more vibrant life, while allowing for the decay that he needs for his practice.

They all sleep, and compare dreams in the morning- even Creature gets some overflow at this point, and they worry what the sunken city, the avalanche, and the eclipse might portend. They warn the team that something bad may be coming, and then Dig begins crafting a concrete homunculus with their assistance. They notice that there seems to be a huge area detection spell passively scanning Seattle, which they fear is the Black Lodge. They also warn the team about this, but not before it may have effected Tabasco up on the roof- the rest likely are safe inside various magical wards. Iva Linus Hathaway comes and visits Tabasco with some coffee and they discuss experimental arrow design for a while.

Meanwhile, the journal team has made some impressive progress with Creep’s implants and stolen knowledge, Carol’s experience on the metaplanes and Seelie Court, and the overall expertise of Elijah and Maggie. They uncover hints of Black Lodge infiltration of the IOND after the “debacle” in DeeCee. They find out the Keymasters relocated from DC to St Louis, and that the BL has a significant footprint in the ARCHology there, and may be importing metaplanar materials for construction. They find hints of some sort of opposing group of human supremacists called the “Theran Society” who want the Horrors to return to cleanse the world of magic and metahumanity. They get some hints at some other projects and recruitments in progress also.

The team warn Maggie and Elijah about the likely danger, and Maggie seems spooked though Elijah is cavalier as usual. They quickly sell the info to Eletheria, having heard that the Sea Dragon is highly involved in the “Free St Louis” movement and the ARCHology there. Hoping that this will get them clear for the moment, they decide to rest up a bit and see what happens. Before long, they get a call from Margaret Telestrian asking them to break into Chuck Beale’s office and get a little preview of the Free Seattle results before she commits her vote (she claims to be the last holdout to not tell Beale her final stance).

She provides a lot of building schematics and info, as well guard and security info, and offers a bonus if the team does the job immediately, otherwise it needs to get done by the next day. They accept, and Creep slams some drugs to stay with it after the all-nighter. They grab a few more B&E tools, and Dig begins a massive lightning bolt ritual with Tabasco as his spotter. Tabasco heads Downtown and finds a good perch with a view of the government building rooftop and Beale’s office.

Creep gets smuggled onto Council Island again and sneaks to John Abernathy’s chopper, clinging to the bottom with gecko gloves and magnet hand. Creature follows up with ACE, and the dispatcher Wizard and one of the runners Gentry, who xe met at OtherCon, hook xyr up with a courier run to deliver snacks and stims to the KE HTR team on duty at the building. Recognizing that the included Psyche is surely for the building security mage, Creature carefully poisons it without a non-lethal seizure-inducing toxin, to add some distraction. CG uses one of his spirit’s animal control powers to get a couple angry hornets into the snack package as well.

Carol and CG circle the area on GrdiGuide in the van in case backup is needed. Creature parkours the package right up the doors, and gets sent back to the guard room, but told to come straight back out. Xe delivers the package, but the excited KE guards get the included hornets extra riled up in the process. They quickly deal with the distraction, but Creature manages to copy one of their access keycards in the chaos. One of the guards has a PTSD flashback to Chicago and accuses Creature of being a bug, and won’t lower her weapon til the mage confirms that Creature is not a bug. Creature sees that the Psyche is delivered to the mage though- good deal.

Creature exfils, and Creep manages to sneak past the warded door upstairs when it is dropped to let Abernathy and his party in. Beale greets them and brings them down to the big meeting room on the 11th floor. Creep uses the keycard that Creature got to get through the security door onto the 12th floor, and heads towards Beale’s office, avoiding cameras. He just manages to crack the lock and hurriedly leaps over a pressure plate inside the door onto the heavy desk, as the mage has a seizure and triggers a medical response, with a few KE guards rushing onto the floor with a crash kit.

Creep pokes around a bit, having avoided detection, as Creature rejoins the van crew. Creep finds a desk safe, and uses the handprint Kit stole from Beale at the intro gala to bypass the first security level, but biffs it on his first attempt at bypassing the lock. He uses the handprint again to verify his ID and manages to crack the lock on the second try, quickly snapping pics of all the docs in the file folder labelled “Free Seattle”- Beale is old school and uses paper records. He just has time to finish, close the safe, and dive under the desk, as Beale comes up, greeting the KE guards on the way (who seem to have stabilized the mage).

As Beale enters the door, a sniper round takes out a chunk of his selection of nice liquors halfway across the room, and he drops to the floor in panic, luckily not seeing Creep also hiding there. Tabasco gets another anonymous text saying “4 o’clock, 13th floor”, and turns to spot a well-concealed sniper under a tarp on a window washing platform. He sees the sniper fire a round but can’t figure out what it hit- Creep reports no more impacts in the office. Dig uses this opportunity to let off his lightning bolt, and completely destroys the sniper and the platform, sending the remains of both plummeting to the ground far below.

The KE guards quickly usher Beale out of there while covering him, and Creep uses this chance to quickly swing out the shot-out office window, and gecko glove around the corner. Unfortunately, he’s slipping a bit in the rain. CG gets one of his spirits to offer some support, and Carol rapidly launches the VTOL from the van, using all it’s stealth mods to scoop up Creep without triggering the building’s rooftop turrets. The team scatters quickly, though Tabasco stops to see if he can get any info from the fallen platform/sniper, but no such luck. They contact Telestrian with the info, and get paid, and and also sell it all to Annie, as per their agreement.

Tabasco calls Tommy Vermont and asks him to look into the whole sniper thing, and Vermont uses some old KE contacts to get some info. Officially, nothing happened- a rogue lightning bolt killed an unfortunate building maintenance employee. Unofficially, there was a high-powered sniper duel over Downtown today- both snipers were killed, one shot, one by lightning. The one killed by lightning was a merc/assassin named Horza, and the other was an ex-ARES employee named Susan Hayes who’d been on the run since killing her husband (also an ARES employee) during an extraction attempt by another corp. Tabasco is devastated, as he clearly recognizes that this was his mom, though he manages to play it cool with Vermont.

He reports into the team about what he’s determined, and says he’s headed back to his safehouse alone to take some time with it, and that they should do the next run without him. The team tries to talk him out of it, but he says he needs to think a bit. In other assassin news, an Egyptian Old God cultist tried to poison Layli Red Feather, but failed in his attempt, and was later hunted down and killed by Sioux Wildcats trying to leave Seattle, causing a minor diplomatic incident as they Wildcats aren’t supposed to operate outside Council Island. However, it mostly serves to make KE and the UCAS JTF look further incompetent as they didn’t catch the assassin themselves.

The team also hears that Tauren got a team to dig further into Romeo and reveal that he had done some sketchy false flag attacks using human supremacists in the leadup to Prop 23, confirming Tauren’s suspicions. He helped to get Prop 23 passed, but his methods were too fucked. Word of this spreads around, further burning Romeo and blunting the shit he’s been talking on the team. The Mythfits also managed to gain some intel on the Sons of Snohomish and their affiliated clinics in Snohomish, and uncovered disturbing experiments on giants to uncover the source of the “reversion trigger” and try to make it deployable.

Runners
Creature
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig

Carol continues to lay low for a bit, preparing to decamp for Detroit once Vogel is ready. On that front, there’s been some news: ARES has begun some major matrix upgrades in Detroit, which Vogel says are likely a cover to justify “outages” during Operation: Latvian Gambit. There are also a lot of kill contracts being offered for ARES mi-level execs and scientists, which Vogel says is Otto Hendricks covering his tracks from Bottleneck/Pyro/Apex ahead of Latvian Gambit’s kickoff. Don Michaels also tells Tabasco he’s headed to Detroit along with a lot of other Cutters, to start doing some “street cleaning” on ARES’ behalf. Tabasco tries to warn him about bugs without warning him about bugs, and hopes they don’t end up on opposite sides of a future fight. He asks him for any last minute gear that the Cutters need to leave, but it seems like they’re loading up all their equipment for the mission.

Tabasco is happy to report that he got revenge for the Cutters who went missing up in Snohomish. He doesn’t bother to tell Michaels that the revenge was secondhand and accidental, and Michaels seems to appreciate the closure before he leaves town for an uncertain amount of time. The team also hears from Aradia, who has a disturbing report: someone has fully cleared out the Sisterhood of Ariadne clubhouse and scrubbed it. She warns that if the Black Lodge is looking into what happened it could go badly for the team. She also reports that she has made some good advance prep for Jonny Spinrad to party while he’s in town, and that Jonny has apparently been having “some trouble at home with the missus” and is looking to cut loose- which Aradia is all in favor of. The team notices that she seems to have taken a bit of a harder turn again after opening up a bit to community with the Sisterhood.

Aradia also wants to examine the blade fragment, and uses Pyschometry for a few hours to take a look. She learns a lot about the blade’s forging, use, and breaking, and confirms/further fills out the team’s existing info. She also reports that the blade fragment is made of valuable materials if they were to melt it down and separate/refine them, but it might be dangerous to hold onto. The main crew decides that at this point Chew Gum and Dig need to either be in or out, so they offer them the team norms and permanent places on the crew. Both accept, and the crew heads back to Finn’s Safehouse to celebrate. Tabasco, noticing that the team name suggestion box is full, suggests they vote on a name, and they do so, settling on “Hired Power”, which Carol approves remotely.

Chew Gum heads back to his safehouse in Puyallup the next morning and is bummed to see that Jaga stopped by while they were out, and left a note on a leaf. He and Dig call the Watering Hole again to leave her another message to make a specific plan to meet up. The crew decide to try a ritual- they now both want to track local Black Lodge activity, and decipher the code book they retrieved. They head to Blake Island to seek a safe place for the ritual, and decide to cast it on Creep. given his sneakiness and good mental abilities. Creep calls on Shiawase Daigou’s good will and gets connected with the Delta clinic again, where he gets an attention co-processor to help deal with the overwhelming amount of magical info he’s about to receive.

Aradia helps with the ritual, seemingly having developed a grudge against the BL. She also reports on night one of partying with Spinrad (fun and wild), and Tabasco tries to help out a friend, Nyssa Hallas, by recommending that Aradia take Spinrad to Club Penumbra at some point. The team also spots some more Menehune Dwarves seemingly exploring the sea caves on Blake Island, confirming the CG and Dig that the Menehune Underground are also likely working for the Sea Dragon, as rumored. The ritual goes well, and Creep finds himself with a massively expanded mental perception of a very specific thought in the minds of others: the strange language from the BL code book.

They split Seattle into 6 grid sections, and Tabasco and Creature protect Creep in the van while cruising around, seeking hits on the thoughts the ritual aimed to identify. The rest stay on the island to maintain the ritual. They get 3 hits throughout the city, and start with the friendliest one: the alchemist Squeamish. He trades some info with them, and confirms his limited knowledge of the BL script: he explains that it uses magical cryptography, essentially a ritual done on all participants to be able to read each others’ code. He says they should be able to crack it if they can scan it out of anyone else’s mind who was looped in. He also explains a bit about the Rogue Lodge, and the local power broker Jonathan Blake, who seems to be the mysterious “JB” hinted at on Aunt Clara’s comms. Blake apparently had his owns son killed after he leaked some BL into to the runner Axis Mundi, who is also now missing.

He also gives them some news updates: the Aztlan-er fixer Izidor Kurtlanik was gunned down, along with his bodyguard Achilles Serifim, in an attack by the Iron Templars, in which one of them was killed. The survivor then tried to hit Dewei Tao as well, but was foiled as he had apparently gotten spooked and hired 2 very pro bodyguards: Danger Sensei and Shieldmaiden, who easily felled the already wounded assassin. Carl Derrick was poisoned in his hotel room (one of mine, chuckles Squeamish), leading to a minor PR kerfluffle when his wife said that she hoped that “that awful sinful city WOULD leave”, contrary to the official UCAS position that Derrick was meant to represent. Two Chimera assassins also got into a massive firefight downtown with the Red Samurai guards of Takuto Nakagawa, and essentially everyone was killed when one of the Chimeras detonated some kind of backpack bomb rather than be captured. Based on the CBRN cleanup crews, it seems this could have been a mini-nuke or chemical weapon of some sort. Renraku announces that they luckily have a digital persona backup of important high level execes, so Nakagawa will be able to complete his duty to the corp and the Referendum.

The team does some research and decides that Blake is too hard of a target: Mayor of Bellevue, head of Centurion Security, and former spymaster for Dunkelzahn before falling out with Nadja Daviar: too hot. So they decide to go after the third ping, which came from Council Island. Tabasco gets a bunch of stun arrows and captures 11 sea birds with Creature helping keep them calm and sedated til ready, Dig assumes the same bird form, and CG uses animal control through a spirit to make the flock follow Dig on a recon flight over Council Island. Dig uses a smaller version of the same spell again, and sees an Eastern Euro man on a comm call under a tree. He heads back after getting spotted by magical security on the island, and spends the night making an impressively accurate sculpture of the man’s face.

Creep, worried about Takashi getting too powerful (he seems to be benefiting greatly from the direction that Shiawase is taking the Spirit of the City in) pays him a visit and they do some meditation and conversation on the meaning of leadership etc. Takashi explains that mutation is purely consensual now, and a more arduous process than before without Nightmare’s Chemosh artifact around. But he says this is all for the good. He seems as before to be living by his own personal code. Creep leaves still concerned but feeling maybe a little better. Tabasco leaves a message for Jimmy Kincaid, and is surprised when he calls back. Kincaid is a classic drunkard PI, and fills Tabasco in on some of what’s been going on with him/Puyallup. He also accepts Tabasco’s offer of assistance, and asks him to pass along a message to Margaret Telestrian.

Tabasco does so, warning Telestrian to tell High Prince Evan Harris to stay away from Seattle., in exchange for not releasing info that could damage Telestrian/Tir Tairngire’s standing post-Referendum. Tabasco makes clear he doesn’t know what’s happening and is just delivering the message, and Telestrian seems to enjoy his bluntness and lack of guile. She tells him if he hears of a sword fragment with Sperethiel script he should tell her. He calls back almost immediately and reports that he has it and offers it for sale, the team having gotten what they can from it and worried about keeping it longterm. She pays up, and also offers to get the team day passes to Council Island after Tabasco asks. She also ID’s the sculpted bust of their surveillance target as Tibur Dobos, some kind of political operative from DeeCee. The team does some research and it seems like he has been thoroughly scrubbed from the matrix. Based on some old info on Jackpoint, it looks like he is Black Lodge, and has an ongoing interest in the ACHE.

They decide to get smuggled over instead, and hire Sounder for the job. Dig stays behind to provide spell assistance from a distance. They infiltrate south on the island along the same path as the last time they were here, not having gotten spotted or tripped any defenses then, and find the setup is only slightly upgraded since. They reach the edge of the woods, and Tabasco and CG hang back to provide long distance cover and escape assistance, while Creep and Creature follow their guidance over the TacNet to sneak up to the edge of Embassytown and find the man they seek. They find him finishing a meeting with John Abernathy, and Creep manages to do a brush pass and inject him with narcoject. Creep quickly slams one of Clara’s potions and mind probes Dobos while he is out.

He gets some info but is almost instantly forced to retreat when Dobos jerks back to consciousness (likely an auto-injector) and summons aid. Creep sets off some smoke grenades on a different path to cover his and Creature’s retreat, and they reach the treeline and get back to the rendezvous with the subs without issue. He was able to get the cryptographic key they needed but not much else, but that was the most important thing, so mission accomplished! And his attention co=processor should allow him to work on transcribing the code book, so that’s all good news. Next up, back to the University to start translating!

The team also gets the news that the Call of the Void cult killed another astronomer who was worried about the asteroids they’re pulling onto a collision course, which spurred Arleesh and Dyna Mite to action. They hired Kukulkan’s crew, who made the necessary phone calls and arrangements and got Buttercup, Lady Xoc and the other necessary parties involved. They ask the team to get them a meeting with the Sea Dragon to offer their assistance in dealing with the ones that are prophecied to hit the oceans. The team agrees, and the K’s Crew offers to share info on lesser Horrors and other existential threats anytime. So that’s Prophecy 10 resolved and the planet saved! Hopefully…..

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Creature
Tabasco
Creep
Chew Gum
Dig

Dig and Creature do some bonding by riding each other in various shapeshifted forms, non-sexually. Their animalistic natures seem to fit well together. The team gets some updates from previous members: Kit has managed to link up with some local Brokerage X operatives (Gina and 3 Card, the brains and muscle, respectively, though both have a lot of financial knowledge) and set up insurance for the Shadow Chaps locally. Teams will opt in or out as a group, and will trade paydata/early tips etc to BX in exchange for BX covering a certain amount of medical per runner per run. Aradia reports in that she is keeping busy doing party prep for Spinrad’s arrival- rumor say he has a big business deal or acquisition on the table and needs everything to go real well, but also wants to party outlandishly.

More disturbingly, Aradia says that noone at the Sisterhood of Ariadne has been answering her calls today, as she was supposed to go by later for another ritual lesson but is too busy with party planning. She asks the team to check in on them. Chew Gum also chats with Dig about strange dreams, as he has also started to have them, and they seem to overlap with Dig’s odd dreams a bit more than would seem usual. Creep and Creature take the van out to meet up with Dig and CG, not wanting to share their safehouse location just yet, though Dig seemingly unaware of the implications tells them all that he could easily find them if he tried. After some tension he agrees not to, for now, but Creature promises to let him try once they approve him for full membership.

They all load into van and travel (mostly via GridGuide) up to Snohomish. They notice that Kit has left the drones and RCC in the van for team use, but has removed the Carboxing arm and rigger interface, presumably to set up a new rig for themself. Reaching the SOA clubhouse, they do some external investigation, as something seems to be off and some unusual magical signatures are detectable from outside. They find no life signs inside, but a warded area appears to be the intact (likely their ritual chamber). There are a suspicious number of cars present, including a slightly concealed dirt bike out back. Both the front and back doors appear to have been breached while locked. After using his rotten possum’s Deathly Aura to try to spook out any stragglers, they carefully enter, searching for traps. The only one they initially find is an explosive under the dirtbike’s seat.

From the investigation inside, they determine a few things: one lone attacker entered through the back, and seems to have been a very fast and efficient killer, using a mix of quiet weaponry. A separate team entered through the front and appears to have been more methodical and used some kind of harpoon guns (some Witches are still pinned to walls and furniture, and appear to have been executed if not killed by the initial shot). The lone killer and the group seem to have intersected at the ritual chamber, where the surviving Witches made their last stand- unfortunately the Witches were all killed, and the team accounts for them all, except the top half of one which was cut off completely smoothly and seemingly somehow sealed or cauterized without burning. Her top half is also missing, as are all the assailants. There is also a sizzling cut through the otherwise intact ward around the ritual circle- the team is confused as the ward should either have failed or healed.

However, they also find the top half of a sword inscribed with a strange script, some burnt toxic reagents, and a satchel with an expended device that looks sort of like an explosive but doesn’t seem to have blown up. Creep speculates that some sort of portal or magical effect is likely responsible. Looking around a bit more, Dig uncovers a secret door in the floor, and after disabling some traps, the team heads down the revealed chute and enters a small tunnel. Chew Gum finds an ornate key around Aunt Clara’s neck, and Creature uses it to unlock the door at the end of the tunnel, but is badly electrocuted. Creep manages to knock xyr free, and they tumble into a small office. Searching it, they find a lot more tech than anywhere else in the clubhouse, including a high end commlink, an offline terminal with a digital whiteboard, a journal, some hermetic reagents, 6 alchemical potions, and one Tarot Card.

Creep opens the journal, which bursts into flame. He manages to put it out but is badly burned. Dig drinks one of the potions and feels like he gained some kind of heightened sense but can’t figure out what. They check everything else carefully for traps and then haul it all out of the basement and to the van, with CG concealing them as they exit. CG also has a spirit make a silence sphere, and then snipes the bike out back to set off the explosive trap so that noone will unexpectedly trigger it later- a real civic-minded guy. Recognizing that the journal is in some kind of code, that they aren’t hackers, and that none of them know whatever language is on the blade, they decide to seek help. Dig feels his extra sense going away and manages to focus and figure out it was an astral clairvoyance potion.

First off they head down to Lady Zelda’s Lore Galore store in Puyallup, as usual she talks their ears off but does provide some useful info- as Creep had speculated, the code in the journal looks somewhat similar to the text in the Voynich Manuscript, and Zelda concurs, suggesting it is likely an internal cipher used by the Black Lodge. She warns them about the dangers of messing with this group, and also ID’s the rest of the potions- all detection and mind effecting stuff, so Dig holds onto them. Creep and Creature remember there’s a Vault of Ages in the van so they chuck the potions in to preserve them.

Next they head to Severinus de Cloet’s cart, as she has hinted to Elven royalty ties in her past, to better ID the sword fragment, which Zelda said was Sperethial. Severinus seems a little spooked and drops it after examining, and says this was a blade supposedly crafted by experts in magical weaponry on the Seelie Court for a legendary assassin who later went rogue: Teachdaire, aka The Messenger. Supposedly the blade is able to dispel magic and is exceptional as piercing magical armor. This possibly explains the strange unhealing slice they found in the warded ritual circle at the Sisterhood’s clubhouse. Severinus warns them further about The Messenger, but seems relieved that he may have gotten shoved off into some metaplane- she says that he has killed multiple members of elven and Seelie courts, so hopefully someone will take a chance to get revenge….

They next contact Tauren and request some hacking help, but warn him there are probably some traps. He agrees and says he’ll work fast, but will bring in a couple others to help. They all rest for the night, and CG and Dig have another weirdly similar dream. Creep and Creature both get Kit to patch up their armor from the run. The next day it looks like Tauren pulled an all-nighter, and he requests some extra pay for medical expenses- they lost a few files, but recovered most of the data, but it was VERY well-protected. He says that it looks like Clara was the lone user, and appears to have been reporting to a handler ID’ed as “JB” on a number of different areas. One was the use of the Sisterhood to foretell various events, possibilities, etc, and the potential for recruiting various members someday. Another was new connections with some useful shadowrunners. The 3rd was a pressing investigation into a newly acquired photograph of the previously unknown plane of Dis.

There is a lot of back and forth with JB about what this could mean, and it seems like the primary consensus is that this could give them a serious leg up against their opposition in this area. After some digging, the team is able to ID this opposition as the APEP Consortium, newly acquired by MCT, who locally operate out of a magic research facility atop Cougar Mountain in Renton. Clara’s last report is that she is planning to use her Sisterhood to do a large ritual to try to gain more info about Dis, and JB warning her to be careful, as their adversaries are very jealous of their current advantages in this area. JB and Clara never directly confirm that they are Black Lodge, but the sense of superiority and unspoken human supremacy that comes through says enough. The team realizes that they didn’t find the Dis pic anywhere at the clubhouse. Creature also recalls that xe has seen harpoon guns before: the Rift Jumpers who attack the team when they were leaving the OZ hyperplane to go to the Library of Alexandria. So are the Rift Jumpers connected to APEP? Who are they?

They next contact Elijah to get help cracking the code in the journal. They head to his temporary basement office at UW Downtown, and find him with a few full-limb casts on, which he explains away as “Antarctica being interesting this time of year.” They get down to business, and he has a mini-me version of himself (some sort of Homunculus) close the door and fetch coffee. He seems very smart and just mildly condescending if he ever feels like they’re wasting his time. The team trades him a bunch of Dis info in exchange for help with the strange device and the journal. He examines the device and explains that it looks like someone has re-jiggered one of ARES’ “Project: Bottleneck” portal closers to reverse the polarity and use it to open portals instead. He says he thinks they would be imperfect, inaccurate, and very temporary. The tech doesn’t look totally finished, but nonetheless- very interesting! In combo with the burnt toxic reagents they found, he explains that you might be able to control portal size/shape etc a bit.

For the book, he calls in a colleague: Prof. Maggie Magnusson (with the team’s approval). Maggie and Creep chat a bit, having met at the Crypt, and then Creep, Creature, and CG are dismissed as they aren’t really much good at helping with the book and it’s a small office. Dig stays to assist. They don’t make much progress on the book, and Elijah suggests reaching out to some AI contacts of Maggie’s to speed it up, but the team rejects that idea for now. Dig asks for help learning some mind reading spells, which Elijah agrees to, in order to try to find the magical cryptographic key that might crack the journal quicker. The rest of the team decides to look into the Tarot card. Following some clues, they end up at the Numismatic Museum of Seattle, Downtown, and buy tickets.

They find the coin hinted at on the card, and “near” it find a huge glass jar with some trace magic, filled with tens of thousands of rare-ish dimes. The curator claims that is a world record collection of dimes, and seems to be a coin pervert. The team tries to figure out how to heist it, while Creep sneaks into the basement to try to find out who the unlisted donor of this item is. With some miraculous searching, Creep finds out that it was Dunkelzahn himself. They head out for now, planning to possibly return later to steal the thing but not quite sure how to proceed, as they guess it would weigh close to a ton. For now, they link back up with Dig and discuss next steps- it seems they’re waiting on the translation of the book, so CG and Dig reach out to Jaga, the Walking Witch, to suggest a sleepover, to bring the 3 Tzuri Group traditions together and see if their various dreams continue to align, and what that might mean….

The team also gets some new from around town: Romeo has been talking shit about them since they burned him with ARES, probably permanently, and he will not be working with them again. Annie has been doing some quiet damage control though, and she hopes this doesn’t harm the team’s rep too badly. Rahel Juric of Omnistar released the bunraku parlor info about Carl Derrick (UCAS rep), and also the info about Reed/ARES trying to cover it up to blackmail Derrick. This gets the public pissed at both ARES and the UCAS government (for being so in the pockets of the corps), playing into Omnistar’s hands nicely. Reed tries to do a damage control press conference, but is killed by a sniper. ARES tries to blame the whole thing on her and sweep it under the rug, announcing that their longtime political head for Seattle, Karen King, will be taking over their place on the Referendum.

The missing CAS rep has been located- the Blank Verses team managed to find a ship with his corpse aboard a ship docked at the local Proteus aquacology. It looks like the Null assassin Hitsec Burn corrupted or unleashed an AI aboard the vessel, which killed and experimented upon the passengers. The BV didn’t head further into the Proteus facility, as it was outside their job parameters, especially as they already had multiple casualties from the run. The BV spread the word about a mad AI on the loose on the ship, nd possibly in the facility, and a minor panic starts- likely what Hitsec was after primarily- bad press for AI’s.

Gregory Bear-Killer also went after his target: the Horizon rep Thomas Muir. Muir’s bodyguard, Sutun the Pillar of Ankara, managed to hold back a toxic wolf but was killed by acid while wrestling it. Muir himself had a surprise adept awakening and manged to fight off and subdue Bear-Killer, who was arrested and is now detained on McNeil Prison island. Horizon plays up Muir’s “good guy with magic” heroism, which is very popular with the masses, especially given his “awe shucks” vibe at the press conference he insists on concluding after the attack.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Creature
Tabasco
Creep

Goodbye to:
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
and Aradia

and Introducing:
Chew Gum
and Dig

While the team is busy hiring out tons of runners, a couple new ritualists roll into town. Chew Gum, a Necro Mage affiliated with the Tzuri Group’s Black Magic school, and Dig, a Beast Mage affiliated with Tzuri Group’s Red Magic school, have both found themselves in Seattle after ending or finishing their formal instruction. Dig has been having some prophetic dreams (a blood eclipse, an avalanche, and some underground cities) that have brought him here, while Chew Gum is seeking money, connections, artifacts and power, and heard Seattle was a good spot for all of it.

They link up, and get to know each other a bit. Both are very strange. Dig seems to be a homeless shapeshifter with some rock-skin SURGE qualities, while Chew Gum is a pot-bellied Ogre accompanied by some Necro spirits housed in a mass of rotten plant matter worn as a bandolier and a rotting possum. They get along just fine. Following up on some Tzuri Group leads, they decide to investigate some happenings in the Underground.

They bribe some Skraacha to watch CG’s bike (with sidecar for Possum and DIg, who is in dog form), and head down into the Umbra district from a Night of Rage memorial in a public park, which contains a secret entrance. They send some of their spirits off to search for signs of Green Magic, as they heard a fellow former student went rogue and may be down here. They eventually come across some Rooters members, who CG makes a good impression on, after convincing them that “his dog” isn’t laughing at them. Dig uses a mindlink spell to stay in communication with CG while in animal form.

The Rooters give them a bit of the lay of the land of politics and power struggles in the underground, and tell them the Green Mage they seek is a weirdo healer named Jaga, The Walking Witch. They follow the Rooters directions to bypass the main tourist/developed area, and cut around to the Ork Underground to the north. They pass through some construction zones that look to be SK and EVO sub-arcologies in the process of being built. Reaching the Ork Underground, they encounter Big V’s Monument, and eventually find their way to the Watering Hole, where CG once again overcomes his and Dig’s bizarre appearance by virtue of speaking Or’Zet (and being able to down Hurlg and Big D Hot Sauce with no trouble).

The barkeep uses an alchemical token to summon Jaga, and she walks in a few hours later. They converse, and she reports that she has been having her own versions of Dig’s dreams, seemingly filtered through her Green Magic perspective. They squabble a bit, as their fields usually do, but CG helps keep the peace. They agree to work together on some investigations, but Jaga makes clear that she won’t help them if they’re working against the “true” Underground at any point- take from above, not below and all. She also tells them about some other interesting locations to find (and avoid) down here. This includes the Ghoulberg area (good body disposal, but make sure you don’t get snagged too- helps to make some infected friends) and the toxie Druid cult harvesting the fatberg out in Redmond.

They also notice the barkeep gives her a human sized Hurlg mug, a rare sign of respect to a non-Trog in this establishment. She also seems to have replaced a former cyberarm with an animate plant matter arm, and has a small humanoid plant familiar of some sort that follows her. She seems to be kind of evenly somewhere between CG and Dig’s relative power levels. CG also makes contact via a bar terminal with Sung Yi, and info broker with the Choson Ring, one of the local Seoul’Pa’s, and proves his nationalist credentials sufficiently to get a test job: fuck with the Yak in a meaningful way and they will help him out and give him more work. He agrees.

They leave the bar and continue their investigations. They head to the Dwarf Underground, the ritziest area, to look into rumors of Menehune Dwarfs working some kind of excavation project. Sung Yi already tipped them that the Menehune are likely working on behalf of the Sea Dragon, so they tread carefully, plus they inevitably attract plenty of attention from the guards (Hard Corps mercs) who police the zone’s borders, and who insist on confirming magically that CG isn’t a shedim. They get in, but are under constant surveillance while there. They use their spirits to find the nearest large collection of excavating tools, and confirm that it is somewhere down under the bottom of the central elevator shaft of a new 10-story deep hotel.

The concierge confirms that the Penthouse suite (the lowest level, with a private elevator) has been indefinitely rented, and will not allow them access to any areas without renting a room, which they obviously can’t afford (the concierge has correctly assessed this). Dig checks it out astrally with his Watcher spirit, and finds a massive magical barrier blocking access to the bottom of the shaft, which also is laced with some impressive illusion spells to block sound and visual without being obvious about it. So it seems that whatever the Sea Dragon has the Menehune digging up/out/etc is down there, but will remain secret for now.

They head back to the surface and get a call from someone telling them that since they’ve been poking around, they might as well come have a chat. She invites them to her yacht, and suggests they head there immediately. Not having any better leads, they do, with CG riding atop Dig (in horse form) at an impressive pace through Downtown. This gets them noticed by any magically aware individuals watching, and they don’t do much better with subtlety at the docks, where they startle a man when Dig transforms back to man form, and then use a spirit to trip him into the water, where they watch while he drowns. Luckily for the man, some other boaters rescue him just in time, but CG and Dig are filmed and shamed on social media for standing by and doing nothing (though noone seems to realize they were also the cause).

They head aboard the yacht, and meet Eletheira Windtaker, correctly assessing that she is a Sea Dragon rep herself. She tells them (essentially) to stop poking their noses in, but suggests that the SD will reward them well and maybe share some info if they start working for her. They agree in principle, which seems sufficient for the time, and Eletheria gives them some contact info for some local runners she’s been using for a variety of jobs, who she suggests linking up with. For now, they head north to meet up with the Sisterhood of Ariadne and talk ritual magic, having a few forecastings they wish to attempt.

Meanwhile, the team has cleared up their jobs list quite a bit with subcontractors, and Kit has decided to retire from day to day running in order to focus on fixing and managing the Shadow Chapters. Aradia also takes her leave, in order to focus on her personal magical development as well as her investigations into Entropy circles and the Shades night club. Both promise to stay in touch with developments from those areas, but won’t be available on the regular for day to day runs. Aradia’s first stop is the Sisterhood of Ariadne, to do a ritual to learn about some of the assassins in town, where she encounters Chew Gum and Dig. They agree to help with the ritual, recognizing Aradia as one of the team they were supposed to seek out, and Aradia offers to connect them with the rest of the team for payment.

For payment to the Sisterhood, Aradia offers the mana plate photo of the door to Dis on the Moon, which Clara and the others eagerly accept. For all their grandmotherly vibes, their ritual chamber is quite nice and put together, and they decide first to focus on the legendary assassin Teachdaire, as the team decides to try to cooperate with the Moonlight Thorns to take him out. The ritual works, and tracks TD to a farm safehouse in Snohomish, but he has some kind of magical protection that cause about half the participants to forget ever having seen him (including the 3 runners). Luckily, Clara and the other team members, who were observing via TacNet, do remember, so not a total bust. But scary! He looked right at them as if aware of the ritual!

They also do some digging into some other assassins, and offer to help John Abernathy (as unpleasant as always) survive against the Wrecking Crew, a thrillkill explosives trio. They recommend a few bodyguards, and he chooses to hire Dynamic Solutions (“for the optics”), which proves useful, as the Executive Protection team does their job, engaging in a massive fire(/explosives) fight with the in disguise Wrecking Crew as they “sealed cracks” on the bridge to Council Island. The JTF and NAN military on either side of the bridge also got pulled in, but luckily due to some good planning from OrkCEO, civilian casualties were minimal and fatalities were limited to combatants. Unfortunately, the bridge was badly damaged and is closed for the time being, but Abernathy survived, ensuring his “leave” vote.

The team checks in with Romeo, who hassles them some more about doing Free Seattle jobs, as the referendum is flying by. They decide to do a twofer, and take Major Brenda Reed’s job with the goal of sabotaging her by feeding the info to Rahel Juric. Tabasco does his best negotiating since they don’t want to risk putting Carol on the call, and gets an OK promise of pay from Reed, to manufacture some blackmail on Carl Derrick, the weak-willed UCAS congressman, by taking advantage of his predilection for Bunraku parlors. Reed gives them his favorite in-town place, his schedule of visits, and his preferred type, and tells them to take it from there, so long as whatever they do is bad enough to give her permanent leverage for getting him “out of it.”

They do some recon, and get a good security head count and idea for the building exterior. Creep pays for a membership (after verifying his age) and does the same inside. Small building, lots of guards. They contact Las Muñecas to tip them to what’s going down and offer an opportunity to rescue the 6 “dolls” kept onsite. LM agrees. Dig uses magic to program the AIMAD, freaking everyone out, and leaving it so that Creep will just have to run the program. Creep buys some gamma-scopolamine, and heads back into the parlor, renting the room directly under the one Derrick always uses for the same amount of time as him.

Once the team observes Derrick arrive, Creep waits 15 minutes, then crawls down the dumbwaiter from his room and up the one into Derrick’s room, making good use of his linked camo skin and suit, and KO’s Derrick without any trouble. He runs the AIMAD on him a few times to make sure it sticks, and then heads back the same way he came, leaving before things get chaotic.

The rest of the plan springs into motion: without Kit present, the gloves are off! So Tabasco KO’s a Yak guard with an injection arrow, and Carol retrieves the arrows and breaks their neck, and then steps back out of the way as Derrick’s driver races towards the back door. Chew Gum causes him to have an accident, slamming into another Yak guard who rushes out back and going flying through the windshield. Tabasco and Creature KO these two as well, and Carol retrieves the arrow again.

Derrick comes running out back, screaming, with Yak on his heels, who start firing as he peels off in his car, abandoning his driver. The Yak try to grab the driver and head back in, but find the back door locked somehow. They send runners to other Yak bars in the same strip, but Chew Gum and Tabasco kill them both, and Carol splashes lube grenades in the alley to add to the chaos. Feeling that they’ve done enough, they exfiltrate, but Tabasco spots 7 stealthed VTOLs taking off from the brothel roof as they leave.

They report into Reed and send her the footage, and she seems satisfied and pays up, though she asks if it wasn’t a bit of overkill, though she doesn’t seem to mind. Not sure what she’s referring to, they check the news and find reports that an organized crime brothel went up in flames, with multiples bodies already recovered inside. Checking in with Las M, they hear that the rescue went well (all 6 dolls recovered and into hiding/recovery in their network), but that a local contractor was a it enthusiastic. They put together that Yoko Aruki was on the job, and is continuing her anti-Yakuza firebug style.

However, this also nicely fulfills Sung Yi’s request, so Chew Gum advances with the Seoul-Pa. They sell the info about Derrick, as well as the fact that Reed was behind it, to Rahel Juric, who also pays up, and then tell Annie that they did this, but don’t tell Romeo. They figure this is a good test of how he responds, in terms of getting a feel for him, and Annie overall approves the strategy. They also get her to negotiate a deal between the Yak and the Skraacha for ACHE smuggling once Shiawase takes over, on behalf of Shiawase Daigou, as the team is so unpopular with the Yak right now that they can’t possibly do it themselves.

They also hear the a Songbirds assassin named Oscen, a poisoner and thrown weapons expert, made a move on Margaret Telestrian (likely for not being a pure enough elf). Luckily, the Moonlight Thorns werewolf Saroosh was onsite, and saved Telestrian, but was killed in the process, though not before he also killed Oscen. Without Saroosh around to help though, what will happen with Teachdaire?!?!

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Aradia
Tabasco
Creep

After the confusing paydata selling day, with a lot of new feelings about what to do next, their relations with others, etc, the team decides to try to fortify the local Shadow Chapters by hiring a bunch of runners (for a small fee, of course) to do a bunch of the various jobs the team has amassed during their time in town. They also hear some worrying rumors about some very angry Marry Me… megafans who are are displeased about the team’s revelations. 6 out of 16 (in total) of the reprogrammed Shadow Chaps members are successfully deprogrammed, the rest die via the allergic shock trigger that was also implanted to prevent tampering. Shiawase is holding one of the 6 survivors for study by their MFID branch, but promises it’s “catch and release” and won’t be a regular habit.

The team does some research on local runners, figuring out who are the crews to know, who’s got good rep, etc.This includes all the teams they met while distributing VDH’s hoard, a useful reference, as well as some others they’ve encountered in their time here and in Chicago. With this list in hand, they compare it (the teams on it’s capabilities) with their list of available jobs, and assign out one to each team, with the explanation that this is a test run for the team to join the Shadow Chaps, which will bring more work. The team decides to keep certain Free Seattle/high secrecy jobs for themselves, especially as Kit wants the Shadow Chaps to remain officially neutral on Free Seattle and able to work either side, with Wei and Snow agree with.

Takashi and his Rusted Stiletto mutant recruits storm the Aqua Arcana lab facility and free the captive Merrow, as well as various other critter subjects kept there. The mutants remain reasonably restrained and only eat some of the staff, though at the request of the Sea Dragon, they make a horrifying video of them eating alive the project head in front of all his cowering coworkers, with the announcement that Merrow are under the Sea Dragon’s protection, and experimentation upon them will not be tolerated. Remo helps Creature with some research, and Takashi is able to shuttle the Merrow to one of 3 spots of their choosing: Enatai Beach Park on Council Island (already a free Merrow gathering point), Blake Island (the Sea Dragon’s recent acquisition), or the water-entry level of the Beaux Arts arcology in Bellevue, after Eletheria purchases a significant portion of it for their private use.

Next up, Kukulkan’s Crew is sent to investigate the Halloweeners, at Shiawase Daigou’s suggestion, and figure out what they’re up to trying to corrupt the Spirit of the City. They confirm some info that the team had provided from the early, early days of the team file, when Eion Smash had snuck into Glow City to observe a ritual done by Nightmare, the gang leader, and found himself mutated for his trouble. Asking if they should continue, the team decides to throw in some extra assistance and hires the New Assets to back up K’s Crew, though Picaro, the young ork adept on the crew seems gung-ho to go either way. With some injuries on K’s Crew and casualties amongst the new recruits to New Assets (Tommy Talon explains it was a test run anyway), the runners prevail and manage to destroy the statue of Chemosh that was being used to power the mutation rituals, corrupt the local Spiders, and attack the Spirit of the City. After a hard battle, they also manage to disrupt Nightmare, who seems to be some of Cancer spirit, likely from Miggon.

Imre Dahl’s crew is hired to look into all the assassins in town, and their on-call hitman, By the Numbers, gets a solid report back, backed up by their deckers and mage doing some research. They get names and likely targets of all the top tier assassins working, and manage to strike a few from their “concerns” list based on them being hyper-focussed or specialized on things the team doesn’t care about. They also spot some good possibilities for turning certain assassins against each other. Tabasco pays out of pocket for a side job, and hires the same crew to take out a Shedim merc/assassin named SIN who is in town. Unfortunately, By the Numbers is killed in the process, and this crew refuses to join the Shadow Chaps, and Dahl says not to contact them again.

Beltfed’s team takes on Rooster’s job, and successfully steal the secret rites of the all-Dwarf Stonecutter’s Guild and pass them along. They also report to the team that this is likely Rooster up to something on the Seelie Court, as the Stonecutter’s Guild and the Court’s Zhigul Makers faction are deeply connected. The team doesn’t know what this will entail, but files it away as potentially useful.

They hire the Coven of the Crypt for a few different jobs- looking into who owns Shades, who owns Fenris Nacht, and the Sons of Snohomish. They bungle the Shades job a bit, but confirm that it has unusually good, though not overly threatening security, and that Imre Dahl’s crew is involved somehow (too bad the team already burned that bridge…). They have better luck at Fenris Nacht, discovering that an ancient dragon-hunting order is behind it through a series of LLC’s and shell corps. The Sea Dragon violently takes over ownership, which most of the patrons accept, as she is obviously a strong hunter. Yoko Aruki and a bunch of sea drakes lead the assault, and they mount the heads of the local ownership (and any onsite who resisted) in the secluded alley leading to the entrance. Nyssa Hallas is satisfied with this info. The SoS turn out to predictably be a human metaracist org, with ties to some of the metaracist doctors from the destroyed Paladin clinic network in Denver. The team finds some old notes in the file about that. They’ve opened a new clinic in town, which will need dealing with. They also seem to be doing false flag attacks on humans under the “Sauron’s Legion” banner, in order to drive recruitment.

Grappler’s crew (who Carol knew from Chicago) gets tasked with sabotaging, false-flagging and overall making the UCAS JTF look bad, to popularize their pulling out. The team at Kit’s insistence request a “low lethality” plan, which costs more and is harder, but the team pulls it off with style. This greatly pleases both Rahel Juric and Shiawase Daigou, who gives them yet another job: Renraku will almost surely get various “x-guide” contracts for De La Mar’s new matrix relaunch, and he wants a sleeper agent inserted to make sure that Shiawase has some backdoors and kill codes in place, just in case. The team recruits a cocky and eager young hacker with some social/con skills named Kid Code, who agrees to the longterm assignment, and they successfully get him inserted and set up in his new position. Shiawase Daigou is most impressed with the team and their rapid results.

Howard and Phillips INC is given the job of looking more into the K-Code and the Null Sect, as well as this digital Horror entity that De La Mar has codenamed “Blackout.” They mostly just confirm the info the DDLM gave to the team, especially re: K-Code, but do discover some local Null connections that the team didn’t know about, including an infested host in Redmond that might be a worthwhile target. They also confirm the presence in town of the Null assassin Hitsec Burn, and report that they had a lot of gear fried in their investigations. They report that it seems that Null attacks are down in areas where DDLM’s new matrix is live (Boston, Chicago) but escalating in other places, suggesting they are attempting a pressure campaign to speed the transition. The team give H&P the Null Doc to help them keep safe in future.

Tommy Vermont and Las Muñecas set their trap as discussed: they put out word in some places they know Kellan Hunter will hear it that Natalia is a Monad, and sit back and observe. Hunter manages to kill Natalia after stalking her for a few days, and takes her eyes, and Vermont and the LM’s take him out (perhaps a little excessively, but best to be sure), ending that serial killer threat to the city, as well as shutting down the Death Ships pipeline. A matrix-based member of the Nadja Fixer Network named Sofia also contacts the team and thanks them for their efforts, having received proof of Natalia’s corruption and activities from the LM’s. She’ll be taking over the Seattle beat for now in Natalia’s absence.

The Mythfits are given the job of looking into the First Union smuggling org, and discover that it is a forced conversion recruitment Monad operation, which deeply upsets Kit. It also proves useful as a way to recruit other smugglers and go-gangers to take revenge, and the local FU chapter is basically wiped out, though with pretty high casualties on the ganger side. The Mythfits luckily only require some hospital stays to get back on their feet after a gnarly brawl.

With all these new crews signed up for the Shadow Chaps, and only one real failed job amongst the lot, Kit plans to start recruiting more fixers, street docs, etc to begin building the full network. The team also has to figure out what to do with all the assassin info. Miranda King from Spinrad contacts them on an old number of Carol’s asking if she was correct in recognizing them from Chicago. Aradia gets in touch to maintain Carol’s fake dead status, and agrees to work with her. First off, she does an interview on Kit’s Shadowcast “The Bolthole” in order to start building relationships between Spinrad and Monad communities, since they don’t like that EVO has the market cornered at the moment. She then hires Aradia/the team to begin prepping an epic night (or more) out for a certain VIP, who she will not confirm or deny is Spinrad himself.

They also hear that the referendum is officially starting, and will last for exactly one week. Creepily, Horizon is deeply involved, conducting opinion polls and surveys the whole time to gauge the populace. The team better get a move on to make sure things swing their way, and not let any of their preferred delegates gets clipped! Happily, they also got a list of high end bodyguard in town, and can recommend their services.

The team also hears from Su Cheng, and learns that due to his secret manipulation, Jimmy Kincaid has brokered a peace deal between the Ancients and the Triad to secure an arms smuggling deal, basically granting them the power that Cheng was worried about the Laesa/Yakuza having. Unfortunately, someone seems to take exception to this (or something else Kincaid did) and severs his arm, destroying his last bit of magic and cutting him off from his ally spirit. Hearing that she’s been appearing randomly around town, Aradia and Tabasco astrally track her to an apartment/office registered to a pair of people finder/bounty hunter/bailbondswomen named Skip and Trace. They try to offer assistance consoling the spirit, but S&T seem to have a pre-existing relationship with her and say they have it under control. Aradia tries to snoop a bit more astrally and gets KO’ed by the very emotional spirit. Tabasco leaves a number in case they can be of future help, and then carries unconscious Aradia out of there, successfully taking the hint. But who went after Kincaid and why?

Runners
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Aradia
Tabasco
Creep

With Creature at OtherCon, and Carol embracing the lessons he learned from ThinkTank (RIP) to take some vacation sometimes, the rest of the crew settles down to divy up all the paydata from Alice’s lab. After some debate, they decide to split it into some separate tranches rather than try to sell it all as one chunk, figuring it’ll be better overall payout and connections that way. They report in to Annie first, giving her some info on the Death Ships and missing persons cases, closing out a few investigations Tabasco had started back when.

Calling in some favors from Remo, and doing some research of their own, they find out some about Alice’s Death Ship contact, a local fixer named Natalia. Strangely, she’s a member of the Nadja fixer network, who are usually anti-trafficking, but rumors have been circulating that not everyone she helps to smuggle themselves somewhere reaches their destination. They find out that she survived an assassination attempt some years ago, and was kept alive partially with an experimental nanite treatment. They speculate she likely later fell victim to CFD but has kept it under wraps.

They report this in to Tommy Vermont, who has been working with Las Muñecas to crack down on trafficking locally. They decide to set a trap: they will tip off the serial killer Kellan Hunter that Vermont has been investigating about Natalia’s “Monad” nature, and then observe, and plan to take out whoever survives that encounter.The team’s a little iffy on the morals of this whole plan, but since noone even asked them to get involved decide to just wash their hands of it and move on, though Tabasco and Vermont get a little side action going on who they think will win.

As part of their pay from Annie, they get a couple contacts, to pursue other paydays. First, they call up a mid-level Shiawase exec in Tacoma, who Annie had some connections to from a ways back, and offer some valuable info to the corp about the ACHE. She passes it up and the chain (and seems to benefit from bringing it in), and the team gets a meeting with a retired C-Suite exec, Shiawase Daigou, one of the 7 adopted children who ran the corp for quite some time, but who know advises informally from his 5 story penthouse on top of the ACHE.

The team hires an air cab to get up there, and gets a very thorough search from very polite corpsec. Daigou’s grandson ushers them in to the large suite, and they find a huge greenhouse garden, explaining Daigou’s nickname on the streets, “The Gardener.” The grandson brings those who can drink tea, and Tabasco tries to see his condo- the view is incredible from 320 stories above downtown. Daigou eventually wanders over, taking off his work gloves, and begins negotiations. Aradia tries to spot magic, and there is definitely something there, though well-concealed, although he also has a lot of implants. He also has a set of color-coded hardlines to… somewhere on his sparse desk.

The team has a quick debate, and decide to sell this guy Spirit of the City info as well, as he’s a much bigger fish than they expected to be dealing with. Plus, Tabasco knows that Shiawase wants the contract to run the whole ACHE and the reactors below, and would be happy if Free Seattle passes as it will make that whole process easier. So, could be a useful ally! They turn over the info about the Spiders and Weeners infiltrating the ACHE and trying to corrupt the SOTC, and also tell about the Weeners smuggling old secret Deus tech out. They connect Daigou with Jaliyah Angél, their local ASPS connection, to stabilize the SOTC and prevent corruption.

Daigou says he will dispose of the undesirables, and Tabasco gets a little concerned and inquires, and Daigou reveals that they have also been making use of the Death Ships to get rid of problem elements. Tabasco convinces him to stop (after this last shipment, as the team decides Spiders and Weeners are best off getting eaten). He also agrees to provide access to one of Shiawase’s delta clinics to the team to put their payday to best use, and with a donation from Aradia of her chunk of the pay the ASPS helps her craft and bind some foci. Kit gets Daigou to potentially agree to bring Shiawase onto the Shadow Chapters, but he hints that they have been infiltrated or at least influenced by a corp, and he wont agree until that has been resolved, but he won’t say more for now.

The team gets paid, heads out, and agrees to do a job for Daigou as well- he suggests that his security would have spotted an artifact powerful enough to corrupt the SOTC if it had come into the ACHE, even if JTF security had missed it. So there must be someone on the outidie who’s the mastermind of the conspiracy who has yet to be revealed. He suggests starting by looking into the Weeners. He also offers bounty payouts to the team or anyone else who makes the JTF look bad- he will use the info about ganger/cultist infiltration to just such a purpose. But the worst of a public look the JTF has, the easier it will be to get them booted out of the ACHE- which will be especially easy if Free Seattle passes and the UCAS military pulls out in full.

Kit posts a warning about “Marry Me…” on Jackpoint and elsewhere, and reports start coming in from some other teams who have encountered similar labs in different Barrens-esque places around the world. It seems like spirit, drone, and Dissonant sprite security is the norm, but the other labs seemed long abandoned by regular visitors, so the team likely disrupted Alice getting a full new one up and running before she skipped town. Comparing dates of these other lab raids to various Marry Me outages and glitches, matrix sleuths confirm that most of the game beyond the base is likely being run by these technomancer meat-brain networks, which is deeply upsetting. The team gets some hate from some diehard Marry Me stans who suggest they are plants from an opposing game company, but most posters seem to believe the evidence, and thank the team for sharing it free of charge.

The team then calls in more Remo favors to dig into the Shadow Chapters further. They compile some info and compare it, trying to get as big of a sample size as possible from the dozen-ish cities where the Shadow Chaps have set up. What they find is a bit disturbing: Horizon and SK most often benefit from runs through the SC, and Horizon gets hits least often- both by a significant enough margin to not be random. This implies that the corp that Daigou hinted might be behind the Shadow Chaps (or have infiltrated them) is likely Horizon, which means probably the Dawkins Group. It seems like the reprogramming of uncooperative types is not a situation unique to Seattle- the team likely didn’t encounter it in Chicago since everyone had a common enemy and they were deeply involved in setting it up there.

Worried about what this might mean locally, Kit sets up a meeting with Ms Snow and Eddie Wei to use this as blackmail leverage to make themselves a third equal partner in the leadership. The rest of the team comes along as backup, but unfortunately are not paranoid enough, as Ms Snow quick draws and shoots Kit in the chest as soon as they present the info about Horizons/Dawkins infiltration.The team manages to KO Snow and corner Wei, but not before Wei puts out and APB to all Shadow Chaps members that the team has attacked the leadership.

They manage to convince Wei to a brief ceasefire by sending him the intel they found, and get him to tell the SC members who showed up to reinforce to stay outside (for now). Wei suggests they all back off a bit while he reviews the info. Kit stabilizes Snow before they leave. Aradia calls in a favor from Arthur Vogel to get an ARES AIMAD of their own, having seen that Alice had a modded one she was using to reprogram people for the SC (and others). Wei eventually agrees to the team’s proposal- Wei, Kit and Snow (if she can be deprogrammed) will all 3 run the local SC for now, and they’ll try deporgramming with the AIMAD first off on Snow before trying to round up all the other reprogrammed members at once and trying to clear them.

The team heads back in, and Aradia uses mind probe in concert with some drugs to soften the still unconscious Snow up for the AIMAD. Kit does a spectacular job, aided by their nanites, and manages to break the core reprogramming down on Snow (which seems much higher level than what Alice was doing- uh-oh!), as well as shove all the evidence of Horizon/Dawkins infiltration into her brain. They luckily also manage to magically and medically keep her alive as they fight the reprogramming which tries to kill her as a last ditch effort. She wakes up with an awful hangover but agrees to their terms of the deal and plan, and says that she guesses she’s thankful?

With this info in hand, Kit returns to all the skeptics around town (Tauren, Takashi, Daigou) and gets them to help all the uncorrupted local SC members round up the list that Wei and Snow have of reprogrammed locals. They plan to attempt the same protocol that Kit and Aradia established, and save as many as they can. Daigou keeps one for Shiawase to study, saying that this will not be how he usually operates in relation to the SC, but that they need to see how their adversaries work. He says Shiawase’s inhouse spies (the MFID) will be able to deprogram just fine once they’re done studying, and return the captured runner back to the streets. Kit and team reluctantly agree, not really having a choice.

Finally, they make contact with a one-use number Annie got them for the powerful socialite and matrix safety campaigner, Danielle de la Mar. She agrees to meet them for lunch at the Embassytown cafe on Council Island. The team review their SINs and ditches all their illegal gear and heads over. Tabasco gets some additional scans, but all his visible ‘ware is legal, and Aradia seductively distracts the guard from looking closer. They get to the meeting and find that DDLM has impressive magical, tech and physical security, all onhand but low profile. She explains that she will be jamming their meeting and that her mage will be using illusions to keep anyone from lip-reading or listening in. The team explains Alice’s diabolical plan, mentions the K-Code and Jormungandr, and brings up the Null Sect.

DDLM seems familiar with all of these, other than Alice’s “crash the global currency and take over” plot. She thanks the team for their info on that, and says she will update the robustness of the Matrix 3.1 launch she is preparing, as well an the new SIN and Nuyen registries, to counter that threat. She doesn’t seem as worried about the K-Code, suggesting it is more of a matrix bogeyman/vaporware, but is interested in knowing more regardless. The Null Sect however, she has a lot to say about. After conferring obliquely about safety protocols and level of knowledge, and establishing that her and the team are on the same page, she launches in.

She explains that the Null Sect’s ultimate goal, as far as she can tell, is to sever Resonance energy from tech energy, and be able to fully control what they consider the “real world”: the digital side of meatspace. The NS view Resonance (and e-life forms and digital sapients/AI’s) as threats to this, which is why they especially want to eliminate them. DDLM explains that based on some recent Seelie Court discoveries about the connected nature of magic and Resonance, and her dealings with the NS, she believes that Resonance has other similarities to magic as well: it grows in power with more use and belief in it, and if it gets too powerful, some kind of “digital Horror” will arrive to smack everything back down, much as happened to magic at the end of the 4th World. She believes the NS are seeking to hasten the arrival of this entity or entities, which she has codenamed “Blackout.” She isn;t sure what this Blackout will do, or even what form(s) it might take upon it’s arrival, but she thinks the NS might be something like the Invae or Shedim: early signals of the coming of something worse.

She also believes the NS have recruited some human allies to manipulate, pay, etc into doing their bidding in meatspace: the Freedom Network, and the Turing Army. Their various political proclivities make them easy to use, and they both are arrogant enough as orgs to likely assume that they are in control of the partnership (they are not). They are also working with global networks of Dissonant TM’s, who also hate Resonance. More worrying, according to DDLM, is that she believes the NS have struck some sort of deal with the Euro Vampiric cabal known as the Ordo Maximus, which could prove very troublesome indeed. Regardless, she explains that the real reason she is launching matrix 3.1 (as well as enhanced safety protocols) is because the Foundation has become to dangerous and she wants to get the vast majority of metahumanity further from the NS, to buy some time. She explains that she made a devil’s bargain of sorts with the NS: in exchange for abandoning the Foundation to their control, they won’t expand beyond it, and will limit their attacks to those e-life forms they find especially abhorrent.

She doesn’t trust them at all of course, but thinks this will at least give metahumanity some maneuvering room. She also explains that the CFD/Monad explosion out into the world was of course because of the experiments being done on AI/e-life, but also because something worse was chasing them, so the NS are also partially to blame for that. The team, all sitting back in their seats with their minds blown wide open, agree to potentially look into some of this stuff more, and not spread any of this info wide outside their networks. DDLM offers them significant additional pay for more details about any of this stuff, and suggest they come to her first in the future, as they now have a working relationship, and who knows who else you can really trust?

Shiawase Daigou calls back to share some info: Horizon is likely triggering their sleeper agents and sending subliminal commands through otherwise innocuous concealed programming in popular music they release. So they don’t have to specifically target any one agent or even know where they are, so long as they’re somewhat connected to pop cultural norms. This matches with Alice/Null Sect’s fucked up use of stolen Dawkins Group tech at the Iron Jungle, that Tabasco had previously ID’ed. They also call in their final Remo favor, and get some more K-Code info: it does seem like more of a rumor than a fact at this point, BUT there are multiple instances of air-gapped offline private code labs getting massacred, and every time the data drives are missing afterwards.

Looking further into the coders killed in these incidents, from what they team can piece together (it seems like lots of payouts and NDA’s have prevented much outcry publicly), they are all specialists in AI, economics, market forecasting, and the like, so it seems like Alice might be onto something with this K-Code biz after all…. yet another problem for another day! The team celebrates their big paydays with some implants and chillin’, closes out a lot of the investigations on their lists, and figures out what to do next.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Aradia
Tabasco
Creep

With Kit’s rough location data on the TM they need to rescue for Remo, the team does some research. Wherever they’re being held (and whoever by) it seems likely to be in the Carbonado/Crocker Mine complex, which after some digging turns out to be Mafia smuggling turf. Tabasco warns the team that Gianelli mafia shouldn’t be trusted (he feels burnt by his experience of Enzo corrupting Urban Brawl still), and they debate a few different options before deciding on stealth recon.

Creep gets dropped off via stealth VTOL while Aradia and an air spirit accompany in the astral. The area seems to be covered with ash clouds and runs over the powerful leyline Aradia had spotted at Grand Council Lodge. Plenty of cover and distractions, but harder to do their own surveillance. They find a sort of main entrance to the abandoned mine, and head in, moving slowly and looking for defenses and traps.

It looks like an active smuggling zone, but noone seems to be around at the moment, and there aren’t any detectable devices, sensors, etc. Aradia sends the spirit to search for irregularities, and it reports back that deeper in the mine is an area aspected towards Toxic Dog. Reporting back to the team, Tabasco suggests that this is likely another of Alice’s facilities, as he knows she follows that corrupted mentor. They gear up and head over while Creep keeps an eye on things.They also add some stealth mods to the van, and park it off track in the ash wastes to keep it from getting spotted (or stolen).

Heading in, they follow a winding path as Aradia navigates towards worse and worse feeling background counts. They eventually reach a mana barrier, and Kit sends a drone through, which spots a tunnel lined with explosives with a blast door at the end and a motion sensor above. Aradia sneaks herself and an invisible Kit through the mana barrier, and Kit sneaks up and hacks the motion sensor with nanites, but there’s a terrifying person inside so they bail. They then jury rig the explosives to blow the door. They then head back and cross the mana barrier with Aradia at the same time Tabasco comes through from the other side and waves his arms a bunch to trigger the motion sensor, before getting yanked back behind Kit’s shield as the explosives go off.

The team races down towards the door as the tunnel caves in around them, with Tabasco’s armor somewhat blasted. They get in a fight with two rail drones firing assault rifles and a horrifying toxic spirit inhabiting a mutating dog body (with extra legs and mouths). Carol gets pretty fucked up but Kit keeps him in the fight and the team prevails. They enter a server room, which was badly damaged in the explosion, but is connected to an adjacent chamber. Kit rips some data, and is distressed to find that this seems to be a major “Marry Me…” server, before getting chased off by the upsetting e-entity again.

The team enters the next room and hears many voices crying out for assistance, saying they were kidnapped and just woke up and can’t see anything. One of them seems to be the one who sent the message. They pull some tarps off some vats and find a bunch of brains wired together into some sort of meat computer, even worse, each brain seems to correspond to a major expansion, area, quest or NPC in “Marry Me”. Creep smashes the speaker on the jar closest, and suggests they don’t bother trying to save these brains, as this is obviously the outcome of the mind/body separation work that Alice was up to in her other lab.

Kit refuses and tells the rest of the team to go on while they stay behind and try to save at least a few, if they can figure out how.They also mini-weld shut some ceiling valves that seem prepped to spray Cleaner-Cleaner on everything, but also see that a countdown clock has passed the 4 minute mark, and the brain vats are all draining liquid onto the floor. They break open 2 vats and manage to get a little liquid in one busted end to slosh 2 brains around in, choosing 2 of their favorite expansions.

The rest of the team chases after Alice, but Carol stumbles into more rail drones and is nearly killed. The team takes them out and continues, finding Alice’s lab. Creep and Tabasco decide not to document and continue pursuit, and head the other way with Creature in tow. Aradia and Kit heal Carol, who goes to document the lab while Aradia mind probes one of the brains. It knocks her out, but they confirm that these are kidnapped TM’s from the missing persons list Tabasco has, and worst of all, they don’t know that they’re only brains in jars. Carol gets a ton of data to review later, and also finds a problem- the lab is flooded with a currently inert compound that is highly flammable when combined with some second element, aka a binary explosive! They need to get out of there.

As there’s only 90 seconds left on the clock, they flee to where the rest of the team went. Meanwhile, the rest of the team has found one of the mine’s boreshafts, and Tabasco has managed to shoot his grapple hand up to the ascending elevator therein. Creep and Creature start climbing a ladder stuck into the rock. Another toxic dog drops on Tabasco and nearly kills him before Carol and Creature (drake elemental attack very good vs spirits!) manage to take it out. However, the elevator reaches the top and Alice blows some charges, trying to drop it on Tabasco. Luckily he makes a heroic swing to the side and Creature catches him with a web. A massive explosion behind them seemingly destroys the lab and blows a huge dust cloud up the shaft.

They make it to the top of the shaft, and Aradia cleverly sets off an acid trap left for them using a trid phantasm. Kit and Aradia hurry the brains back to the van outside while the rest of the team chases. Carol is the only one fast enough to catch up to Alice, who seems to be riding on a massive dog spirit. He triggers a grenade trap without taking damage but chooses to continue the chase as the tunnel collapses, separating himself from the team. Racing around another corner, he is shot and nearly killed by some Ex-Ex rounds, and the team has to dig through the collapse to get to him before he bleeds out.

Seeing that Alice and dog are headed deeper into the mines instead of out, the team abandons pursuit and heads back to the van, getting out of there. Meanwhile, Kit has contacted Remo and S@m to try to get help uploading the 2 rescued brains before they shrivel and die. They jury rig an upload system using the RCC, van comms gear, and a satellite uplink, and manage to upload brain/persona copies into the Endless Archive. They aren’t full e-life forms, without the magic of the Tarot, or Big D’s “Jack-B-Nimble” program, but it’s at least a form of life and preservation, and who knows what else could occur. They thank the team but are horrified at what they found, and Remo feels a little bad at the level of favor this ended up being.

The team heads back to the safehouses and review the data: Alice has a plan of world domination through financial markets, and to that end has a few fundraising ops going: Marry Me is a big one, each brain she brings online adds new layers (and lairs) to the world, and gives the game it’s unique lifelike/dreamlike feel. She’s become a critical dev for the game, and it’s highest paid employee. She has also been selling her mind alteration skills to anyone willing to pay locally, using a purloined ARES AIMAD device in conjunction with Dawkins Group Project:Orion sleeper agent tech apparently stolen by the Null Sect and traded or sold to her. Her local clients include most major corps and syndicates as well as the Shadow Chapters, which explains some things Tabasco has heard.

They get the layout of her local network: which bars she kidnaps from, which gangs she works with, and her contact for selling the leftovers to the Death Ships: a fixer named Natalia. They also find out that she’s been helping the Halloweeners infiltrate the ACHE for some reason in exchange for recovered DEUS tech leftovers. She’s also after rumors of something called the “Kechibi Code” which seems like some sort of financial/predictive specialized AI. She modelled her program on Danielle delaMar’s “100” as well as the advances of Thomas Roxborough at UniOmni, though neither appear to be directly involved.

Also, the crazed e-entity that Kit encountered seems to be her former mentor, and originator of these projects, Dr. Halberstram, a true mad scientist thought dead. She’s trying to figure out how he was transformed (or created) in his current form, not to cure him but just to know. She seems to enjoy keeping him localized as a crazed defender. Anyway, she seems like a true supervillain with ridiculous goals, but maybe the skill and tenacity to at least cause extreme chaos?

The team, realizing they’re sitting on a gold mine (ha) of paydata, decide to take some time and think about who to sell what to, but warn people off the kidnap clubs for now at least. They rest and recuperate, and the next day Creature heads to OtherCon to make more contacts for the Sea Dragon. Xe meet all sorts of interesting characters there, and make some good connections, deciding to once again use local Merrow communities as an in for the Sea Dragon, by helping them out against Aqua Arcana experimentation and trying to get them recognized as sapients officially.

Xe quickly latches onto a hip Vashonista named Soresha, who says she is new in town but seems adept at making connections, and helps Creature make the rounds and meet some people. In the surgeries and mods hall, Creature spots the quiet street doc from Fenris Nacht, who intro’s herself as Trickster’s Daughter, and seems to possibly be a fox shifter. Creature gets some minor mods from her to cement the connection in case xe needs to rely on her medical skills (and discretion) in the future. Xe also wanders a bit, and spots various advocacy groups, panels, costume contests, fandoms, etc, as well as a “We Remember: The NIght of Rage” exhibit that the hotel seems to have put on with the Tacoma MoM chapter (they sheltered many that night using a formerly secret Underground connection, now another level of the hotel).

Eletheria also tasks Creature with observing corps at the con, as many use it as a recruiting opportunity for beings with unique abilities. EVO is well-represented of course, and seems relatively benign. SK is recruiting through a drake named Scale, who seems a lot less fun than Simon Andrews, but similarly loyal, and gives the corp a good sell. He’s also staring daggers at a merc corp called “New Assets”. which appears to be drake-only, and is also recruiting, offering peer alliance as an alternative to servitude to the “Greats” to their fellow drakes.

Creature buddies up to the NA rep, Tommy Talon a bit. He seems friendly enough, but is also a vain LA type. He seems intrigued by Creature, but recognizes that xe already has a bond to a Great, so doesn’t have much to offer beyond being a potentially useful connection out of town. Xe also make friends with some local couriers for (and the dispatcher of) the Alley Cat Express, aka ACE- some side work that Creature and Tabasco amongst others might find useful from time to time. They seem to be friendly with Jimmy Kincaid, amongst others, and Creature recognizes one of them as the decker from one of the team’s that helped distro the items from VDH’s hoard.

Creature also sees Proteus recruiting pretty hard, which is interesting as they are an AGS AA-corp, but do have a local Arkoblock. Their reps also seem to be meeting with some other corp reps using the Con as a cover: Creature ID’s reps from both Maersk and Wuxing, which worries Eletheria, as all 3 are involved in ocean experiments and shipping, and may be trying to cooperate against the Sea Dragon. She declares it’s time to teach them a lesson, and tells Creature to get the team ready for a job.

Tabasco also calls Rahel Juric, and tells her they haven’t forgotten about her. She seems agreeable to an open timeline for most stuff, but throws it out there that she would love paydata on the ARES rep, and also wants to know what happened to the CAS rep who was supposed to be at the gala but never turned up and has been incommunicado ever since. As the CAS was one of the sector owners in Denver, it makes sense they would want a say in a new treaty city, though it hadn’t occurred to the team before. Anyway, they missed their shot and apparently folks back home are steamed and want answers…

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Aradia
Tabasco
Creep

Kit decides to take a day off and go see a movie via hotrigging his wimp, using his new William Wimpleton SIN, while doing some background research for the technomancer rescue mission that Remo gave them. Aradia heads out to take care of some witchy business. The rest of the team decides to use their downtime to look into some mysteries Tabasco had uncovered, and try to knock some tasks off Creature’s list of jobs for the Sea Dragon.

After doing a bit of research, they head over to Tacoma so Creature can try to make some connections at Fenris Nacht, the predator/hunter bar. Xe gains entrance via namedropping the Sea Dragon (a powerful hunter herself) while the rest of the team hangs nearby to provide audio input and backup if needed. Tabasco tries to surveil other arrivals but is foiled by a magical fog, which Carol fears is vampiric in origin.

Creature first enters the bar area, and finds some various Infected hanging around, mostly starring daggers at a pair of cybered-up Catholics with a lot of prominent iconography. A pair of equivalently cybered Russians are loudly trying to outdrink each other at the bar. Creature wanders a bit further in, and finds Gregory Bear-Killer conversing quietly with what looks to be a wolf shifter or werewolf in a hunting lodge area- some of the trophies are definitely immoral if not illegal.

Creature continues down into a network of grottoes, small caves, and private rooms. The whole place is laid out to make visitors feel hunted/vulnerable if they don’t view themselves as an apex predator. Creature spots a young vampire woman emerging from one of the rooms, seemingly having just been treated by a street doc who looks a bit out of place here, and is wearing a fox lapel pin. The street doc hurries off, but the vamp, who is wearing a heavily battle-damaged anime “sexy schoolgirl” style outfit (looking extra bizarre now that it cut, burnt and shot to pieces, though her wounds seem to be healing quickly), sticks around.

Creature gets a drink and makes conversation with Bear-Killer, using Aradia’s name as an intro, and also is introduced to the wolf man, Saroosh. Saroosh seems to be an assassin, new to town, who is looking to kill one or more other assassins, though he won’t specify who. Bear-Killer also seems to have taken on some contract work during the recent uptick, and it seem they are sharing info now that they’ve confirmed their targets won’t interfere with each other’s work. Creature participates once they verify that xe also won’t be working at odds with them. They both seem to think that in the current landscape, doing mob/syndicate hits is small potatoes compared to the high value contracts that are being tossed around in the lead up to the referendum.

They all split off, and Creature is approached by the young vamp, who gives xyr a hard time for a while before revealing that she is a friend/protege of Red’s, and knows who Creature is. They chat a bit, and it turns out that this vamp, EB, knows the Triad vamp that Tabasco has been investigating, Su Cheng, and offers to make an introduction, though she offers no guarantees on how that will go. Creature agrees, and buys EB some blood from some onsite blood bags, who seem happy to trade for whatever the bartender gives them small doses of after they are fed on.

Creature also asks EB about membership, and EB tells xyr that xe must complete a major solo hunt of some sort- bring down a big target. a trophy and/or a good tale will also help a lot. Creature plans to pursue this for the Sea Dragon’s benefit, though this place doesn’t seem like a community per se, it seems like a useful place to have regular access to.

The team heads back to Tabasco’s condo to “party” which entails buying 2 six packs. Creature gets a call from Su Cheng, who sets up a meeting the next day. It feels like it could be a trap, but they’re all curious enough to go along. They head to Triad turf in the Downtown Chinatown district, and after an extensive security check (and getting all their weapons checked), are ushered into a windowless room with trid screens projecting nature scenes on the walls. Su Cheng turns to them from some sort of ritual task, and they all take a seat to discuss biz.

He proposes that, since they are asking questions, they go into business together. In exchange for performing some tasks for him, he will answer at least some of their queries. There is definitely an element of threat over the whole thing, but Carol pushes for a little more info (instead of money) and Su Cheng seems to appreciate that the team recognizes the value of the immaterial. He explains that the Laeasa syndicate has been smuggling in Tir Tairngire Peace Force armaments and selling them exclusively to the Yakuza, which is an obvious source of imbalance in the local crime scene. He wants the team to get evidence of this: footage of meetings, documentation, etc, and pass it on to a Puyallup PI named Jimmy Kincaid, who should be able to make good use of it in another deal that he is working on. They are not to let Kincaid know that the info came from Su Cheng.

The team agrees, and does some recon, splitting into 2 and tracking both some Laeasa and Yakuza members around town until they do find them meeting at the Tacoma docks, and get some good footage of a handoff. If they can just get some digital records/weapon ID’s etc to back it up, they should be set. Meanwhile, Creature is getting excited for the start of OtherCon the next day, another location xe is supposed to investigate on behalf of the Sea Dragon for possible allies.

Aradia, meanwhile, finally meets up with the Sisterhood of Ariadne and begins trading a little info on entropy circles and the like, as well as getting more info on the group in general. She also tips them to the powerful leyline from the Grand Lodge on Council Island leading to Mount Rainier/Tacoma. They hint that the forces behind the entropy circles are powerful adversaries but agree to share some info or assist in the investigation. They specialize in foretelling/portents and the like, so don’t seem as skilled in physical magics, though they do some alchemy and rituals as well. Aradia is also excited to meet a bunch of cool older ladies, who give her some tips on achieving lifelong power.

Next, Aradia and Iva conjure and manufacture up some over the top outfits to get into Shades, the new club up in Snohomish. They manage to catch the doorman’s eye and get ushered in past the line- the club is officially still invite-only but with some flexibility for the famous and interesting. Aradia talks their way into a “premium” area in the back of the former Masonic Lodge, where she can access more illicit substances than are available out front. She fails to bluff her way into any of the VIP/private areas further on, but gets some info about how to potentially apply for the exclusive memberships.

She also scouts out the security a bit, and notices that the club has unusually good magical security, and multiple means of verifying its VIPs. She also does some people watching and some info gathering amongst the crowds, mostly local celebs of various levels. She decides to return later with Creep and possibly some better surveillance gear to continue the investigation.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Aradia
Tabasco
Creep

Needing to get a move on, the team decides to do the heist with minimal mission gear (weapons, armor, etc) relying instead on implants and surveillance/B&E tech. Tabasco gets Bernie Carter to swing by his condo and pick up his gear from Emdachat, and Creep has all his stuff, but the rest of the team is going in their rented formal wear. Carol once again bemoans the fit of his rented tux. They head to the Tacoma docks to the location Telestrian provided, and meet up with a mini-sub smuggler named Sounder, who has a good rep on Jackpoint. Kit is a little bummed to not be allowed to pilot one, but Sounder insists on being in control.

They do a minimal amount of research on Council Island, but can’t get much useful surveillance data or security details, so they decide to wing it. Sounder drops them off without incident, successfully bypassing their water patrols, but tells the team that they’ll be stranded if they miss their very narrow pickup window, as she isn’t going to wait around. They head into a dense forest along the shore, and Carol and Tabasco quickly spot some hidden cameras and pressure mesh scattered around. Most of the team is confident on their ability to bypass them safely, but Aradia isn’t, and levitates herself and Kit, as well as making both of them invisible.

They safely pass through the forest, and come into sight of the Grand Council Lodge. They had heard there was a protest turned riot on the south end of the island, which they hope will distract on-island security. They spot some more pressure mesh, a spirit patrol, some patrolling guards, and 4 caged barghests, as well as cameras covering angle of approach across 100m of open space from the treeline. They check out the front of the building, but that has stationary guards and even worse coverage, so they decide to stick with the back door.

Kit disguises themself as John Abernathy, the targer, using his handprint that they copied, as well as their false face, plus some more spellcraft from Aradia and disguise help from Carol. Aradia and Kit approach the back door invisibly, with everyone else spotting them. Kit manages to bypass the door lock and disable the camera inside via nanites, while Aradia does some astral surveillance (noticing a powerful leyline connected to Mount Tacoma, as well as some underground levels), while Kit sneaks over to the SSC embassy wing, and uses Abernathy’s handprint to access it. Unfortunately, some guards notice the beep as the scanner works and opens the door.

Aradia drops the invisibility on Kit, and Kit bluffs as Abernathy, not doing a great job, but the appearance is so strong that they manage to sell it to the suspicious guards. Kit continues in and heads to Abernathy’s office, which fortunately has automatic lights so they know which one to go to. Tabasco repositions in the trees to cover the window to the office, now that he knows which one it is. The rest of the team watches for trouble.

Kit does a quick search of the room and finds that Abernathy doesn’t have a terminal and seems to prefer hardcopy. A safe in the corner looks promising, so Creep sneaks in, following the path the others took. Kit and Creep make quick work of the safe, and find some promising paydata inside. Kit quickly memorizes it all before carefully putting it back, wanting to leave some plausible deniability that anything happened. Unfortunately, something has tipped off the guards, who are headed in to investigate. Creep opens the window and Tabasco shoots in his grapple hand for them to zipline out on. Aradia slips out the back door and floats back towards the trees.

Creep ziplines back to the trees just fine, but Kit drops about halfway, luckily Aradia makes them invisible before anything bad happens. The team hoofs it back to the water and makes their pickup window, getting dropped back off at the Tacoma docks. They get a call from Romeo, saying that Telestrian has tasked him with collecting the data and paying them off. He also offers to buy any other paydata on behalf of Annie, as arranged. He says he thinks this is a power move by Telestrian to reveal that she did her digging on the team, and also why Annie wanted to use Romeo as a cutout.

Remembering another aspect of their job for Annie, they decide to dig into Romeo a bit before handing over the data, and get some intel from an Underground hacktavist named Tauren. Romeo has some family ties to Humanis and other extremist orgs, though his parents appear to have “officially” left when he was born a dwarf. He also may have some personal ties, which Tauren wants the team to confirm, as Romeo presents himself as a beneficent meta-rights supporter.Tauren also seems interested in the Shadow Chapters if the team can prove it’s a legit org, as he’s heard mixed things.

They pass along and sell the data, but get Remo to watermark the intel from the gala, and then check with Annie to see if Romeo copied the file or altered. He looks to have copied it but not altered it- could be pro, or could be sneaky! More investigation needed. The team does some various other digging around into assorted other ongoing missions and mysteries, and make some future arrangements for collaboration with Domingo Febles and others. They check in with Nyssa Hallas, Iva, and Don Michaels about assassins in town, and get some intel, and also some updates on some happenings in Snohomish.

They get Remo to look into matrix security at the Iron Jungle as a favor to Nyssa, and he reports back that, somehow, the Freedom Network/Popular Will crew there appears to have the Null Sect doing security, which is very troubling. In exchange for all these favors, Remo asks them to rescue a technomancer that just managed to smuggle a message to him from wherever they are being held, as they sound pretty scared and desperate. The team agrees to focus on that next.

They also officially make Creep a full member of the team! Though he doesn’t seem too interested in their safehouses, they have a fun time riding the jet ski around in the small lake while the water spirit makes waves. He shares a bit of his sad past as a child model/pageant star, which inspired his current anti-appearance, not particularly wanting to be observed anymore.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Aradia
Tabasco
Creep

The team readies themselves for the gala in a few days time. Creep takes advantage of the final touch construction chaos at the building site to sneak in ahead of time and insert himself into the ducts, where he can crawl around, surveil, and get an eye on security and layout. Kit and Carol do some research on the layout of the building as well as gather some info on it’s sister structure in Dubai. The configurable maze, on the 5th-8th floors, is the site of the main VIP portion of the gala, and will likely be set to it’s highest security/privacy setting, making exterior surveillance difficult. They discuss having Creep use a data tap to get Kit access to the maze controls if needed, but decide not to rely on that.

The team brushes up on social skills, and comes up with appropriate backstories. As the team travels downtown, they notice that there are some large protest crowds and clashes, just short of riots, seemingly advocating for either “stay” or “leave” with the recent vote tally from the informal poll at the music fest having riled things up. The team does a little research and sees that a lot of the “leave” faction seem to have backing related to the Real Americans and the Pacific Independence League, both of which are at least partially funded by Ghostwalker. The “stay” faction seems to have some local funding from a new group called the “Sons of Snohomish”, which almost for sure is a metaracist org based on name and location, and which the team has a job to investigate. They plan to dig in more on both sides in the future.

Tabasco reserves Bernie Carter and his armored cab for the evening, and Aradia and Creature rent a short distance town car, while Carol and Kit travel in another. On arrival, they spot a few people watching over the crowd and arrivals, as well as some notables from around town. Tabasco ID’s some organized crime figures from the Downtown and Bellevue families, but they don’t seem to have tickets to the VIP area. Aradia approaches the rumpled dwarf doing surveillance first off, and they have a friendly (on the surface) but probing convo about who exactly they each are. Recognizing each other’s magical abilities, they exchange contacts.

Aradia also gives a nod to the elf who watched them arrive but is ignored, and offended. The team in their 3 groups heads upstairs fairly quickly, seeing that most of the political and corp movers and shakers do so, not lingering in the semi-public soiree in the atrium. Creep re-positions himself near a private corner of the 3rd level of the maze in order to try to observe any quiet convos any VIPs might have there.

The other 2 pairs of the team make some conversation at the maze entrance with some of the various figures, and meet a Seattle government official, Chuck Beale, who they manipulate into revealing that he is the one compiling the list of delegates for the FS referendum, and that this meet and greet will give them a chance to make their cases to him. Kit manages to snag a copy of his hand print. but fails to scan his irises. They also meet a very jolly Horizon rep who creepily doesn’y have handprints when Kit tries to scan them. Most of the other VIPs cleverly rebuff handshake attempts.

The team finds out about a bit of drama between a few of the reps: the SSC guy really does not like the Telestrian sent on behalf of Tir Tairngire, and the PCC rep sent up to advocate for Seattle as a treaty city doesn’t think much of the SSC rep. Omnistar wants in, and their rep Rahel Juric makes Tabasco as a runner after he drops some hints, and hires him to ensure she gets on the referendum list, and hunts at more future related work. Creep overhears the UCAS govt rep get berated by Margaret Telestrian, who suggests that her vote will be amenable to bribes, but she’d prefer he offer her the best one. She also hints at some scandals in his background, which the team only finds some whispers and hints of online. Creep repositions a few times and overhears some more convos as well.

The ARES rep (who Carol steers clear of) and the Renraku rep seem to be planning to work together to push the “stay” vote, as both have a lot of contracts they might lose if things go the other way. The Horizon rep seems VERY good at navigating the maze and stumbling into convo’s at interesting points, and claims not to have a preference or agenda. This is also Beale’s line, who claims to just be excited to be in the room where it happens. The Pacific Independence League rep makes Creature as a drake beholden to the Sea Dragon, and suggests that both of their masters will want the same result so they should work together. Miranda King, here on behalf of Spinrad, confers with the Wuxing/PPG rep, and both seem open to either outcome, but interested in the possibilities present.

King seems to almost recognize some of the team, especially Creature, but doesn’t push it, so they avoid her as well. Telestrian eventually threatens the team into doing some work for her, having noticed Creep in the walls. She’s very friendly about it all. but seems like a real social predator, and Carol is a little spooked. The team decides to throw caution to the wind and steal Beale’s commlink, make sure Juric is on the list, and then send it before returning the link, in order to create a situation where it would be too embarrassing for him to admit what happened. Aradia distracts him by questioning the integrity of the process, and he goes off on how he is very neutral and wants an unbiased discussion with even opinions on all sides as well as some undecided.

Carol snags the link, though Beale seems to have some exec protection training and almost spots the palming. Kit does the hack, gets the full delegate list, and decides to add not only Juric but also Ceri Gilbredes (the PIL/Ghostwalker rep) and King (Spinrad), hoping this will give the “leave” faction a head start, and keep Stuck from killing them. Creature handily returns the comm to Beale’s suit, and the team disengages, needing to head out to do a quick B&E job for Telestrian that evening so as not to get Creep into hot water, plus wanting to get on her good side in the hopes of swaying her vote.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Aradia
Tabasco
and reintroducing: Creep

The team returns to Seattle, still mourning ThinkTank’s death, and planning to carefully guard their new ID’s to try to avoid blowback from ARES. Tabasco, noticing that one of their other sneaker/fighters is permanently absent, proposes a replacement: his occasional comrade Creep, a weird but reliable fellow. The team concurs, planning to try Creep out on some of the many upcoming missions they have in Seattle: astral library returns, throwing the Free Seattle referendum Stuck’s way, fighting off the many assassins in town while discovering their targets (and without their access to TT’s assassin contacts!), plus all the mysteries Tabasco was investigating prior to joining the team. Time to get to work!

Worried about being able to cover upcoming rent on their 3 safehouses, they decide to try to do some quick money jobs, get that settled, and then delve into the bigger concerns. The team meets up with Creep, and agrees to do a few test run jobs before fully onboarding him, but it seems like he’s eager for work, talented, and pretty weird. Tabasco calls up Cheeks and they arrange to meet up and chat about some jobs and investigations that Cheeks would like handled. Carol calls Vogel, and asks for any intel on what ARES jobs are on the line in Seattle, and which way Vogel wants those to go. Vogel tells the team to not interfere with the bug infiltration of the Mafia via the N’Drangheta (more of an international problem), as having his Mafia allies in disarray will put Knight at a further disadvantage. He also tells them that Dr. Ellis is seeking to capture one of more Botflies, a rare (in this region) bug spirit type, and that the team should instead wipe out this nest.

The team takes a few days to restock on gear, catch up on local events (Aradia is bummed that she missed a full moon chance to investigate the strange entropy circles), and give Kit time to set up the new van. Kit also borrows some money from the team fund (recently increased in size with the influx of ThinkTank’s funds at his death), and further upgrades their new Wimp drone.With the van arm and armor equipped, the team heads out to NE Redmond to meet up with Cheeks and some other Dogmen.

They make introductions, and Cheeks gets down to business: he wants Tabasco to follow up on the previous work he’d done for the gang, and figure out what exactly is going on with the Spiders gang, and also see if they can get any intel on what is happening to the people they snatch. The team agrees, thinking this will link up well with the Vogel job, potentially. They do some recon, and find some sort of huge trapdoor spider spirit catching stray passerby in a magic web, and passing those off the what seem to be Spiders gang members, but who have a bit more of a cult-y vibe.

Creep manages to follow them as they drag the unconscious kidnappee underground, but Tabasco has to fall back when he is spotted and caught with some sort of astral webbing. Aradia and Carol take a pic with the Quicksilver Camera for proof as needed of the situation aboveground, and KIt sends in a crawler stealth drone to back Creep up and relay signal. Creep and the drone follow the cultists done through some narrow tunnels into the sprawling sewer system under Redmond, which Creep knows is big and dangerous. Creature follows partway to keep the signal working, and Tabasco hangs nearby for combat assistance as needed.

Creep sees a shaman with a black widow focus (likely the gang;s leader, based on description), with about a dozen gangers/cultists all chanting “Grandmother” in various languages. Widow touches the kidnappee and speaks some quiet words in a language Creep doesn’t recognize, and as her focus glows, the victim transforms, mutating into a spider hybrid form. This isn’t bugs, but this is bad. Some of the cultists come forward and usher the newly transformed victim to a nearby bench to recline, offering words of reassurance that he is one of them now and they will take care of him.

Taking another scan of the large reservoir chamber, Creep spots a massive, newly manifest spirit lurking in the shadows, and sees another shaman come forth from it’s vicinity with some fluid from it in an ewer. He watches in mute horror as the shaman gets the newly transformed man to drink it, also offering words of reassurance. Creep decides it’s time to go, and the team exfiltrates. They report into Cheeks, and post warning to the Shadow Chapters, the Crypt and Jackpoint. Cheeks gives them the small “missing persons” funds he’s raised from the community, and tells them they did a good deed. He seems to be pondering next steps, and also not 100% sure none of them are corrupted, so he says he’ll be in touch.

They talk to Fargus Sol, who confirms that something weird is going on in the astral planes with Spider: Metabeles, their traditional home, has new connected hyperplane known as the Twisted Web, which seems to be the creation or at least home of a malevolent trickster spider who broke free from his astral prison in Metabeles. This is apparently where “Grandmother”, whatever it is, resides. Sol doesn’t know how it started corrupting shamans from there, but suggests this would be worth further investigation. He also suggests that both the trapdoor spider and the huge black widow were likely quite dangerous but both tend to not be overly aggressive, so just as well the team didn’t attack, for now.

The team starts researching Botflies, and manages to identify some likely focal points. Remembering that Cheeks had said the Spiders only really got bad and weird after they ran out of bugs to eat, they decide to try to play one faction off against another. Conversing with Prof. Maggie Magnusson about Botflies while he confers with some colleagues, they hear that some Spiders gangers recently got picked up Downtown without SINs and dropped in the ACHE, and decide to get a third faction involved as well. They call Tosh Athack and tip the Black Knights off to the panned Spider raids coming up. Unfortunately they then hear back from Maggie, who says that the hosts can likely be saved with the help of a skilled medic and a skilled banisher, if they are found before the incubation is complete. The team feels bad they already sent the Spiders after them but feels it’s too late to stop what they’ve set in motion.

They wait a few days and then hear the good news: a large number of Spiders gangers were detained by Knight Errant after being found in the vicinity of a suspicious number of recently deceased individuals, none of whom bore any obvious signs of harm other than having been restrained. Due to the Spiders’ lack of ID, they are being detained in the ACHE for now. They team pats themselves on the back, and calls Vogel, who says he will spread the info they uncovered about how to ID and counter Botflies far and wide, to make sure ARES can’t try to use them as sleeper agent infiltrators. He sends them some cash, and with relief, they pay their rent.

In worse news, Jaliyah Angél cakks Aradia from the ASPS, having heard about the Spiders ending up in the ACHE, and shares her worries that the Spirit of the City, which seems to be centered on the ACHE, could easily be corrupted in it’s nascent form by the cultists.So maybe not an unqualified success. But at least the team knows where to look for them. They also get some intel on the ACHE itself, which could play into resolving the Free Seattle referendum: Shiawase is bidding to take over care and upgrades of the structure and it’s reactors from the UCAS military, which is good leverage.

The team decide to go with Imaginary Annie instead of STV as an employer to look into Free Seattle, and givers her a call. She says that she wants direct reports from the team, but that jobs and money and gear and whatnot will all be handled by a local fixer named Romeo who she is testing out, and also wants looked into. She confirms that Shiawase info, and tells them that there is an upcoming gala where they could likely meet a lot of the power brokers in town and try to ID who the likely delegates to the referendum will be- the first step.

They contact Romeo, and are less than delighted by his easy sleazy nature, but he seems to know his business, and gets them tickets to the gala (except Creep, who wants to sneak in), as well as nice rental clothes. Carol cringes at the thought of attending an event in a rental tux but has to remind himself he doesn’t have the corp credit card anymore, and goes along with it. They get a down payment for any gear they need from Romeo, and have a few days to prep for the gala itself. It will take place as an opening event for a grand new structure called The Aspirant’s Tower, a vertical maze inspired by a similar building in Dubai.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
Aradia
Tabasco
and a sad farewell to: ThinkTank

With TT and Kit on board to take Tate out, they start debating tactics. They decide to take a few more days to get some cyber upgrades and do some shopping, with Kit and Aradia taking a day trip to Cairo to shop the massive markets there. Aradia, unable to avoid temptation, goes looking for something illicit and special, and eventually gets put in touch with Am-Mut, a regional fence, black marketeer and info broker. She insists on getting their street names and checking their rep before doing business, but gets them what they need a day later after they check out. Kit buys schematics for Tate’s cruise ship, as well as some info on onboard security. Aradia gets some reagents, an ancient death mask that could be made into a focus, and also decides to drop a large sum on a mysterious weapon focus.

After spending some time examining the focus, they consult with Fargus Sol and do some internet research. It seems it is a legendary blade known as Ketel’s Dagger which can transform living matter to gems and crystalline forms depending on use and target. Sol says that since it uses blood magic to enact the transformation it would likely be quite addictive and might be an item that other’s seek to acquire, by force if needed. Aradia decides to trade it for a less dangerous magical sword, a Blade of Hark, which allows some level of spirit binding and control, and when bound as a weapon focus will make her a significantly larger astral threat.

Aradia and Kit decide to board the cruise ship as passengers to get some early intel, while the rest of the team approaches with all the gear on a zodiac provided by Ibn Hassan. Kit and Aradia spot some magical security, and confirm that the crew are either all bugs or maggots, and decide not to explore further until the rest arrive, though Kit inserts their new crawler drone into some maintenance raceways to skulk around and see if it sees anything. They also determine that there is definitely strong bug magic in and below the VIP spa area. Carol stays behind to get one more spa day, and also pilot in the escape boat if needed.

Tabasco learns how to pilot the zodiac, and after some trial and error and some withering looks from TT and Creature manages a successful stealth approach to the cruise ship. TT and Tabasco board via a tactical grapple, while Creature uses xyr web to stick to the side. Not seeing anyone inside the nearest chamber, Tabasco cuts through the porthole glass, and Creature manages to contort xyr way in. Using Tabasco’s radar and the plans Kit bought, everyone manages to link up, with Creature opening a door to the below decks area from inside, while Aradia bypasses the ward to allow everyone to pass through undetected.

They avoid some eerily efficient crew patrols (always in pairs and seemingly linked to some sort of hive mind or shared perceptive network), and head for what on the plans is supposed to be a bilge tank that seems to be the strongest magical location. They find it cut open, with some crude stairs welded together descending into it. Hearing more footsteps, as well as some voices, approaching, they dash down in. A horrifying sight awaits. At the far end is a massive bulbous, slimy entity, looking something like a huge putrid toad. In the center of the room is a Bug statue, similar to some they’ve seen before, this one obviously of the Scarab tradition.

Lining both walls of the room are various contorted metahuman forms in various stages of transformation, although they don’t look to be getting transformed into bugs. Instead, they seem to have some kind of small grub inserted into their heads, which seem to be causing the heads to massively swell and distort, consuming the rest of the body as they grow, and eventually projecting a mass of limb/antennae from the chin. The 11 bodies are in various stages of transformation, with the ones nearest the gum toad (as the team ID’s it) the most transformed. Two of these snap their massive, torso sized heads off of their shrunken husk bodies and charge the team on their spindly chin legs, targeting Aradia and Creature, as the gum toad flicks it’s tongue out at TT.

The team manages to dodge the initial assault, but are unable to connect with the enemies, who seem quite quick, until Tabasco targets the gum toad, who seems fairly sluggish. He manages to light it on fire, providing some better illumination in the dark chamber. Unfortunately, this refocuses the toad’s attention, and it quickly snags Tabasco with it’s tongue and begins to swallow him. TT gets off a solid javelin attack, destroying it’s mystical armor. Tabasco gets another arrow off, lighting himself on fire as well but badly injuring the toad. Meanwhile, Creature finds that xyr dwarf minigun is quite effective against the fast (but weak) head monsters, managing to slay one. The other continues to hyper-extend it’s jaw as the top of it’s head lolls back and it tries to chomp down on Creature.

Kit manages to prevent Tabasco from burning to death while the team finishes off the toad and remaining head, with Aradia loosing her air spirit on the grub/head monsters that are still incubating. 4 pairs of cruise ship guards dash down into the ballast tank, all moving disturbingly synergistically, and the team finds themselves straight back into combat. They all take some hard hits, especially TT, before Kit has a plan and manages to snatch the Scarab stone off it’s altar, and Aradia destroys it in astral space with her new sword. All of the cruise crew stop attacking immediately and sort of go limp, though their autonomic functions appear stable- Kit speculates that they are wimp clones, and decides to keep one for some experimental surgery.

Meanwhile, Carol has been chilling at the resort, and is approached by one Georgiy Abolev, who says he is a rep for the APEP Consortium, the magic/artifact hunters who were recently acquired by MCT. He fishes for info about VDH’s hoard, and offers large payouts in the future for other magical oddities, etc, giving Carol his number. Carol, with amazing perception, notices that his room was subtly searched while he was out, and calls Abolev on it. Abolev admits it was his people who did it, but nothing is missing, and he seems to be attempting to use it as a power play- “we can reach you anywhere”. Carol feels like he successfully won that social encounter by noticing it though, and expresses his displeasure in the skill level of the team Abolev used.

The next day, Carol plans to just chill more while the team does the job, but ends up deciding to get a second boat from Hassan and heading out to extract them when he realizes noone made an exit plan. He refreshes a bit on how to drive a boat, and zips over to the cruise ship, arriving quickly but not stealthily. Having lost comms with the team when they went belowdecks, he heads for the porthole Creature used to enter, and yanks open the compartment door from outside, using his grappling hook. Comms back on!

Creature and the air spirit finish off the grubs still in the transformation process, and the team prepares to chase after Tate, with Aradia sending her spirit off to search him out. As they follow the spirit, TT spots some chained plastic explosives all built into the lower area of the ship, that, if detonated, will definitely sink the vessel, so he offers to stay behind and sort that out while the rest of the team pursues.Kit heads for Carol’s zodiac with one of the wimps in tow, and manages to toss it down and wingsuit down after themselves. A very crispy Tabasco follows. They zip around the front of the boat to try to intercept Tate, who looks to be heading for an escape craft of his own.

Aradia and Creature give chase, with Creature faster. Xe gets lines of sight on Tate just as he is about to step off the cruise ship onto an emergency launch, which is starting to lower down the side. Xe fires with xyr minigun, and perforates both Tate and the rubber boat. Aradia, racing towards the deck, goes astral and summons a fresh air spirit, commanding to to engulf the wounded Tate. Seeing Tate about to press a detonator, Creature shouts a warning, and Kit manages to jam the signal just long enough for TT to clip the wires midway down, and prevent about half the explosives from detonating, the ship doesn’t start sinking. Unfortunately, the other half in the areas above/the spa/etc all do still detonate on a light lag, burying TT in a mound of debris after shredding his body. Creature cries out, seeing him flatline on the TacNet and heads back down to see if he can be saved.

Aradia jumps down to the zodiac, and has the air spirit drop Tate’s body in after is suffocates him. Kit is able to stabilize the unconscious Tate, while Carol restrains him. Creature manages to retrieve TT’s trashed commlink and one javelin but not much else, as he was blown apart and then crushed quite thoroughly. Though his face is hard to remember, Creature does not think xe will forget this view… Xe dashes back upstairs and webs down to the zodiac as announcements from the ship’s captain try to keep the passengers calm, especially since no other crew seems present/sentient at the moment. Kit gets them out of there before anyone can try to climb aboard, and they call up Hassan from the water and request a safehouse.

He directs them a bit west on the Mediterranean Sea, to an abandoned part of the former Libyan coast, where they link up with Bedouins traveling with a camel caravan including some dot camels. One of the Bedouins takes the zodiac and heads back out to sea, while the team covers up to blend in and hops aboard. A few hours south in the middle of the desert, they enter a secluded cave which looks like a smuggler’s cache. The Bedouins start their own fire and stay a short distance away, though seeing both the team’s injuries and the captive, say they are happy to help dispose of any corpses as needed. The team rests around their own fire for a bit and mourns TT, whose large sunny absence is noted.

Carol calls up Vogel, and gives him the intel on the Horror cult, and the suspicious fact that both the newly built cruise ship and the explosives were ARES manufacture. Even with the dot camel’s signal boost and Kit’s quality ECM, they are only able to text. Vogel gets back and says that Tate, under his new name, seems to have gotten added to ARES payroll during the bug dragon battle in Chicago, so seems to have fled and switched allegiances when he saw which way the wind was blowing there. But Vogel is distressed about what exactly he was up to and what ARES knew… as is Carol. Aradia mind probes Tate once she has rested a bit, eager for answers.

They find out that Tate seemingly got corrupted by V’golkatl after the team gave him the bug dragon to try to heal (before they knew it was buggy). V’Golkatl was apparently already using the dragon for its own designs, and convinced Tate to join it, as Tate came to view the coming of the Horrors as inevitable, and wanted to be on the winning side. He tried to bring Chicago contacts who were loyal to him along with, but most either refused (like Creature) or were killed during the chaos of his escape. He came to ARES’ attention due to the team, and Candice Phillips passed him up to Michael Turpentine II and III to run. In exchange for info on the last few nests in Chicago after the battle, they got him out and are using him to ferret out other nests in the Mediterranean region. They manages to insert him as head of a local Scarab cult using the artifact that Aradia destroyed, as Tate has no magical abilities of his own. He seems to have independently acquired the gum toad and the Crawlers (carol ID’s the grub/head monsters as something he saw in his vision of Kadath), and used them to maintain control of the artifact and also begin his own secret breeding program for lesser Horrors.

Meanwhile, ARES had him implanting various A/AA/AAA mid-tier execs and the like with various bug spirits that they think will be controllable, as what they believe could be the ultimate in corporate sabotage and infiltration. Luckily, Tate is very detail oriented, and the team gets the full list of all the converts, and this seems like a pilot version of this program, based on ARES’ success in it’s Project:Apex bug soldier hybrid experiments. Tate doesn’t think ARES knew about his current Horror activities, but they were very happy to provide him a lot of latitude as long as he kept up his target numbers.

Feeling like they’ve plumbed his mind as fully as they can, Kit kills Tate with a medical cocktail, and they trade his body to the Bedouins for a ride south. The Bedouins put it on ice in a large case, and also ice the wimp that Kit has hauled along. The team sells the list of names to Hassan, who compliments them on their work and says if they need more jobs in the region to get in touch. The next day they head south, and Carol starts to worry. TT is probably fairly identifiable, even in his exploded form, and they left the body there with distinct javelins and such scattered about. That night when they rest, Kit posts a memorial to TT on Jackpoint, and users there quickly link it to reports of a “shadowrunner terrorist attack on a cruise ship” that are being spread around. Someone also mordantly jokes that they’ll repost on Neutral Ground to get people off that bounty.

Carol finds that his corp credit card has been cancelled, and he doesn’t have any messages from his dad, bro, or Candice. He starts freaking out and planning to disappear in the desert and join up with Vogel, which Vogel seems excited about, but eventually talks him down from. Carol also passes along the general info about what Tate was up to for ARES, which Vogel is glad to know, and just seems like more motivation for him to take over. Carol makes a plan to get a fresh SIN or a few, and fake his death when they get to Asamando, using some bio-material removed from some major cybersurgeries he plans to get. They travel across a few countries in NW and central Africa to reach the ghoul nation, slipping over most borders deep in the desert without encountering anyone, and paying the ghouls at the Asamandan border with Tate’s body. The Bedouins leave the team at the outermost transit station, saying they have their own business, but recommending a few people and places in town for runners on the go.

Aradia and Creature get some minor biosculpting down in streetside walk-in clinics, while Kit just changes their appearance, and with the help of a curious aristocratic British “family doctor”, implants an ASIST rig into his wimp, effectively making it into a second body/biodrone for them to rig. Kit posts this info to Jackpoint as well, and gets a pretty wide range of responses, from the horrified to the impressed. Kit and the second body then help the doctor, Baxton Gresh, to do a series of surgeries on Carol, including giving him a False Face mod. Using the leftover tissue from that surgery, Carol pays off a fixer called The Butcher to report that Carol died of his wounds and was transported to Asamando and consumed, with the proof being some of his face in the Butcher’s possession. Aradia also calls in a favor with Juan Xiuhuitl, who flies the Brooch of Shifting over to AZT"s regional office (they are one of the few corps doing major business in Nyamkopon), and altering Carol’s aura to a different aspect, to throw off any attempts to magically track him. His low essence should also help here. The Butcher also offers them more regional work anytime they’re interested.

Aradia calls some Chicago contacts to report Tate’s death, and has another depressing checkin with Lothan, who is not doing well and has moved fully to his basement where he listens for tunneling in the walls. Aradia calls Goober to go check on him, and throws in a lot of money to start a “bug city survivors” PTSD support group at the Wisest Troll. The team all buys fresh SINs using Vogel’s contacts, and Hassan gets them suborbital tickets back to Seattle on a business flight where they won’t get searched (though they’ll still have to check and seal all their combat gear). They see some large, flagship-y Taco Temples on the way to the airport. What a vacation! As they swoop down towards Seattle, they are all a little depressed to realize that they have less than a week til they owe rent again…. time to get busy!

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia
Tabasco

Assessing the situation, the team finds that their arrival seems to have attracted the attention of one of the Emerald Cities bizarre reflections of a go-gang. Quickly naming them “wheelers” the team decides to try to evade before committing to another fight since the van/wagon is almost trashed, and 2 team members are unconscious from stun. Kit once again does some amazing driving, even in this unknown environment, and manages to ditch the bio-mechanical go-gang. However, Carol spots a low-slung scrap built racer following them from a block over, and then loses track of it. They are all surprised when it appears directly in front of them, compliments Kit on his driving, and challenges them to a race. The windows are all tinted, and the car seems like an odd classic muscle car in form, but built out of period-appropriate equipment to the metaphor that this hyperplane exists in.

Kit accepts, and they do a quick loop around a chunk of terrifying roller-coaster highway. Kit manages to squeeze out a victory, and the car introduces itself as Butter, and says that those who race together are “family”, since they all live a quarter mile at a time. Kit, recognizing the name, tries to connect with Butter about having had some distant connections, but Butter seems to have only vague understanding of the past life or alternate existence or whatever it is that Kit is referring to. He does seem interested in carboxing though, and says he will add capacity to his form before the next time Kit comes through so they can give it a go. He also offers an introduction to the Parliament of Cars, though he says they’re a little stuffy for his taste.

Butter escorts them safely to the edge of Oz as a favor for winning the race and wishes them luck out beyond, where the roads don’t run. Luckily Kit has the offroad upgrade kit installed, so the van/wagon doesn’t have any trouble. The team’s gear all seems to be some sort of odd WWi/WWii mid-era mish-mash, but they do what they can with the analog equivalents of drones and TacNet. They make a point to try to avoid engaging with any of the different events/historical periods/etc that they see represented throughout the densely packed metaplane, trying to safely cross the borderlands, and keeping the Tower in sight in the far distance. They are disturbed to see a portal crack open in front of them, and 3 individuals in what look to be armored diving suits step through. Using what look to be auto-loading harpoon guns, they manage to nearly wreck the van and almost pin Carol before the team manages to injure two of them badly enough that they retreat.

Upsettingly, they retreat by opening another portal, with the survivor pulling his downed team-mates through. Shaken by this encounter, the team redoubles their efforts to avoid any others. As they reach the edge of the borderlands, they gaze out over a massive expanse of different hyperplanes within the Kindred plane: ideologies, cities, ideas, etc all have their particular metaplanar reflections and representations here. Worried about evanescence, especially if they accidentally transit to a deeper metaplane, they plan to make haste for the Tower and ignore the rest. Before they can start moving again, a hooded figure approaches, and throwing back his cowl introduces himself as Carter Hayes, Tabasco’s dad.

Kit says “too bad” and drives off, but Hayes seems easily able to keep pace without any particular difficulty. Tabasco questions him and notices that he seems to have his dad’s memories and gestures, but something just seems slightly off. Carol spots that they don’t seem to be getting any closer to the Tower, even though they are moving at top speed, and starts really focusing on it. This seems to annoy Hayes, so Aradia and others threaten him and he backs off, though not without some parting words saying that he tried his best. Tabasco is left sad and confused. But the team feels that the van is now actually making forward progress again so something was up for sure….

A short time later, a summoning circle flares on the ground and a massive hydra erupts from the soil. Kit barely avoids slamming the van into it, but the hydra makes quick work of the remaining structure, and the van is wrecked and partially melted. The team fans out, using the van as cover, and Carol is badly wounded and some others injured in fight before they manage to figure out how to fight it effectively, by countering it’s elemental heads with different elements. Aradia summons a fire spirit, and actually sees it launch, comet-like, from the distant metaplane of Fire hovering in the sky, to come to his aid.Creature decides to chance it, and throws on the Babr-y-Bayn, gaining it’s famed elemental resistance, as well as shifting into drake form to gain xyr own elemental attack.

They eventually manage to defeat the creature, which dissolves into black sludge as the summoning circle fades. Aradia assenses it, and based on her and Carol’s knowledge, assume that this was the work of the Black Lodge. They definitely would have been monitoring VDH’s hoard, and have wanted any/all of the things therein, and have the magical capacity to pull off this kind of attack. Kit frantically pieces the van back together, with some assistance, jury-rigging it well enough for one last push. The while team focuses on arriving at the Tower, and with some miraculous driving, Kit manages to scrape into their yard just as the wheels fall off and engine block drops out. Interestingly, they seem to be fully back to their own era appropriate appearances.

Gazing at the Tower, they see that the lower levels look to be new/modern construction, but as it rises higher, it’s a total grab bag of eras, styles, and qualities. A confused seeming librarian exits the Tower and standing on the front steps inquires as to their business. ThinkTank takes the lead, introducing himself as a LoreKeeper from the Vault of Lore in Seattle, which interests the librarian, who introduces himself as Mr. Bookbinder. Kit starts to explain what they need, but Bookbinder fussily silences them, and tells the team to collect their “things” (gesturing dismissively at the pile of car parts) and meet them inside, before heading inside with TT.

Kit takes a moment to patch the team up, and then salvage what they can from the van, in terms of expensive mods and the like. The armor and camo coating is obviously wrecked, but they manage to recover a lot of the expensive add-on’s, though Carol refuses to help and dashes into the library to research ARES, futures, prophecies, etc. What he finds mostly seems to line up with what Vogel has been telling him, so that’s nice. TT and Bookbinder meanwhile discuss a reciprocal arrangement between their two libraries, as Bookbinder wants more material plane book depositories for recovering loans, and TT wants to expand the VoL.

The team heads in, and agree to retrieve an overdue book from a denizen of Anderson Island when they return to Seattle. When pressed, Bookbinder acknowledges that it is one of the 3 Books of 9 Gates, and advises them not to look inside if they value their sanity. Bookbinder seems to want to chat more, but Kit insists on portaling back to the material plane ASAP to get these magic items safely stored. Tabasco finally convinces Creature to take off the armor, which is just so incredibly perfectly tailored and fit that xyr regular clothes feel like scratchy trash in comparison. Unfortunately, Tabasco also starts running his mouth (lol) about his ancient symbiont tongue, the Dis Trader on the Moon, etc after getting nervous about the portal.

Bookbinder seems fascinated, and shares a little about Dis in exchange- there are multiple factions, with the Traders being one. But some of the other factions may disguise themselves as Traders also. He says not much is known, but that the opening of Kadath has caused many new rumors, creatures, and distant places to seem a lot more real all of a sudden. He offers reward for more info, on both Dis and the metaplanes in general, as well as other retrieval missions for the Library, but the team says “maybe later” and he huffily opens a gate and passes them through. They find themselves in a matching room, but seemingly back on Earth.

An out of breath Australian dwarf dashes into the room with a taser, seemingly not expecting visitors, but TT flashes him a coin that Fargus Sol provided for ID purposes, and says they need to stash some items in the Vault. The dwarf introduces himself as Barnaby Rudd, and takes them downstairs, there’s a lot of visible and audible construction going on around and above them, but more “in use” spaces the lower they get. Rudd passes them off to a scarred and hairless ork, who Carol recognizes as his old team-mate Test. They chat a bit, and seems like Test has been doing well since joining the collection of technomancers protected by the Coptic Church here in Egypt, many of whom work on the Library.

They explain again about items/vault/etc, and he says he’ll need to find one other being to help, but takes them down into a sub-basement, where a Filipino man in a business suit seems to be directing some crew heads on next steps in the project. Quickly trying to get a grasp on the situation, the team determines this is likely the great dragon Masaru in his human form, partially by ID-ing his voice standing nearby in a hardhat. Masaru heads downstairs with them, and he and Test both deactivate parallel security systems- the vault seems to require both a mage and a TM to open, though Kit thinks the TM part could possibly be done with nanites. Test explains to the team about his cutting-edge research into the similarities of technomancy and magic while Masaru nods a long with a slightly long-suffering look.

TT has to use the coin to access the vault, and only one is allowed in at a time to avoid temptation, so he heads in to catalogue the ring and the armor and store them safely. Masaru offers to portal them back to astral Library if they wish, but they say they plan to vacation for a while before heading home, so he gets them visitor visas for Egypt instead, and they cross the land bridge to Alexandria, curious about why dragons won’t set foot in Egypt. Doing some matrix digging, they settle on using fake SINs and a lot of nuyen to get rooms at a local seaside SpinRad luxury resort, not wanting to reveal their ID’s and get a discount at the nearby ARES spot.

They get a variety of different quality of rooms, and Kit bounces between rooms the first night, tending to everyone’s wounds. They also notice that 3 days have passed in material time. Aradia, Tabasco, and Carol, exhausted, all collapse into a deep sleep. They wake the next day, and Aradia and Kit hang in the enclosed cove pool and swim-up bar, while Carol lounges in the infinity pool that his fancier room bought him access to. Tabasco, still feeling iffy on vacations, practices on the archery batts and the climbing wall, before doing some swimming and drinking as well. Creature heads out on a day trip for an experiment. Xe swims out to sea from an unobserved place, and transforms into a drake underwater, swimming down to touch the bottom near shore. Nothing bad happens, so xe feels content, but notices a feeling of passing through an oily membrane when they walk back onshore in xyr human form.

Worried, xe calls the team, and Carol is stressed out that it might be FAB 1 or 2, one of the detection strains.Creature decides to hide in the wild for about a day, and does have to dodge some beach patrols, before heading back to the resort and rejoining the team. Carol returns to his room on the 2nd day to find a note on his pillow requesting a meeting about a mutual enemy the next day, at a teahouse in the old city. Kit and TT stay behind, but the rest of the team attend. They meet a large, jovial, bearded man in traditional Islamic dress, who introduces himself as Ibn Hassan. He says that after his organization, the Alliance Under Allah, was infiltrated by bugs in Mars City, he took it upon himself to fight them wherever he encounters them. He has heard similar things about the team, and believes he has some info that will interest them.

He says that there is a man, new in town, who offers exclusive rejuvenative treatments on a cruise ship, the one cruise ship not operated by one of the Big 10. He says that many execs, politicians, etc use this particular ship for off-book dalliances, and that this gives access to a wide-range of individuals with a lot of access. He says that this man is working with a local Scarab Cult to infect these powerful people and infiltrate their organizations. And he says that this man’s name (though he uses a different one here) is Dr. Martin Tate. The team quickly agrees to investigate further, wanting revenge, but say they need to run it by their 2 absent team-mates first. Hassan says that he is a good person to know in the Middle East and Africa, with a lot of connections. He can provide logistical support for the job, but not much reward other than the connection- he hopes that doing the right thing and achieving closure/revenge for Chicago will be enough.

The team heads back to the resort to discuss….

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia
Tabasco

The team makes a slightly uneasy peace with Fargus about their groundshaking discovery re: the Tarot/The Cornerstone, and Fargus speculates that they may be the only 7 people who know how that works. However, he thinks that Queen Brane Deigh may know or at least suspect, as she has been obsessed with collecting a full set of the 6WT, and owning the Cornerstone would supposedly give her full control over the castle and it’s ways. And as they say, “as goes the Castle, so goes the Court”…. Aradia tries to pyschometry the stone chunk that they summoned, to see if they can determine if it was stolen, if it was one of the 4 rumored chunks in people’s possession, etc. However, she experiences strange psychic feedback and doesn’t get much info- it seems to have some sort of strange object intelligence that she’s never encountered before, and it feels almost more like trying to read a mind that normal psychometry. It also seems to have powerful passive defenses against detection and manipulation magics, though it doesn’t seem that it was “intending” Aradia any particular harm. She decides to leave it be, feeling pretty wrecked, and on a few stim patches now.

The team goes down the list of saleable items, and votes on who to sell each to after some debates. They decide to start with their most loyal contacts first, and proceed downward from there, ending with getting the lil Black Book to Tosh Athack. They decide to keep the Orn’s Ear, figuring that it’s value versus it’s utility is worth the trade. They sell the Watch to Stuck for a discount, in exchange for letting them sell everything else inside the casino and getting some additional security around in case anyone tries anything. He seems delighted by the trade and instantly siphons off some of Tabasco’s luck. They call up Juan Xiuhuitl, who is quick to send Izidor and Achilles over to pick up the Brooch of Shifting, seeing the massive potential for such an object.

The handoff goes off well, with Tabasco managing to reset his aura using it before passing it over. Unfortunately, his astral taste is not very well developed yet, so he decides to do this in the casino, and is now aspected towards the Wealth and Greed plane. Better than toxic! Tabasco ventures outside after Stuck’s guards warn that they can’t protect him out there, and spots 2 separate teams keeping an eye on things. He quickly ducks back inside, and the team figures that some interested parties must have accessed VDH’s feeds in order to see when his Vault was opened, and got tipped when they team didn’t turn off that sensor on the door. They seem to be waiting to see who gets what perhaps, and either are only seeking intel or are planning to hit people as they leave.

The Howard and Philips, INC team reports that this is exactly what happened to them- they had to send out proof that all the stuff they took out was already damaged and/or destroyed to get their pursuers to break off. The team decide to call in some backup, and calls in their favors with Takashi and Yoko Aruki to get some folks on their side keeping an eye on stuff outside. The good news is the casino guards seem to be doing a good job checking for implants and weapons on arrivals, and keeping an eye out for hostile magic. The team next calls up Vogel after a long debate, and offers him the 2 Cornerstone chunks. He is thrilled, and as usual, gives Carol some real praise, which Carol laps up. He also offers Carol a position on his advance team in Detroit, if Carol wants to get off the streets anytime.

Aradia spots t2o separate individuals with solid magical power monitoring the situation from inside the casino, but they aren’t taking any actions so Stuck refuses to move against them or let the team do so. Rooster, Jamaal Quigley, and a non-binary eco type with a junkyard jaw named Smeed all show up to get the Cornerstone pieces, and pass over a massive payday. Covalent also seems to be benefiting from this based on his alliance with Vogel, and offers the team help transporting other artifacts/themselves if needed. The team then calls up Squeamish to sell him the vat-grown organs and the fool’s gold solution, and he agrees. He shows up with some massive toxic spirits on an armored moto, and gets the gear before heading out under spirit cover.

The team calls up Dyna Mite, and sells her the Crystal Traveller, in exchange for promises to share her research and help the team with astral travel when and where she can. She gives them a few hot tips for now. She sends a runner team pick it up, and the team meets Kukulkan’s team, who have been hunting Tzitzimine’s since a fovae spilled a bunch out in Tenochtitlan. Having rescued both Dyna and Kukulkan from the astral shadow prison of Fauth-Doshgoi, this team seems relatively well-disposed towards them, and interested in sharing info in the future when the team mentions some of their experiences and what they saw in Chicago and Kadath.

Aradia calls up the Sisterhood of Ariadne with the contact info she got, and gets a hold of a friendly older woman named Aunt Clara who is excited to buy the Compendium Malifecarum, and also to meet a young witch on the go, and invites Aradia to come visit their clubhouse in Snohomish. Aradia, as a longterm witch poser, it too excited to resist, and agrees, until the team team makes her call back and gets the witches to come to the casino, as per the plan, and aim for a hang sess later. They successfully make the handoff, and Aradia gets to meet 4 members of the coven, who are excited to meet her, seemingly, and share vague prophecies which could be pretty widely interpreted. Aradia warns them a bit that the house might be extra lucky tonight, but they seem to have a set budget for fun and aren’t worried.

The team then calls up Athack, and arranges for the KE Black Knight to come into Stuck’s without causing an incident. He shows up out of uniform in an unmarked APC, and takes the 2 evidence bags and the lil Black Book from them, giving them a silent nod before heading out to the well-armed and armored vehicle, likely full of backup. The team then begins debating how to get the Ring of Gyges and Babr-y-Bayn out of the casino, and out of town, safely. Fargus offers that Grey Cell has a contact in Brokerage X who has access to the global network of Freeports, which they can use to move themselves and the items without inspection, though not necessarily without interference. Carol is initially excited until Tabasco fills him in a bit more about the dark side of BX, based on his research into Toast and his downfall.

They decide to get Covalent’s assistance, and consulting him and Fargus, determine that their best bet is probably to get to Downtown and try to cross into OZ, the pocket plane in the plane of Kindred/Man that reflects Seattle. From there, they’ll just need to transit Kindred to the astral Great Library at Alexandria and arrange crossing into the physical plane to deliver the items. Kit plans to try to bring the van through, and the team starts prepping for the trip. They realize they may need to burn SINs to do this, as they’ll likely get recorded thoroughly travelling through Downtown (and a portal!) so Tabasco plans to ride in the smuggling compartment as he is the only one without a spare SIN, and he can an eye on the 2 artifacts down there.

Kit orders a rental truck full of sod to the casino, to get a second vehicle and try to gain some astral camo. Fargus arranges to leave with his knowledge, and says he hired a local crew run by a troll named Ms. Myth to escort him, so the team doesn’t need to worry. The team splits the sod between both vehicles and loads various containers into both. Aradia summons a Kindred spirit to ride in the sod truck and cast some illusions to make it look more occupied, and the team sends it off on Grid Guide, where it is quickly pursued and attacked. Meanwhile, they tell Takashi and Yoko to start taking out the opps drone and sniper overwatch, which Takashi especially does with relish. Interestingly, Tabasco gets another " unknown number text saying “I’ve got your 6” after an unseen sniper takes out one of the enemy drones that was following the team van.

Kit plans an incredibly tight and challenging route to Downtown, trusting their skill and knowledge, and manages to almost instantly ditch one of their tail cars. 2 moto’s remain, and Carol opens fire on them as they move into Renton. The bikers return fire, seemingly trying to disable the van, and do some serious damage, before Kit and Carol manage to drop both bikes, seemingly without killing either rider, which Kit is thrilled about. They white-knuckle it through the tight Downtown crowds during the last day of the weeklong festival, and call the contact Covalent gave them, a rift specialist named Tinman. Tinman seems a bit weird but caves to Carol’s threatening name drop of Covalent, and tells them there is an unstable portal to OZ just outside the Alabaster Maiden, so they race there, and manage to just slip through, clipping the mirrors off the damaged van, as the rift snaps shut.

They find themselves on Kindred, in a weird Frank Baum style reflection of Downtown Seattle, with strange representations of other districts in the distance. Rolling to a stop on the yellow road, they examine the camouflaged hay cart they are all now riding in, as Tabasco excavates himself from under the bales. They all seem intact, with only minor metaphorical changes to their equipment, with the tech all looking distinctly 20th century. Carol, with his incredible eyes, spots a teetering layer cake tower far in the distance, and assumes this must be the Library of Alexandria, based on descriptions, so they plan to make for that, hoping to avoid any trouble on the way….

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia
Tabasco

The team starts making arrangements to get the VDH hoard job done, worried that others in town will beat them to it if they don’t make a move. They get a meeting with Stuck through Ranya Zhong (via Tommy Vermont), and cut a deal, though it’s a dangerous one. They agree to finally get involved with Free Seattle referendum, but instead of just finding out all the info, they agree to throw it towards independence on behalf of Stuck. He makes VERY clear that failure is not an option, and that their deaths will be long, messy and unpleasant if they do fail. However, with this out of the way, he agrees to give them private access to VDH’s vault under his casino, and allow them to keep whatever they find inside in exchange for clearing out the security, whatever it may be. He offers to help them sell anything they need if they wish.

The team stocks up on some B&E gear, including a counterspelling focus for Aradia to try to protect against magical traps. They head to Stuck’s, and get shown in the back by Zhong, who tells them they closed off the small area of hallway outside the vault door but that the team will be responsible should anything “get out” while they are clearing the vault. The team prepares to be cautious. Noticing that VDH upgraded his security since Joygirl IX’s visit, Kit manages to bypass the anti-tamper circuit and sequence the numeric code to get access to the bio-scanner. Kit decides not to mess with the one bit of matrix security visible- a simple “open/closed” switch attached to the door.

Creature warms up the bio-sample of VDH’s remains they got from Tosh Athack, and it scans successfully. Carol then inserts the magical frat ring and twists it, and the vault door hisses and cracks open. A foul stench emerges, which Carol begins analyzing, and then stops after almost puking. The team hauls open the vault door, and finds themselves staring into total dark, with a weird muffled effect on sound. Aradia goes astral and comes under attack from some kind of disturbing web, which manifests and continues attacking her after she drops out of astral. The team manage to kill it without taking much in the way of damage, though Aradia gets some unpleasant psychic feedback.

Almost immediately, Aradia gets tackled by a massive rotten panda, which charges out and mauls her. The team manage to wrestle if off and slay it, before seeing what seems to be an animating spirit leave the body and slip back into the vault. The panda corpse begins liquefying almost immediately, which helps explain the awful odor, further explained when they enter and find that a Sangre del Diablo tree has partially digested a man who seems to have been caught in it’s clutches. Aradia summons a fire spirit and sends it after the spirit they saw, and the team comes under attack from the tree (spitting out it’s previous meal), a floating eye, and a shadow beast. A twisted pile of limbs and organs cruelly kept alive by medical and alchemical technology also reorients itself towards them.

The eye slow most of them down with some sort of magic, and the shadow beast slices at them with claws that leave behind dripping shadowy ichor. Luckily, none of them take major damage as they manage to defeat these threats, though Tabasco is almost swallowed by the tree. The fire spirit reports that is has chased the enemy spirit from a skin suit it inhabited, into a key, and the fight continues, though Aradia has to keep using services to order it to keep fighting as it seems repulsed by the enemy, some sort of toxic spirit that fights back with an astral toxin that harms and disgusts the elemental. However, the fire spirit emerges victorious in the end and a loud crack rings through the vault.

The team carefully checks for further threats, and sensing none, begins to explore. Creature decides to kill the pile of limbs and organs, just in case, first with boiling elemental water in drake form, and then getting in close with the monofil garrotte. It takes a while and is disgusting work, with severed components turning to black sludge almost immediately. TT hauls the rotting panda corpse back into the vault and they seal up the door, not wanting to give any extra time for magical snoops to get a look inside. TT almost immediately starts feeling ill, and Kit is worried he caught something from contacting the panda corpse, however minimally, as he forces himself to vomit foul smelling substances.

Kit patches up Aradia’s armor a bit as the team catalogues the vault and debates what to do. It looks like what happened is that one of Tabasco’s list of missing freelancers, an alchemist, seems to have been trapped in here, seemingly by VDH, and forced to work on various craftings and potions. Unable to escape and without resupply after VDH’s death, he appears to have essentially activated all the security systems as an attempt at revenge from beyond the grave. It looks like much of the valuable alchemical gear, as well as a blood magic “shaman tuxedo”, were destroyed in the fight, but many artifacts, preparations, books and scrolls remain. Kit also just barely manages to gain access to a small floor safe without setting off it’s self destruct, finding a hard-wired burner comm (the vault door, when closed, blocks wireless), the little black book (which they owe to Athack), and 2 Tarot cards, inverted.

The Tarot cards in their presentation seem to back up what the team determines happened here, and also are obviously valuable in their own right, though the team plans to keep them. They check the book to ID some of the other items, and at least get names for many of them, as well as some info about what they fought and where VDH acquired it from, which all implies he had a lot of continental connections. It looks like some of the items in the vault had already been sold, also, though the team agrees not to honor those deals. Realizing they are in way over their head, they debate a few options (selling it all as one batch to AZT or someone else, trying to freelance auction it, etc) before deciding they need help to even know what things are worth, and what is too dangerous to sell.

They call up Fargus Sol and propose a deal: if he will catalogue and price the items present, they will let him set aside anything which seems too dangerous for selling, to either destroy locally and transfer to safekeeping with Arleesh. The team will be compensated for these items, as usual, though probably not as highly as they might have been if they auctioned them, but it gives them a lot more info, maintains a relationship, and is at least reasonably moral. Sol tells them he will bring a local crew called Howard and Phillips INC that specializes in the destruction of dangerous things and data, and will head over ASAP.

A few of the team head out back to receive the newcomers and bring them down to the vault, and check in with Zhong. They spot someone maybe surveilling them but lose sight quickly, and don’t want to chance pursuing, but warn Zhong who says she will have security keep an eye out back. Sol and the H&P team head down, and he begins sorting the items. He convinces the team to transfer the Babr-y-Bayn armor (made of dragonskin) and the Ring of Gyges (madness-inducing invisibility at will) to safekeeping with Arleesh, as he isn’t sure they can be destroyed but believes them to be too dangerous to let loose in the world.

They set aside various toxic, bug, blood etc reagents, a hand of glory and a few blood magic scrolls, as well as some organs harvested from various metavariants and sapient critters for destruction, after some discussion, and also the SDD tree, which looks to be one of the rare HMHVV-infected variety- Tabasco is especially glad it didn’t get through his armor now! Sol also gets TT to drink a delicious elixir to cure the disease he caught from the panda corpse, even though it was very valuable, as it will save his life. The H&P team do some careful initial destruction on-site, in case they are stopped or attacked, to make sure the things they are leaving with are no longer valuable for harvesting or reuse, before heading out.

Sol stays and gets the team some price suggestions for the items he considers safe to sell, and says he/Arleesh would likely be interested in some of them, though probably couldn’t compete at open market prices. He seems especially interested in/concerned about a chunk of the Cornerstone, a mystical object from the Seelie Court that can supposedly control the castle and allow easier movement around it. The team realizes it resembles one of the monolith symbols on the Tarot cards, and Creature sets the card in question on a table next to the Cornerstone with some intention. The card burns up and vanishes, and the Cornerstone vibrates, disappears, and reappears where the card was.

Watching in astral, Sol and Aradia suggest that the card summoned the stone. The team frantically searches through the cards they have to see if they have any others that have unique symbols on them. They destroy a few in experimentation before getting one right, and manage to summon a second chunk of Cornerstone. Both Sol and the team realize the implications of this and get a bit stressed out at what they’ve uncovered: this is essentially priceless info and items, which could make their sale a bit problematic, but this is a major discovery…

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia
Tabasco

Aradia reaches out to the ASPS to offer to work together on entropy circle business, getting a contact from Maggie Magnusson, and talking a bit about weird local magic. Jaliyah Angél, the local ASPS liaison, agrees to share data and work together, since DeeCee, Boston, and especially Chicago have pulled a lot of the available resources for the org. She also asks the team to look into local Spirit of the City rumors and sightings if they get a chance, since they seem to have some affinity for that. Aradia and team agrees. Aradia also plans to get in touch with the Sisterhood of Ariadne but doesn’t feel up to venturing up to Snohomish yet, so plans to follow up on linking up with the diviners later.

The team decides they should follow up on the ARES lab that’s been out of comms for a few weeks now, and decide to do the job for Juan, since they didn’t get him anything on the space lab. They plan to give Vogel the info without the paydata, and try to appease Candice by revealing that AZT has a mole in their corp. Juan puts them in touch with a local info broker contact, Izidor Kurtlanik, and they meet him at a Downtown sports bar, which is noisy enough to provide a reasonably secure convo, especially once he turns on a white noise generator as well. He gives them contact info for their inside man, who will help them avoid sensor/security trouble on the way in, and will provide the secure password needed to gain access to the private elevator to the lab. They negotiate pay, and agree to do the job soon.

They stock up on some supplies, armaments, ammo, fake ID’s and permits, and some potions from Squeamish. They pose as musicians plus entourage/bodyguards to have a reason to be hauling a bunch of cased gear in a van through downtown, using the multi-location weeklong music fest as a cover. They make it into the lobby with no trouble, and blag their way past the security guard with the help of “Webmaster”, the inside man. Using the provided codes of the day, they gain access to the secure elevator, and head down to the lab, gearing up for combat on the way. They emerge into a disturbing scene- arcane sigils line the walls and floor, but appear powered down, and there’s some odd stains and overturned furniture in various states of disrepair just outside the elevator.

Weirdly, as they head further in, the cafeteria, kitchen, med lab and dorms all appear undisturbed, as if they were abruptly abandoned with no time to shutdown or clean up. They find records in the med lab suggesting that the facility has 12 people on staff. They head further in and find the first body – which strangely appears to have been turned into a husk by some sort of magical effect or strange weapon, it looks to Kit like years of decay occurred effectively simultaneously. They find 2 more bodies in a lounge area, who appear to have been killed while napping and gaming respectively, so it seems the killers were either very sneaky, very fast, or both.

They find a secure data lab, which has been breached, and locate the body of lab lead Robert Hammond, who had been summoned down to this lab from Daedelus station after some sort of major discovery here. Carol knows he is a specialist in weaponized manatech, and assumes that something has gone horribly wrong. They also spot that Hammond almost managed to call in Firewatch through a secure line to Carol’s dad, who is working directly under Damien Knight. Kit begins working on gaining access to the servers, while Carol heads back to the lounge to get some water to rehydrate Hammond’s finger to get it to work on the bio-scanner.

As he returns, Carol spots something upsetting- a floating tentacled crab monster made of some void-black like material with odd glowing eyes traveling up and down it’s tentacles. Carol warns the team and they enter combat. They are having trouble damaging it with conventional weaponry, until Tabasco makes some progress with his bow and TT manages to finish it off with a javelin thrust and punch combo. However, it manages to do incredible damage to both TT and his armor, using some spikes on it’s undercarriage- whatever this spirit is seems to be what killed the others here, as TT’s armor rusts and cracks where he is hit, and the area under ages a few years just from the small contact. He’s glad he dodged most of the spikes.

They get into the computer system while Tabasco takes watch in the hallway to keep more threats from sneaking up. Kit manages to wipe the headware systems of a few other scientists on-site, unlock a safe in a different area, and get copies of both project data and Hammond’s notes before wiping the system with nanites. Apparently they found a Latin copy on an ancient book, which contains a formula for summoning strange spirits from an unknown home plane. They managed to summon and bind some of these spirits in special containers, and Hammond was excited about their destructive capabilities, though both the summoning and binding was unexpectedly difficult, even for the talented corp ritualists they brought in for the project.

Then, they accidentally summoned a spirit too powerful to contain, which broke itself and the others free before they could banish it. Almost half the staff was killed in the initial outbreak, and the rest have hunkered down in various different warded areas to monitor the situation and try to regain control. However, nothing they try worked and the spirits seem to have a corrosive effect on magical spells, wards, etc. They eventually gain access to all the employees and kill them, Hammond last of all, just before he can call in the emergency signal. Up til then, he seemed content to merely collect data and hope for the best, not wanting to admit failure.

The team continues, and finds a prep area and 2 doors. They decide to leave the larger door for last, and Tabasco heads into the smaller room, finding the safe which contains the ancient book. He comes under attack from another spirit, and Creature has luckily stripped down and flipped into drake form, where xe finds that xyr elemental water power seems effective against the spirit, as do punches from TT and Kit. They manage to defeat this spirit without significant damage, and open the safe. It was still warder, though the outside is pitted with rust and decay. They find a book with blood-red leather covers, that seems very old, as advertised, but also in remarkably good shape.

They all decide they’ll need to have a convo after they get out of there about whether or not it’s safe to pass this on to AZT, but for now they feel they need to disrupt any other spirits onsite, perhaps as many as 4 more, since otherwise they will likely escape, given time, an cause unknown amounts of trouble. Aradia has noticed that they seem to corrupt the background count at an advanced rate, which is also quite worrying. The team tracks down 2 more spirits in the containment room and manages to disrupt them without much damage to themselves. However, based on the number of destroyed cages there are still 2 spirits missing. The team heads back towards the exit, clearing and closing off room as they go. They get in a brutal brawl with the final 2 spirits, which are both a bit larger. TT almost dies, and Tabasco and Kit are both badly injured.

However, they do defeat the spirits, and then make a pile of all bodies, terminals, notes, etc in the server room, and use some chems from the kitchen and med lab, plus some incendiary arrows, plus a fire spirit to incinerate everything after Kit disables the fire suppression systems in that room. They head back up the elevator, with Aradia maintaining some illusions to prepare for a potential trap. However, they easily leave past the lone lobby guard, who seems professionally uninterested. They all burn their SINs that they got for the job, and get out of Downtown before debating what to do. Tabasco believes strongly that they cannot possibly pass the book along to AZT, feeling that no corp or entity should have access to this awful power. He wants to either destroy it or pass it to Arleesh. However, the rest of the team has money signs in their eyes, and also doesn’t want to take a rep hit or burn their ties to Juan Xiuhuitl. Heavily outvoted, Tabasco gives in, but reiterates that this is deeply wrong.

They contact Webmaster, who passes along the details for the meet. They link up with Izidor Kurtlanik, with a beefier security detail this time, in an empty lot in Redmond, and pass over the book and data. He seems pleased, and gives them the pay. The team mostly heads to various clinics to get some ’ware upgrades and new gear, while Creature heads out to Blake Island to get some drake lessons from G-Dub, having been impressed by how well xyr abilities worked versus the spirits. Tabasco, depressed, gets roped into helping TT make a delivery the next day: the Sea Dragon found an appropriate gift for the Vault of Lore. They pick it up from Eletheria, and head Underground. As usual, Tabasco hangs back at the appropriate point, and TT heads into the Vault. The Lorekeepers are mightily impressed with the gift, a collection of lost texts about 4th World troll culture, language, and magic bound with a folded dragon scale, seemingly from the legendary library at Barsaive, one of the wonders of the 4th World.

The Lorekeepers agree to the Sea Dragon’s proposition to work together on her research needs in exchange for her patronage, and also tell TT about an ork and troll magic order called the Turgan Magnu, who they think will gain valuable knowledge and influence from this. TT is now a member in good standing of the VoL and can come and go as he pleases. He and Tabasco go drinking in celebration, with TT not wanting to just be a tourist, and making sure to spend money when he comes underground. He gets Tabasco to try Hurlg, which goes about as expected. Tabasco staggers back to his safehouse, and finds out that Creature paid him a visit and left him a present: the strange desiccated grub that xe got from the Dis Trader on the moon. Wanting to feel something new after the revelations about his parents and getting outvoted on a moral issue, Tabasco shoves the grub in his mouth and passes out.

He wakes up and finds that grub has replaced his tongue. He can no longer taste normally but seems to be able to “taste” astral space, and calls Aradia up to ask for some lessons. He also thanks Creature for the gift. Initially he mostly notices that his condo tastes a little sad and lonely, though with some recent excitement overlaid. He gets another session with Hard Case, and gets some lessons about how this recent moral defeat could help him define his code and make sure he knows what questions to ask before a job, and what also what jobs not to take, or how and where to define hard lines with the team.

Carol calls up Vogel after he gets out of surgery, and passes along the info about what happened on the mission. He gets an angry call from his dad about the lab, with his dad seeming to suspect his involvement. However, Carol has learned that Excalibur wasn’t quite the failure it was presented as, and knows that his dad knew and still threw him under the bus. Carol tips his dad that AZT has a spy inside ARES, blowing Webmaster’s cover, and then he surprises his dad by not caving to his anger, which seems to throw his dad off, so he ends the call but seems disappointed and still pissed.

Aradia goes clubbing, stopping in at Club Penumbra and chatting a bit with Nyssa Hallas. She gives some warnings that even having shut down the Blue Dragons and Project Iapetus, as well as getting that one Death Ship raided, the disappearances continue. She also says that she had her matrix guy take a look at the Iron Jungle and they have matrix security that is way too good, and also pretty weird and upsetting- not something he had seen before and he didn’t want to get closer to. Hallas also gives Tabasco and Aradia some missions to scope out new joints around town- a hot new private venue in Snohomish amongst them. Aradia gives in to Seducer and takes too many drugs, so TT calls her an armored cab home via Bernie Carter. Aradia also looks into rumors that Spinrad’s newish wife Gabrielle Al’Thani is throwing around a lot of money looking into any potential dalliances he may be engaging in.

Carol talks to Vogel somewhere, and tries really hard not to call him “dad” with all the positive reinforcement he gets. Vogel thanks Carol for the info, discusses where the book came from and what it means (seemingly, when V’Golkatl opened those doors in Kadath before the team captured it, it opened up some previously unknown metaplanar pathways and connections). He tells Carol that there will be a place at ARES waiting for him once Vogel makes his move, as he’ll need useful people that he can trust near to him.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia
Tabasco

The team follows up on a few things, as Carol continues prepping for the ARES lab raid- he’s got it all figured out, they’ll need to go in quiet since there’s only one secure elevator in and out, and they can use the huge multi-location music festival downtown this week as cover for moving themselves and gear around in a big van without unusual suspicion. He’s gonna feel out the various options for Johnson, and then it’s time to make some money and go to work.

Kit links up with Hans Yolo to talk more about the carboxing league, having to decided to call it “Glovebox” (get it?). Yolo suggests a few organized crime connections who might be good to loop in, and since Tabasco is skeptical of Enzo Gianelli based on his Urban Brawl tampering, they go with Bing-Lei Shen, a fashionable Triad boss with a few tough looking women guarding him, fresh in from Hong Kong- presumably this new imported muscle is a sign of the ongoing syndicate wars as well. Shen agrees to watch a test bout, and Yolo unveils the craft he’s been working on obsessively, a trike with 2 unfolding arms- lighter and faster than Kit’s one-armed van, but with less power. They have an initial match, and Kit dominates, but offers to help Yolo fix up and tweak his craft.

Shen then challenges Kit to take the van up against him, and smoothly leaps into the air and kicks the hand off Kit’s van arm without doing significant damage, with a perfect Bruce Lee yell. Everyone is very impressed, except his bodyguards, who roll their eyes. However, Shen agrees that this has promise, and says they came to the right guy. They plan to shut down some streets in Puyallup and have some escape routes out into the Ashlands if the cops come in hot. They’re scheming on a combo of arena bouts, as well as combat racing, but all with the “unarmed combat via a vehicle” angle. Exciting. The team heads over to Squick’s Vaults to check out their “secure storage” bolthole, and find it very much to their satisfaction: the owner, Squick, seems grumpy, watchful, and paranoid, and the onsite security measures look beefy, and their unit seems exactly as promised.

Creature wants to deliver the package given to xyr by Eletheria, so the team rents a speedboat and heads out to Blake Island, where they meet a steely-eyed STV lawyer named Eva Mari, who seems amused to see Tabasco, as she appears to have been the fund manager on his unofficial bereavement settlement from ARES. Creature passes over the package, and Mari scans it with a sensor -covered cyberhand, and the team can see reflected data flow across her cyber-eyes. She says all looks in order, and congratulates River Guard Investments in being the new owners of the private island, a former state park. It seems the Sea Dragon now owns an island in the Sound….

Mari gripes a bit as she boards a VTOL drone about STV not being willing to spring for a chopper for her. Shortly thereafter, a dwarf woman with a shark-y aspect wearing only a loincloth, swims up to the island, and introduces herself as G-Dub. Tabasco recognizes her gang tat’s as signifying her as a longterm member of the Red Hot Nukes who recently left the gang on good terms. She tells Creature that she has been put in charge of security for the island, as well as assessing it’s condition, but that the team’s welcome to hang there for a while if they wish. G-Dub admires TT’s bod as he strips down to sunbath, Kit stays with/in the boat, and the rest of the team takes advantage of the low tide to explore some narrow exposed tunnels riddling the shoreline.

Assensing, Aradia detects some sort of incredibly pure water magic source deep in the tunnels, and assumes that there’s either a metaplanar connection or a leyline somewhere, but they fail to find their way there. Summoning some water spirits to help them escape before the tides come in, Aradia finds they come out much more powerful than expected, due to the local aspect. Creature plans to return and explore further in Drake form and explore more, noticing that the tunnels seems almost perfectly sized for that. The island life is starting to convince Kit that being friends with the Sea Dragon might not be the worst…

They had back to land, and follow up on another thread: the Shadow Chapters. Tabasco uses Flipside to get a meet with Mrs. Snow, at a neutral downtown spot called Cuppa Joe’s. They meet Snow, and albino elf who play it up, in a secure room in the back, and have a not fully conclusive meeting where they try to push her on disappearances and potentially creepy local SC behavior, and she explains they aren’t in Chicago anymore, and that without a common enemy it will be a lot harder to unite everyone behind the idea, so they’ll have to work a little more harshly to get it done here. The team agrees to work with her but remains untrusting. She also essentially admits that they are doing some personality alterations to some local figures who are useful in the economy/scale but were not reliable, previously, like Flipside. Kit already has a couple recruits to the cause though, and Snow seems mostly friendly and like she’s trying to explain different realities to them, rather than manipulate them. She gives them a few initial tasks to look into when they have time.

Aradia decides she wants to look into some strange “entropy circles” that have cropped up around Auburn once each of the last 3 full moons, and the team does some matrix research and goes and looks at them and takes Quicksilver photos. Aradia determines that whatever is being done has some sort of Luna/Comet connection, and creates a perfect spherical radius of entropy that not only drains anything caught inside it of life, but also completely destroys the manasphere inside it as well, and that it seems to only be healing VERY slowly. Worrying! They look up the next full moon, and plan to do some more research in the next few weeks before returning to perhaps catch someone in the act. They think it might be toxies of some sort, given the proximity to the very polluted Lake Tapps.

TT checks in with Eletheria, and arranges to reach out on the Sea Dragon’s behalf to the Lorekeepers, in further seeking out the “Deep City”. He pays another visit to the Vault of Lore, solo to make sure he gets in. He speaks to Ned again, and Ned agrees to at least share research in exchange for an appropriate contribution. TT contributes some original research of his to a guestbook, which magically sorts it into an appropriate section, and Ned explains that the gift was a book from a librarian at the Seelie Court who came to visit once, seeking some esoteric info. He also tells TT a bit more about the history of the Vault and the Lorekeepers, and their connections to the indigenous shamans at Uluru in Australia, who taught them some of the ritual magic they use to keep the Vault secure but still accessible. TT reports in and Eletheria says she will acquire an appropriate initial gift from the Sea Dragon’s hoard while the Lorekeepers discuss a further alliance.

Creature wants to start checking out the local paracritter scene, so they head up to Blackstone’s in Snohomish, and find that it unfortunately seems to be owned/operated by metaracists, given it’s seemingly intentionally un-troll-friendly design. TT shrugs it off and they learn a decent bit looking at both the zoo and museum portions. Tabasco stays outside, spotting a small runner crew, all human, with some customized dart rifles, seemingly transferring some caged beasts to and from the facility. The team heard rumors that this place helped with import papers and supplied some of the fighting beasts to the Coliseum, and assume this must be part of that. Tabasco mentally designs a tracking arrow with a detaching shaft, to be able to quietly track vehicles like this in the future. The human members have a revealing convo with the nightshift front desk employee, further confirming the metaracist vibes of the spot. Creature is disappointed overall, but got to see a lot of new critters xe had only read about, so still some exciting inspo at least.

Feeling like the night’s still young (it’s not) the team wakes up Tommy Vermont in his apartment/office in Stuck’s, and hires him on to makes some introductions for them, to try and get the stuff they need to get into Van Der Hum’s vault under Stuck’s casino. Vermont suggests they cut Stuck in via Ranya Zhong and just try to gain legit access, as Stuck would take it poorly if they acted against his security. He also puts them in touch with the Black Knight leader/KE detective Tosh Athack, who agrees to meet them the next morning at the Big Rhino downtown. The team finally crashes out after a long day, scattered around between safehouses.

The next day Tabasco and Aradia rally to head to the meeting and find Athack, a very buff troll, wolfing down some food at the restaurant. In exchange for VDH’s “little black book” of clients, sales, etc that he always kept offline in the vault, Athack agrees to get biosamples and his signet ring out of evidence at the KE morgue where the body has thus far gone unclaimed, as the team needs these particulars to gain access, based on the info they got from reading Joygirl IX’s mind. Athack tells them he will need whatever he provides back at the end of the deal, but otherwise seems to be fully onboard- this could be some major evidence and /or leverage against some powerful individuals.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia
Tabasco

While day drinking after their semi-successful recon mission at The Joke, ThinkTank convinces most of the team that they should really take a vacation. As Tabasco and Carol don’t initially seem interested, they decide to plan a longer group trip for the future, and just each take a few days staycation around town to work on their own stuff for now. They hire 9Tails, Creep, Yoko Aruki and Kobold to do the actual run on the Iapetus lab, giving them all the info, and taking a small finder’s fee from the rate they negotiated with Annie. Their hired crew manages the job well, getting the data and finding out that the kidnapped awakened people are either turned into Yakuza killing machines or sacrificed in an attempt to trigger/copy awakening in others. Yoko kills all the scientists on site and burns the lab with white phos grenades, hating metahuman smuggling, and offers the team more work for Las Muñecas if they’re interested. Kit doesn’t approve of the high lethality but has a hard time arguing against the team, given the morality of that lab. Carol splits off for a bit to begin doing recon on the ARES lab raid job, and figuring out which employer to do it for.

With Annie’s help the team gets ahold of Giovanni Pentti, an MCT shadow fixer, and negotiate to not release the Iapetus data / publicize the experiments in exchange for MCT getting the Yak to stop kidnapping the awakened, leave Takashi alone, and not come after the team. Pentti agrees, and offers the team future work, appreciating their professionalism. After that they head into some time off, heading back to their various safehouses, though TT accidentally reveals to Tabasco that his mom killed his dad, so Tabasco needs some time to process. He decides he wants to have the team over, and consults with Emdachot Fahd, his building super/caretaker about updating his unit for guests, and she helps him take down his childhood posters and racecar bed, basically his only furniture, and replace them with a new generic flatpack condo set. Unfortunately, Tabasco leaves his eyes connected to the TacNet so the team sees what he’s up to and Kit especially gets pretty depressed about how he’s been living.

The crew heads out to meet up with Covalent, following up on Vogel’s reco for a safehouse for the sub when it arrives. They find a strange, animalistic man living in an abandoned, moldering mansion on Fox Island, and make a deal to trade him certain Tarot cards for his assistance. He seems to have very powerful magic and some kind of animal form but the team can’t quite figure him out. He seems to want to fuck with the Seelie Court, fairly explicitly, and the team’s latent connections to the Unseelie seem to reassure him. Kit arranges to return to help guide the sub in in a few days. They then head to Eletheria and finally meet up with her, check in about Sea Dragon jobs, and get a few further tasks. She’s using a formerly sunken luxury yacht as a safehouse, which it seems like the Sea Dragon brought up off the ocean floor and only patched up the outside, the inside still shows many signs of longterm water damage and rust. But the meeting goes well. Creature arranges to do some drake lessons with Eletheria, and begins perfecting xyr abilities.

The team collabs on some research and Tarot analysis to seek out Van Der Hum’s hoard, and gets some good intel: the figure depicted on the card is a runner named “Joygirl IX” who is an amnesiac with expert impersonation skills and an unknown metatype. They reach out and offer to swap info, and she just happens to be in town, having just completed a job and not yet left on the next one. She reveals that she knows that she is on the card, having retrieved it on a run, which was what started her on Tarot investigations and on regaining what she can from her memory. She agrees to let Aradia mind probe her, with some contractual caveats about what Aradia/the team can do with the info, after checking the team’s street rep and finding it quite good.

They meet up in a tech and gear alley in Auburn near the Clone Zone mall, right down the block from Technicolor Wings’ local office, it seems like JGIX at least has the use of a small roll-up storage locker here, and it is maybe an in-town safehouse of sort- conveniently near the international smugglers. She has some drone security, concealed, that Tabasco and Creature spot while they are also doing overwatch, and Kit stays with the van, perusing the various wares for sale in the neighborhood and dropping some digital flyers for their “Glovebox” carboxing league that they’re trying to get going. TT and Aradia head in, and find JGIX waiting with an old Italian man sitting a ways back in the corner keeping an eye on things. Aradia probes her mind, and manages to break through a hidden magical partition where it looks like someone really tried to secret away some memories they couldn’t erase.

It seems she was hired on a job to access Van Der Hum’s hoard herself, some time ago, and managed to find out that it required both some bio-data and a fraternity signet ring (explaining the greek letters on the Tarot card) to access. It seems she gained access but whatever she found inside has been cleared. It seems like some unknown scientists (who were very careful to conceal faces and voices while detectable by her) used one of the early CFD experimental “cures” to effectively but crudely mind wipe and rebuild her with her current skills via skillwares and wires. This explains her occasionally somewhat rote way of negotiating, etc. It is unclear if Van Der Hum was the one who originally did this to her, or is she got mind-wiped twice, but she thanks them for the info and says she has a lot to think about. Kit manages to ID the old Italian as Fianchetto, a legendary spy and Jackpoint-er, who seems to have taken a shine to JGIX after working some jobs together, and has had her guestpost a few times to share Tarot info on the board.

Tabasco has everyone over to celebrate, and they all get VERY interested in what exactly is up with his life. It turns out his building super/caretaker Emdachot is an ex-Ork Underground freedom fighter (or terrorist, depending who you ask) with the Sons of Sauron. She owns up to it when they ask, but has intentionally damaged her face and fingerprints to make it harder to ID her. Tabasco realizes she basically always stays in the building too… he calls Don Michaels, who explains that she did him a favor a long time back, and he helped her get out of the life when she needed to. Satisfied, the team decides to let that lie, but chides Tabasco on his inability to cook for himself, do his own laundry etc. They find the building laundry room, and notice that there’s a hidden tunnel behind the dryer. Aradia uses pyschometry to figure out that it’s a secret Underground entrance, seemingly used by Emdachot’s family to move trog families around away from prying eyes.

Tabasco, his mind a bit blown from all these revelations about his life, drinks for the first time. The next day, Kit heads to Covalent’s rotting mansion to help guide the sub in, and is interested to see that Covalent seems to open up a portal to some sort of water plane to hide it in- a very secure safehouse indeed. He says if the team keeps paying him in other Tarot cards and the like, he will work other “miracles” for them too. The team chats with Takashi once they get ahold of him to tell him he’s safe from Yakuza threats, and he tells them he’s been hiding out in and around Glow City, and investigating both the Rusted Stilettos and some local toxic druids (not the Isotopes, interestingly) who seem to be kidnapping people and disappearing them through astral rifts, telling them to “embrace the glow.” They compare notes a bit and agree to collab on diving deeper into this eventually. It seems like Takashi is setting himself up as a bit of a do-gooder, and maintains his sunny attitiude, despite leaving a trail of extreme violence from his good deeds.

Kit logs off the call, disturbed again by the violence, but everyone else is stoked to hear he’s doing well, although a little worried about what he may be uncovering. Aradia, Kit and Tabasco head to Squeamish’s alchemy lab in Auburn, and pick up a Vault of Ages so that Aradia can start collecting ritual samples from targets that the team needs to magically effect and stashing them at the safehouse. They also make a disturbing introduction to the powerful alchemist, who seems like a real creepy weirdo but has a lot of useful intel and knowledge, and hints at available work and exciting projects, and seems like one of the least prejudiced against Monads people that Kit has met who have known that they are a Monad.

Think Tank, Tabasco and Aradia then head into the Underground, checking out Touristville and the various stalls, restaurants, trade bazaar’s, etc, eventually working their way to the Ork Underground, away from the more “official” policed portion. They find a monument to a runner who died protecting multiple families from a violent eviction, and note that is the man depicted on the Karma card. They are a bit inspired by his legend. They eventually find the Underground branch of Sticks and Stones, and TT gets chatted up by a nattily-dressed pimp, dealer, and fight promoter named Fancy Derek. As TT initially claims he’s not great at unarmed combat despite his size, Derek tries to get him to agree to take a fall, and Tabasco commiserates, having done so himself with complicated feelings about it still.

TT says that that is against his code, says that actually he’s decent at fighting, so Derek agrees to make some introductions for him in the Underground if he wins. He challenges the biggest and roughest looking of the Rooter gangers who are training there, a buff ork named Mariusz. TT throws him off by being friendly and asking questions instead of buying into the pre-fight shit-talking, and they agree to go for drinks after. TT wins the fight via a technicality, as Mariusz is quite skilled, but gets some solid hits in, and Derek says he’ll put the word out about a solid new troll in town on TT’s behalf. TT and the Rooters head out for drinks, but Mariusz tells Aradia and Tabasco to head back at this point, as the place they’re going isn’t friendly to unknown “smoothies.”

They hit up a bar even deeper in the Underground called the Watering Hole, and the Rooters warn TT about the Feral Underground areas, including a ghoul neighborhood, and the Depths- unexplored, unknown locales filled with danger and mystery. They hang in a back room at the bar, and TT admires the skilled dwarven carvings that someone has crudely modded to have more orkish faces. The Rooters get him to try the “Dunkelzahn hot” rat-on-a-stick, and impressed by his fortitude and lack of machoness around it, both, seem to accept him as a decent sort. They tell him to stick around a while, and take off. After TT has a chance to sober up just a bit from the Hurlg, he spots an eye watching him from a recess in the carvings.

A door swings open along a previously concealed seam, and a troll with a staff and cloak does a brief interview to make sure TT is acceptable, before taking him to the Vault of Lore, a legendary Undergound library maintained by an order of troll Lorekeepers. The troll, Ned, explains that they “sing the stone” to keep the passages to the VoL secret, especially with all the new interest in the Underground. He gives TT the tour, and TT notices that though the space appears built with dwarven craft, it is all sized for trolls as well, implying a past collab before the current schism in their cultures (or at least in the popular representation of such). He finds a comfortable reading nook commemorating a fallen runner named Christopher Toff that has a cozy chair, a small shelf, and some carvings of dragons, and settles in to peruse the library, finding some fascinating 4th World hints of something called “the Deep City” and something called “Kothan Kaer”.

He plans to dig deeper, but satisfied that he’s made a good first impression, calls it a day with plans to return, once he sees what it is that the Sea Dragon wants with this place. Ned tells him that as an assassin, he might be best used to preventatively protect the VoL’s secrets, and TT says he would be happy to do so.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia
Tabasco

The team links back up with Aradia, who has completed setting up her magical lodge at the safehouse, and compliments TT on his new slightly slicker looks. They rest up and Aradia also gets a task from the Sea Dragon: seek out a lost vault of a dead man who “wanted to be a dragon” based on the size of his hoard. The team decides to meet Tabasco in Puyallup again and go through with their kidnap and mind probe plan to get info from Han Liu of the Blue Dragons. They stop in Downtown to get Carol’s modded rifle back from Iva, who flirts heavily with Aradia until TT gets impatient and interrupts with a huge fart. They get back on the road, and meet Tabasco near the Sleeping Dragon, the BD’s clubhouse/vice den. Carol, Creature and Tabasco all surveil from some nearby roofs for a while, while TT keeps an eye on the area and also on Aradia, who goes astral to scout it out as well. Kit cruises around in the van to get a feel for the streets/escape routes/etc.

Not seeing much magic nearby, and seeing only 1 prospect tasked with guarding the bikes, Aradia makes Kit invisible and Kit sneaks up to the parked bikes and uses their nanite cloud to infiltrate the biggest and nicest one, surely Han Liu’s. Aradia disguises herself a bit and magically enhances her fashion before heading into the bar to seduce Han Liu. She manages it almost comically quickly, and gets him to take her for a ride on his bike. Tabasco calls in a favor from Stella K, the TM he rescued from Alice’s lab, who loops the bikes signal, making it look like it’s coming from a nearby Bump and Sleep love hotel. 2 more BD’s follow on bike’s discretely to keep an eye on the boss, but hang back a few blocks and don’t seem to notice anything wrong, but Tabasco stays back to keep an eye on them.

Aradia drugs Han, and Kit takes over the bike, steering it carefully to keep Han onboard since Aradia isn’t very strong. They head out to a barren spot in the Ashlands, and park the van and set up a little perimeter while Aradia mind probes the unconscious Han. They find out a lot of useful info: the Blue Dragons are picking up awakened victims kidnapped and sold by Alice and other gangs, and delivering them to a secret lab under a Yakuza bar downtown called The Joke. This all has to do with Project Iapetus, and Han knows that Takashi is wanted by the Yakuza in connection with this as well, but doesn’t know more than that. He seems insecure about his potential for advancement in the syndicate as he is an elf, and Aradia finds out that he has a cousin in the Ancients who he keeps in touch with, but can’t find any really juicy blackmail other than the normal crime stuff that the BD’s do.

They sneakily return Han and his bike to the love hotel, using one of the many entrances where the BD goons can’t see them. Hoping that Han will be too embarrassed to admit that he doesn’t remember anything, they call it job done and head out. Tabasco calls Annie, and updates her, she pays them and offers more cash for getting into the lab and finding out what the Yak is actually doing with the awakened there, and also any project data they can get. Worst case, it will maybe be some good leverage against MCT at some point, due to their past involvement. The team agrees, but calls it a day for now, inviting Tabasco back to the safehouse, though he has to sleep on a couch. He’s very impressed by the digs after initially being put off by the rural setting.

Aradia calls Simonetta Chandra, and suggests she get transferred to Seattle, which she reluctantly agrees to, as Aradia has her blackmailed successfully still. Tabasco hears from Butch, who fills him in the weird “mind/body separation” experiment that Alice seemed to be running, and it seems like Stella K got saved just in time, though from what is unclear, and also she has definitely been altered by the experience. Aradia also checks in with Lothan, who still isn’t doing super well but gives some reco’s for Seattle magical orders to learn spells from. The team calls up Patty C and Wingman to try to get Lothan some help and they say they’ll see what they can do, but years of being a dick seem to have effected a bit who wants to go out of their way for him. The team also hires Creep and 9Tails to track down Takashi and warn him to lay low, and to give a location non-specific update on how he’s doing.

The next day, they drop Aradia off at the Mana schoolhouse in West Redmond, with Tabasco providing some warnings about what gangs to watch out for. Aradia manages to learn her spell quickly and get out of there, but does end up chatting a bit with a ‘Weener razorgirl named Borderline. She then gets an armored cab ride from Bernie Carter over to meet up with the team. Meanwhile, the team has been hanging out at The Joke and scoping it out. They know from Han where the secret garage entrance is off the back alley, but it looks pretty high security, so they want to scout out the inside a bit more. They do some karaoke and drink as a cover, and figure out that one of the 3 elevators in the elevator bank goes below ground, as well as servicing the MCT extra-territorial housing units above. The floor is reinforced enough that Tabasco can’t see through it with radar, and Carol see that the elevator is activated with a palm-print and key reader, unclear if it’s either or both since the staff keeps chasing them away from the elevator area.

They eventually get kicked out for being a little too snoopy, and Aradia walks right by them to go in when she arrives, to finish the recon. She spots a mana barrier on the down elevator, but nothing else of note. They all link back up at the Alabaster Maiden to grab another drink, in case anyone is seeing where they go next, as they want to just look like day drunks and not runners on a recon mission. Creature spots a Talis cat near the kitchen, and joins it sitting in a weak sunbeam, which the cat seems fine with. They discuss taking some time off soon to go on a little vacation somewhere, though it’s unclear if all of them want to, or want to go to the same places if so.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia
and introducing: Tabasco (for his backstory see: Meanwhile in Seattle)

The team sets up at Finn Safehouse #4, and Carol buys a jet ski to zip around on the small lake they’re adjacent to. They’re up in some wooded mountains, near the border, on a pretty isolated road, but they have a lot of space and the custom gear they requested. Aradia announces her plan to hang there for a while, get acclimated, and set up her magical lodge onsite for ritual use and cursing. The rest of the team decides to cruise around a bit the next day and get a feel for the town before committing to anything too hard.

They rest well, and some have dreams: TT gets a task from the Sea Dragon to find and contact the Vault of Lore, in exchange for unspecified reward, Creature gets a few tasks to reach out to local changelings and weirdo’s on the SD’s behalf, and Kit gets a task to look into some group called the First Union. They are all also told to contact a woman named Eletheria at the Downtown docks as the local agent for the SD, but to keep Eletheria’s affiliation to themselves. Carol has a dreamless sleep. Takashi reports in, without a location as requested, and says he is appreciating the local terroir and learning about himself. Ken Ichiro also calls and warns Kit subtly that his team’s involvement in bringing Takashi is known, and might be forgiven by the local Yak if they turn Takashi over. They debate what to do but don’t decide yet, wanting more info.

They call around a bit the next day to feel out what jobs are around in addition to the ones they have already been offered, and decide to meet up with a local guy that Imaginary Annie wants them to work with, an archer named Tabasco. They link up at the Reverse Mullet in Redmond, and feel each other out. Tabasco realizes that this is the team that he saw take out a Yak cybersoldier on that vid from the SSC, and is suitably impressed. He’s accidentally a little snobby about Carol’s mixed grade cyberware, but then is very disturbed/impressed when Carol turns out to know secret ARES info about his missing parents.

Tabasco gives the team the local rundown, and says he can introduce them to useful contacts etc as needed. To start, they head Downtown to drop off Carol’s rifle with Iva to give it a powered breakdown function for easier smuggling, and Iva seems turned on by danger as per usual, and is fully gothed out. They next head South to Puyallup, and go to Riot and Butch’s clinic to get TT some cosmetic surgery to make him less recognizable, hoping to limit future CIA attempts on his life. While TT is under, Kit makes friends with Hans Yolo who seems interested in helping start a car-boxing league, and Carol buys a new more portable SMG from Don Michaels, quickly delivered by a Cutters moto-courier.

Kit hangs back to chat with Yolo and keep an eye on the clinic, while Tabasco, Creature, and Carol go roof-jumping. They spots some Reality Hackers throwing up anti-Yak tags, but seemingly trying to make it look like the Vory did it, and also spot some tensions inside the Ancients, both between 3 internal factions (which seems competitive but mostly friendly) and between them and the Laesa, which seems less friendly- something may be up there. They also make some calls and start looking into the missing magical people angle, and Tabasco finally gets ahold of Mongoose.

She gives them some good Yak/Blue Dragons intel, and they make a plan to grab Han Liu, the BD leader, and get Aradia to pull the info they need out of his head. Feeling good about the whole situation, they get Tabasco to read and sign the group norms, and Carol breaks the bad news about Tabasco’s parents to him: his dad is for sure dead, and his mom is “missing” (Carol has put together that Tabasco’s mom was the embedded bodyguard who killed his dad to prevent his capture by another corp, but doesn’t tell Tabasco that part). They all head home to rest up, agreeing to start their investigation tomorrow. Tabasco sticks with his condo for now, not joining them at the safe house. The runners are delighted to find a spirit of water present in their lake, who the Sea Dragon has tasked with providing security assistance, but who also seems happy to make waves for Carol’s jet ski. TT looks slightly more traditionally handsome post-surgery and a bit younger, but nothing too drastic.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia

The team chills for a few days at Artemis base on Luna while figuring out their next steps. Since it seems like there’s plenty of work in Seattle and noone has any other pressing concerns, aside from ThinkTank’s desire for a vacation, they agree to head there after a stopoff in Chicago to grab their extra gear from Ahabitat. They sell off most of their space equipment, and ride the space elevator back to the Atlantic base platform, finding that the sub seems to have been left alone in their absence. They all pile in and motor for Chicago. Kit, while noticing that the waters seem to be actively assisting their travels, reluctantly agrees to the Sea Dragon’s request to participate with the Renegade Works rigger design collective that she is funding, and share some of his odd designs.

They get some various Seattle contacts from friends and connections in Chicago, and get some lines on a first few jobs for their arrival. They also pick up a coyote job from Mrs. Clean, which conveniently includes smuggling and border intel to allow them to drive to Seattle across the various NAN with all their illicit gear. They restock on some drugs and ammo, and get Goober to add a few more upgrades and hidden compartments to the van, and and roll out. TT is glad to be back on Earth. Creature hides in the smuggling compartment during the border crossings, worried that xe is way too identifiable/memorable, but everyone else just uses their best clean SIN, and they pass through the AMC and enter the SSC without any issue.

They reach the small, rundown town in the SSC where the pickup is, and find some camera info from a DNR wildlife cam showing that their target is waiting for them in the single bar in town. They head in, Carol makes contact with the appropriate code phrase, and they head out to the van, just as it comes under attack from a strike team. The van is nearly wrecked, and the team, caught off guard, is under-armed and armored and nearly knocked out of the fight in the first round before they rally and manage to drive off the attackers, killing one before the other two flee into the nearby woods with spirits and grenade traps covering their escape.

They get back on the road, not wanting to wait around and see what shows up in terms of local law enforcement, though the van and much of their armor is pretty shredded. They head further into the mountains along the smuggling route, and are making good time until they stopped by a tall figure made of flaming straw standing across the road and telling them in Salish that they can’t pass until the Sacred Hunt is done. Kit figures out a backroad/offroad way around, but Carol decides he wants to help with the Hunt and convinces everyone else to go along with it. Kit cleverly uses the van’s Ruthenium coating (with Aradia and Creature’s tips) to make a mirrored side with various false faces floating in it, tricking the approaching horde of basilisks into paralyzing themselves as they are herded up the road.

Along with 2 pursuing adepts, the team makes quick work of the the horde after that, and gets thanks from a hunter/guide named Bug Tussle and a Bear shaman named Caria Alten who were there to support the 2 young adepts in case anything went awry. Caria patches them up a bit and send them on their way. Their “package” Takashi takes this opportunity to tell them that he is detectably radioactive due to his interior low-yield reactor power source, as he wanted to check they had a plan to get him safely into Seattle- any kind of checkpoint won’t work, for sure. They all get a little worried, and convince him to climb into one of the spacesuits they kept to benefit from the radiation shielding.

They keep following the route, and Kit finds an entrance into some huge runoff tunnels on some massive mechanized farms along the border, and carefully follows the detailed directions from there until they connect with the outer edge of Greater Seattle’s sewer grid. They run into a ghoul ambush, and sadly spot the smuggler who was originally supposed to have done this run, who seems to have turned into a feral ghoul. Carol, using very lethal Ex-Ex, and Kit, using non-lethal stick and shock, manage to hold back the mass of ferals long enough for Kit to smash through the junk barricade they’d set up, and avoid whatever sentient ghouls/beings were behind this whole trap.

Reaching the bar in Touristville, they link up with Jamaal Quigley, the local Sierra Corp contact who’s taking Takashi off their hands. Overall they’ve had a real nice time with Takashi, who seems like a fun blank slate with a nice disposition, and Aradia manages to glean some info about a secret Yakuza/MCT project from a deep mind read that he consents to. Kit tells him not to tell the team exactly where he ends up but to keep in touch, as Kit has some MCT loyalties and doesn’t want to have to compromise either. Quigley gives them the second part of the pay: a recommendation to the exclusive secure storage facility in Puyallup called Squick’s Vaults, and also recommending various safehouses and giving them a little bit of a lay of the land.

During this convo, an assassin enter the bar and almost kills ThinkTank with a toxin dart, but luckily Carol manages to dive in the way and block it with his armor. Carol, on skates, and Kit, in the van, give chase as the assassin flees with an accomplice on motorcycle. Carol tries to jump on the back and falls on his face in front of a bunch of kids playing soccer outside, who mock him thoroughly. Kit manages to catch up but almost gets the van wrecked when they chuck a magnet grenade at them, which they barely manage to deflect with the van arm, which is badly damaged. Fearing further injury, Kit breaks off pursuit.

TT surmises that the CIA must have put a bounty out on him, and confirms that an area alert went out for him on Neutral Ground just before the assassin arrived. They quickly settle on a choice of safehouse in east Redmond, and put in their order for special equipment as they head out, realizing TT will need some disguises or surgery to keep a lower profile going forward. Luckily he’s good at blending in in a crowd, and there’s lots more trolls in Seattle than in space…

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia
and goodbye to: Foghairal ke’Coille

The team can’t sort out what to do with the data right away, so they decide to finish up all their missions and then sort it out. Most of the team head for Zurich Orbital after leaving basically all their gear in a rented hotel room at Artemis base on Luna. Kit, refusing to participate in a hit, luckily gets a call from Fagus Sol while monitoring the gear, and heads to Darkside Junction to investigate an astronomer’s mysterious death. The team on ZO gets a tour after Foggy uses the local STV branch to rep her as a visiting dignitary (not really even a lie), and then do a bunch of research on Fentin. With the help of a comatose technomancer who works for STV and spends her entire life in the ZO matrix, they plant some falsified and altered evidence of nefarious activity on Fentin’s part, and also publicize a statement he posted on Jackpoint when he got membership some years ago. Hotkey helps with some hacking since he’s also on the line with the Tan Robes to get this done.

They stir up a scandal by making it look like GOD is trying to cover up creepy behavior and abuse of power on Fentin’s part, and station security uses the opportunity to seize some power in their ongoing competition, and gets Fentin sent downwell in custody to face charges. He likely would have gotten his named cleared from the investigation had he survived the trip, but the Tan Robes mash him into a fine mist inside his transit cell as soon as he enters the manasphere. So that’s job done, and Carol gets a creepy smiley face text from an anonymous number, so he figures they’re good.

Foggy announces that’s she’s headed back downwell and to the Seelie Court, after convincing the team to give her the Spirit of the City info re: Chicago as payment for helping with the hit. She invites them to visit sometime, but Carol’s not sure he’d be welcome since he did some major work for the Unseelie last time he was there. However, Foggy has sworn to ensure that both STV and ARES get at least the opportunity to establish a successful presence at Court, and will likely be a useful ally given the nearly sure rise through the ranks she will be able to engineer upon her return given the info and artifacts she is bringing with her.

Meanwhile, on Darkside, Kit begins their investigation- they link up with a local info broker, Maxine Omega, who they found on Asgard Data Haven. Asking some questions, Kit is socially out-maneuvered and agrees to share their investigation info. Kit heads to the astronomer’s lab, and finds evidence that nanites and an EMP were used, implying tech-savvy attackers but not Monads. The data has all been trashed but some various scattered notes give Kit the name of another astronomer and some Tarot cards the astronomer was looking into.

Checking back in with Omega, Kit gets a tip as to some strange folks who just came through seemingly posing as miners, flying a salvage ship in mediocre shape. Checking their purchase logs, Kit finds that they bought up a ton of unprocessed high-magnetism metals from various brokerages around the station before leaving- so not real miners. Plotting their trajectory, Kit determines that they’re headed towards Jupiter. Calling the other astronomer, Kit finds out that the dead man, Ivan Orloff, was worried about Tarot hints about 5 meteors speeding into the outer system. She says she took a look due to his concern but they aren’t on an impact trajectory so she isn’t sure what the issue is.

Kit takes another look, and realizes that with a mining ship full of highly magnetic material, and Jupiter’s dense magnetosphere, and the fact that the ship and meteors will intersect just before the meteors would otherwise bypass Jupiter, implies that they are planning to try to divert the meteors. Kit confirms that this would result in them slingshotting into a new trajectory on an impact course with Earth in about 1 year. They call Fargus Sol and report in, and Sol confirms that there is a new Logos spinoff cult called “Call of the Void” dedicated to destroying human life on earth, which matches some graffiti Kit found at the murder scene.

This all also seems to line up with the info in Prophecy 10, and Kit manages to buy one of the 2 missing cards from Orloff’s list off of Omega, and Sol gets a painting of another from the seer Emily Llanfrechfa. They start planning how to intervene based on Kit’s know-how and info in the Prophecy. Kit also arranges to sell the plants they rescued from the ARES station to Sol, who arranges for an agent in space to pick them up, and quickly reports back that it’s good they sold them to him- one of the plants is from Vhortas, and likely explains their rapid growth, the shaman’s corruption and the rapid corruption of the staff, and the fact that the plants seemed to be eagerly drinking blood. Disturbing.

The team links back up and figures out what to do with the rest of the pay data. They sell info on Null Sect/Hitsec Burn/Isabella Boone to Holmes/EVO, and pass on some info about mana on the Moon to Dr. Dyna Mite, who seems excited about the info, and says that she is investigating other astral transit possibilities involving spectral trains. Having read about some of these in the team file from Denver, some of them are a little concerned but others are excited… The team also loses some loyalty with Sarah Silverleaf as they tell her they can’t tell her what they found at the NeoNET abandoned moon base, and assume she will be sending another team out ASAP.

They decide to tell Vogel what happened on Daedelus station, and he thanks for sharing the info and gives Carol some more positive reinforcement, and suggests that under his leadership, there will be a good space for Carol and other people who help him. They sell the info, as well as the recovered data drive, to Candice, to maintain that contact and try to get the max pay, assuming that ARES likely had backups of most/all of the data anyways. They get a significant payday, and prepare to head back downwell via the space elevator to head to Seattle for some of the various work they’ve been offered there.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia
and a guest appearance from: Foghairal ke’Coille

Having rested up and restocked after the explosive revelations (and explosions) of their last run, they stock up on gear, and start prepping to investigate ARES’ possibly bug-infested Daedelus station. They contact a hireable smuggler in the Space Rescue Service, and also pay Orbital DK to do some recon hacking for them, confirming that only drone deliveries have arrived at the station on the automated schedule for the last week, and that noone has been seen leaving during that time. They also take stock of some of their various paydata but decide to hold onto it for now. Kit plots out some orbital dynamics, and they pay the SRS smuggler to get some armor mods for them in order to make themselves as invisible as possible on their approach. They also craft some jury-rig javelins for ThinkTank.

Boarding the SRS craft, it takes them in a loop out towards Darkside Junction, and they all jump out, using Void Black, Ruthenium, or Electrochromic armor mods to blend in with the background, and following Kit’s carefully plotted plan, all manage to make their landings on the ARES station surface without bouncing off into the black. Carol and Kit, with some of the more advanced stealth mods, sneak up to the single exterior airlock, and Kit loops the camera feed there, although it seems to be powered down currently.

The airlock seems to be running in an emergency power mode, and Kit manages to bypass it with nanites. They get inside and find an orderly stack of delivery crates, seemingly the automated deliveries they’d spotted in ODK’s hack recon. Deciding they might as well forage, TT pops open the crates with the crowbars, stressing out some on the team who are worried about traps and defenses. Luckily, nothing springs out at them, and they find a pair of ARES laser pistols, as well as some KEV ammo and pheromones- seemingly either stolen or copied from AZT tech in Chicago, and some more generic resupply stock- parts, garden/greenhouse equipment, calorie rich and dense nutrient blocks.

They explore further, and find the that area of the station they are in is an outer shell fully surrounding and concealing an inner core, accessible through 4 interior airlocks. Aradia can detect a faint trace of magic coming from within. The area they’re in has been vented, and they see that security bars have sealed all 4 airlocks so they could only be opened from the outside. They find a corpse who looks to be early in a hybrid transformation but has killed themselves with a laser pistol, burning out the battery and slagging the gun by taping the trigger down, which likely caused an automated alert to deliver a resupply.

Using her new psychometry ability, Aradia gets the general story: this figure appears to have escaped whatever disaster struck the inner area, and made it out here to trigger the station shutdown to prevent an outbreak, but was too far gone to save themselves. Worried about what they might find, they cautiously enter the center area. Foggy especially is a bit concerned, as she has gained so much valuable knowledge (as well as artifacts) which would be lost with her death.

They press on, and find an aggressive, overwhelming amount of growth- it seems that generations of careful breeding and the introduction of awakened plants has allowed ARES to keep a stable manasphere alive in space, as Vogel had suggested, but that without maintenance the plants are taking over. Aradia pauses to take a Quicksilver picture, but using some mana seems to attract more hyrbrid flesh forms- fairly mindless but dangerous. They manage to take the first few out, and see that they are wearing shredded ARES Space uniforms.They investigate further and find a trashed lab with all the servers wrecked pretty thoroughly, and a digital whiteboard note saying that the Shaman was corrupted, seemingly from the laser suicide person.

Using Carol’s incredible senses and Aradia’s assensing, they decide to carefully ambush as many hybrids as they can throughout this area before continuing in to yet another airlocked central area. This mostly goes well, except for Kit, who gets sliced up pretty bad and luckily has patch kits and know-how to fix their suit. Between corpses they find (a combo of laser and bug wounds) and hybrids they kill, Kit thinks they’ve accounted for the whole crew complement, aside from the Shaman. TT breaks through the security seals to the inner chamber using the fluid motion ram, and they enter, finding a man in ARES armor standing atop a floating staircase, just on the other side of what seems to be a stable portal.

Acting quickly on instinct, Carol tells the figure that he is here from ARES and asks for a report. The figure seems to believe him once Carol drops his name, and breaks down what happened here- the station Shaman was corrupted by whispers from the portal, which connects to Vhortas. The Shaman then began corrupting other and sabotaging the station, too quickly and subtly to be effectively stopped. He also stole the data and trashed the lab before fleeing into the portal, seemingly thinking it a likelier method of escape that tightly monitored space flight. However, the figure explains that he managed to hunt the Shaman down and eliminate him. He passes over a flash drive with the station data on it for Carol to bring back to corporate.

He also tells Carol to close the portal and tell ARES that he and the other Project: Pyro survivors will continue their work as long as they survive. He explains that the Excalibur wasn’t a total failure after all, and complements Carol on having helped design a solid manaweapon, and tells the tale of how he and other Firewatch “volunteers” were transformed in such a way as to allow them to exist as scouts and assassins on the insect plane, but that this prevents them from ever returning to the material plane without evanescing. He asks them to tell Ellis that he is sorry, before fading back into the wispy surface of the portal. The team pushes the KEV ammo and pheromone crate inside before heading out, in case he or others come looking for resupply.

Kit hyper-oxygenates the air from the outer ring, and Aradia use one of the lasers to light the inner area on fire. They hang around for a bit until Aradia confirms the manasphere and portal are dead and gone using the Quicksilver camera. They decide to stay radio dark and leap free before calling for a ride, so Kit plots another trajectory out, and they grab the remaining crates of supplies to use as barter with their SRS smuggler. Leaping free of the station, they manage to get in a slightly higher stationary-ish orbit, and call for “rescue” a bit later. They get picked up, negotiate fees, and head back to Artemis base on Luna.

They start taking some group walks outside to debate what to do, and for now decide to trade some paydata to ODK to gain membership on the Asgard Data Haven, as they seem to have lots of useful space info. They also start perusing the flash drive, which has a LOT of dangerous info on it. Also, Kit insisted on rescuing two plants from the inner area, so they need to decide what to do with those as well.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia
and a guest appearance from: Foghairal ke’Coille

The team, still reeling from their major discoveries, heads back to ARES’ Artemis base and gets paid out by ARES Corporate after Foggy vows her courtly assistance. They rest up, recharge their oxygen supplies, and plan the next day’s excursion. They buy some various industrial and survival gear to allow them to gain access to the old, abandoned NeoNET base in order to scope it out, and plan to pick up the Monad EVO deserter and give her a ride wherever she needs to go. To that end, Aradia chats up the sole local bartender, and gets access to a secret stash of drugs, though it seems to mostly be various amphetamines and BTL chips. She also convinces the bartender to put her in touch with his smuggler contact, who seems to be a member of the Space Rescue Service, maybe a useful person to know. TT pays a lot of money to rent a nicer hotel room than the coffin-sized bunks the rest of the team sleeps in, and gets a tiny window with a lovely view.

They head out and aim for the rendezvous point that Kit had deciphered. They quickly spot a figure in a moon-camo cloak approaching. She hops aboard and they chat a bit before Kit gets suspicious that she doesn’t know the location of the secret Monad transfer station in-system. Remo confirms that he had already sent that to her, and noticing their suspicion, the “Monad” fires some rockets from a gyrojet into the buggy, wrecking it. The team gets in an upclose knife and fist fight with her, with her luckily only managing to get shots off on TT and Carol, who had the improved armor spacesuits on.

Creature gets a solid garrotte attack (finally!) and TT smashes open their opponents face shield, disturbingly finding a corpse within. Kit had noticed that the body was moving a bit mechanically and had wildly good matrix defenses, and believes they just fought a true AI of some sort thast was rigging the body. Also the oxygen was all drained from the suit to limit decomp after what looks like a death from laser. The body is the person they were supposed to meet though. Before they have much time to think, they get a wideband message bearing the signs of Null Sect involvement, and the corpse explodes, fully destroying the buggy, and leaving them stranded on the darkside of the moon with minimal gear. Luckily they manage to salvage most of their new equipment, and they decide to hoof it for the NN base.

While walking, they decide to follow up on some Tarot hints from the Trader, and finds the second half of Prophecy 9, as well as a lengthy new Prophecy 10, haven been released online from wherever Hansu wound up. 9 seems to refer to some Dis-related stuff, and possibly tie into Jasper de Howlie’s prophecy of the First Expedition, and P10 seems to imply that some sort of dangerous impact event is headed Earth’s way. They start analyzing the prophecy and the potentially related cards they’ve seen, and looking for hints, though Kit is really trying to ignore it all and just play “Marry Me…”

They get to the abandoned base and gain access in time, barely, and recharge some oxygen from a picked-over garage area that they gain access to. Exploring further, they find a smuggler’s cache, what looks like some emergency safehouse sleeping spots, and a relay for Asgard Data Haven (which Carol tags, in a friendly way). They then find an intact kind of jury-rigged greenhouse/oxygen recycler, and following some ductwork find a retrofitted interior airlock blocking off the final area of the base. Carol, recognizing it as ARES manufacture and spotting a concealed camera that definitely saw them, starts broadcasting his legal SIN and gets a surprised greeting from the presumed-dead eco-activist and ARES board member Arthur Vogel.

The dwarf, seemingly having secretly survived the bombing that was claimed to have killed him, ushers them in after they all submit to a UV sterilization (after confirming that none are vamps). He has 2 armored guards standing casually nearby, but given their gauss rifle armaments, they seem ready for trouble if it comes. There is also a massive surgical suite and autodoc, which Vogel sets to making them all some tea. He apologizes for the lack of facilities to host better, but suggests they all take a look out the window at Earth while they discuss what to do about the team discovering him here.

Based on his conversation and musings, Kit deduces that Vogel is edging into cyberpsychosis, of which he seems a bit aware, having needed extensive replacements following the assassination attempt, which he barely survived. After feeling Carol out, and giving him some much needed positive reinforcement, Vogel breaks it down for the team: he explains that ARES has managed to create a stable portal to Vhortas on a nearby space station, which has predictably gone wrong. The team shudders as investigating this very station is their next job… He also tells them about some of the experiments and programs ARES was up to there, and elsewhere.

He also explains an overview of Operation: Latvian Gambit, ARES’ plan to lure as many bugs (especially Queen’s, nymphs and shamans) to a “megahive” under Detroit, and then destroy them all using their new “perfected” Alpha man/bug soldier merges, from Project: Apex. Vogel is extremely skeptical that any of this will go to plan, and says that after Damien Knight tried to have him killed, Knight lost the lone true dissenting voice left on the board, and has gone mad with power. Vogel is planning to make his return, and try to save Detroit as well as ARES, and asks the team to at least keep his secret, if not help him. He says he still needs time to get all the pieces in place, but ARES can’t know that any opponents know of their plans or they may try to act early, which could be even more disastrous. He also explains how one of Hansu’s other prophesies foretells this possibility, and shows how it is the only safe way forward for ARES. Kit, once again, is not into it.

Vogel says he understands they also were likely hired by someone to check out the NN base, and asks for a week to relocate before they report in, as well as leaving the specifics out of it. The team agrees, with some gaining favors, some gaining money, and Foggy getting the early research Vogel pioneered into making stable mana fields in outer space, which he seems sad that ARES corrupted to use solely for weapons, as with many things they do. Having agreed to terms, he gives them the name of a useful safehouse master in Seattle, and says he’ll be in touch when he needs them in Detroit. They head out, and decide to have Carol siphon off all their oxygen tanks and run back to Artemis base and get another buggy, rather than call for emergency pickup.

Carol manages it, just, and gets back and grabs everyone with no trouble. They pay up to the quartermaster at the base for the destroyed buggy after Carol talks him into a significant discount, and all rest up and get ready for the next mission: gaining access to this terrifying bug portal station….

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia
and a guest appearance from: Foghairal ke’Coille

The team has one last hurrah in Chicago- at Kit’s suggestion most of the surviving members of the Shadow Chapters meet at the under-construciton Memorial site for a Masquerade, in order to break down the differences between roles etc. It goes well- finally a big meeting in Chicago that goes to plan! Creature breaks off from the group and accidentally destroys xyr clothes when xe decides to test xyr new power out and turns into a Sea Drake. Xe discovers some strange new abilities but seemingly can’t stay in this form for overly long without injury, so switches back, and reports into the team about being mostly nude in the Shattergraves and also now having a shapeshifter ability. Kit is a little skeptical, not being overly jazzed on dragon’s at the moment.

The team decides to keep Ahabitat for the moment, but give up the Bolthole, and sell some of their vehicles and drones. They order some gear, and use the environment in/around Ahabitat to get some training in space stuff from Kit. They call in their “free ride to space” chit with ARES and Kit navigates the sub to one of the equatorial Skyhook space elevators operated by the Corp Court. Kit rejects an offer from the Sea Dragon to receive her patronage in exchange for his contributions to a rigger collective she is funding. She seems somewhat affronted, and Kit says they’ll think on it. They dock at the Skyhook platform, and secure a docking slip with Carol’s ARES contacts. They leave some weapons and other illicit gear in the sub, and head out of the gravity well. Kit feels like they’re coming home, but it’s a strange experience for the rest.

At the orbital transfer station, they meet the Seelie Court rep they’d been told about: Foghairal ke’Coille, who Carol recognizes as being amongst the Queen’s retinue. They all agree to go to the moon first, and Foggy says she’ll assist them in their other missions if they help her on hers first. They board a shuttle and head to Luna, docking at Artemis station, owned by ARES. Carol calls in some favors from his brother, who seems surprised he’s in space but gets him a buggy and some other gear. They head out, relying on Carol’s memory of the Hakari Marama room at the Seelie Court and his conversations with Al’Farabi there, to try to track down the mysterious mana signs she spotted.

Aradia makes good use of the quicksilver camera to assist with this, and also take a photo of space (distressingly empty of mana) and Earth (a strong glowing mana orb with a hard cut to nothing around the edges). They fairly quickly uncover a rusted metal skeleton key, which Foggy ID’s as the Turnkey of Rust, an item that it is rumored can open any door the lost First Expedition to the Seelie Court entered. Searching some more, they find a mana web, which when photographed reveals it’s recorded signature- a door, seemingly on the moon, with some figures stumbling away from it, seemingly asphyxiating.

They continue searching, and find a small bone rod at the third and final site Carol recalls. This looks to be a Spirit Key, and the camera confirms something resides in it still- whether or not any services are left owed, who can say…. Extrapolating from the 3 points, the team realizes that they look like ejecta from a common point at their center, on the dark side. They head there, and Aradia manages to find a small bubble of mana which somehow exists there. Aradia and Foggy enter, and a strange spirit immediately jumps forth from the bone rod. None of the team has ever seen this type of spirit before, but it appears to be some sort of Trader.

IT starts talking to Aradia and Foggy, who somehow understand it inside the mana bubble, while those outside cannot make sense of the language transmitted on the TacNet. The spirit tells the 2 in the bubble that it will answer them 3 questions, after which they will use the key to open the door. They say “what door” and the spirit sweeps his arms and reveals the door they saw in the mana web. The team agrees, and the spirit insists one of them stay in the bubble with him while the team converses on how best to phrase the questions, and what to ask. They settle on their formulations, and ask away.

Inquiring what’s behind the door, the spirit ID’s it as the cityplane of Dis, which the team has heard of from some of 6Cyl’s ramblings of dreams and lost memories when he returned from the 9 Gates portal through Kadath. Although the Trader seems surprised at how much time has passed, he says that the time hasn’t come yet, but that perhaps their relative planes will align soon. The team decides they probably shouldn’t go through the door with the spirit since the only way 6Cyl and Aylin got back was via a bargain with Tohu Wa Bohu…..

For the second question, the Trader fills them in on the fate of the First Expedition, who apparently stumbled into Dis while trying to find the Seelie Court in the 2030’s, and the tried to bind the Trader to the spirit key to get back, but made a bad bargain, and ended up going through a door they shouldn’t have, and ending up on the moon, where they went mad and were dying, so the Trader calmly explains that he had to consume them to sustain himself, and then hid himself in the key and blew all 3 objects out, hoping someone would eventually retrieve and free him- and here they are! Foggy is delighted- this info will be hugely valuable at Court upon her return, and hopefully make up for her losing one of the Queen’s tarot…

3rd, they ask for the connection between outer space, astral space, and the Tarot. The Trader tells them that mana and space are anathema to one another, but that the Tarot does tie to both, and tells them to seek the words of their Prophet, who though mad, sees truth, and understands the constellations. He will not say more, and insists the team open the door. They offer to trade first, and Foggy gives up her tiara in exchange for the Comet Tarot card- huge deal at Court also! Aylin trades some spidergland silk for a strange grub from a jar, and Aradia swaps some novacoke for a potion of strength.

The Trader then insists on leaving, but says to look him up next time their planes align- Foggy uses the Turnkey to open the door, and Aradia manages to get a blurry pic of the chaotically sprawling massive cityplane of Dis as the Trader walks through, the door slamming shut and the mana bubble collapsing behind him. The team all feels pretty satisfied with how this first space mission worked out, and agree to keep working with Foggy for now, even though Foggy insists on keeping all the recovered artifacts. They negotiate a payment from ARES in exchange for Foggy boosting ARES’ corp rep at the Court.

They also decide they need to see if Hansu has dropped any new prophecies, and Carol begins wondering if Dis is some sort of strange fantasy equivalent of the cityplane of Zecorporatum.

Runners
Introducing: Tabasco
with cameos by: Creep and 9 Tails

Tabasco, as a young man, lost both his parents in some sort of mysterious incident. Since their corp, ARES refused to officially declare them dead, he got a medium sized payout and the boot from his cushy corp housing, since he wasn’t old enough to sign up for employment and get himself a corp SIN. Luckily, his “uncle”/godfather Don Michael took a protective interest and got him a decent condo in Auburn where he could safely reside, complete his online education, and receive some cooking and cleaning oversight from Emdachot Fahd, a middle aged ork women who is the building’s super. Don Michael saw to it that Tabasco’s payout got invested decently by a financial assets manager at STV, Eva Mari, and the nest egg grew in value as Tabasco grew up.

Having done some investigation into his parent’s vanishing and come up short, he also stumbled down the matrix rabbit hole of investigating and becoming interested in shadowrunners, assassins, and the life of crime that seem to permeate Seattle. He paid his way into a membership on ShadowSEA as soon as he was able to access his funds, and got obsessed with the prolific assassin/runner Toast. He began to model himself after Toast, beginning to strengthen and quicken his body and taking up archery. He was already decent at sneaking and deceiving, as the condo building he lived in has seen better days, and begun a long decline in quality and security during his tenure. Luckily his unit is secure, and Emdachot still provides meals and cleaning, and Don Michael seems willing and able to secure him any oddities he requests.

Tabasco, needing somewhere to test his mettle, began participating in casual Urban Brawl matchups, and eventually got spotted by the scout and ex-Brawler Savannah Chiba, aka the Scarlet Widow, and recruited into the minor leagues. Feeling this was the sign he needed, Tabasco blew through most of the rest of his savings upgrading his body with some quality cyberware, which he is a bit snooty about. Chiba keeps hassling him to focus on the basics, but so far buying his way in has worked pretty well! He trains by day, and by night he obsessively trawls ShadowSEA, looking for info on Toast, his parents, or anything else that catches his eye.

Noticing a string of pawn shop (and similar reseller locales) break-ins in his area of Auburn, he decides to finally dip his toes into the shadows, and heads out in his Urban Brawl gear with his bow to investigate. Luckily, he landed the scout role on his team, so he has decent infiltration boosts from his gear. He sets up a patrol around some likely targets, and spots one break-in after it occurs. With no obvious alarms going, he breaks a window to trigger one and see what happens. Strangely, the cops don’t show, but some goons in bulky suits do. He overhears some of their conversation with their boss, and hears that apparently some jewels and some kind of valuable card were stolen. It looks like the folks who did it carefully avoided setting off the alarms, too.

Continuing on his patrol after taking some notes, he hears, but can’t see to spot, one voice conferring with another person, who seems to be responding silently. They spot him, and engage in some banter, laughing off his threats and bluster, before leaving him in the dust when he tries to chase: he’s fast enough, but lacks in tracking. He heads home, reads up on how to track better, and does some research. He finds out that goons in suits are Ciarniello mafia, who seem to have replaced the cops as they pulled back from his neighborhood as it began it’s slow descent into precarity. He reads up a bit on some of the syndicate wars that are simmering in Seattle at the moment, and pegs them for further research.

He also pays a ShadowSEA contact from some info on the 2 people he encountered: apparently a team of thieves named Creep and 9 Tails started working together in town recently, both are child-like changelings, but not much else is known. It seems, however, that a fixer named Van Der Hum was recently killed as a side casualty in an attempted mob hit, and his mysterious Hoard of artifacts, reagents, etc is much sought after. Tabasco decides to get some rest before practice, as the sun has come up.

He runs to practice along some of the disused hiking trails in Puyallup and arrives without incident, though Chiba chides him on his tardiness, as he needs to be early to compete in this game. They run through a practice with stun weaponry, and Tabasco does best on attack, and gets chided again for needing to improve his defense and stealth. He heads home, and cat naps before heading back out on patrol. He heads to the area where he almost caught up to the 2 thieves the night before, and finds a note written in lipstick.

Calling the included commcode, he gets ahold of the female speaker, and impresses her by ID-ing her as 9 Tails, and her partner as Creep. She gives him a hard time about sneaking around and liking to watch, before offering to cut him in on a job if he wants some nuyen. He agrees, and she tells him to look for these strange valuable cards, as well as any hints of Van Der Hum’s hoard location. She also says they can fence anything else valuable he lifts and cut him in on the profit. He agrees, tempted by the danger and intrigue. Picking out a likely lore store, he uses some arrows as impromptu B&E tools, which, while unconventional, does work. He manages to burn his way into a floor safe, and quickly skedaddles with some loot after he sets off and yanks down all the smoke detectors, alerting the proprietor upstairs.

He manages to get clear without any trouble, and sees a local gang, who he ID’s with a quick search as the Blood Brothers, showing up to help contain the fire and look for the perpetrator, so he flees across the rooftops. Once home, he checks his haul: some reagents and magical gewgaws he knows nothing about, and a strange Tarot card with a built-in holo-projector. Most strange, one of the figures on the card is his missing father. He calls 9 Tails and accuses her of playing a trick- she assures him she isn’t, and tells him to sell the card and not get overly involved. He convinces her to introduce him to their fence, and they set up a meet for tomorrow. He’ll have to be quick to not be late to practice!

He does a bit more research, and finds out there’s some weird gang activity and gun smuggling going on in Redmond, and also some people going missing: fixers, fences, and other runner-adjacent types, and also some Monads, TM’s and similar. The only locus he can find for any of this activity is the Iron Jungle club, downtown. He pins these for later and gets some rest. Heading to the meet the next day, he quickly realizes he has a problem- with no valid SIN, he’ll need to be very cautious traversing downtown to Pike Place Market. He just barely manages it, dodging corp scans and cops alike, and finally meets 9 Tails in the flesh.

She is, as advertised, a literal cat burglar- a child-sized SURGEd changeling with camouflage cat fur, a magical 3rd eye, and a seemingly unnatural ability to inspire dislike from animals. However, she approves him to go ahead with the meet, and nods to Creep, who looks to be a childlike gnome with no mouth, and seems to be sticking to the shadows. Tabasco heads over to a table in a nearby cafe, and meets the fence: Imaginary Annie, the Invisible Esquire.

Tabasco, not really knowing how this all actually works, passes over the Tarot card and asks some questions. Annie reveals that she’s done her homework and knows who he is, and offers to help him figure out the mystery of his parents if he helps her with some stuff. Plus, she’ll pay. For now, for the magical items and the card, she’ll get him a decent fake SIN so he can at least get safely around, and she gives him a couple of basic intro runner tips. He agrees to it all, and she gives him the rundown on some mysteries she wants solved and questions she wants answered: gang and syndicate activity, a strange luxury yacht, the missing people, and the missing Hoard. She tells him that she wants to be in a position of knowing who all the players are and what they’re up to before the upcoming Free Seattle referendum, which has been rumored but not yet announced.

He races off to practice, once again getting yelled at for being “late”. Since he decided he needed to be able to break down his bow to make it travel better, he’s also unarmed today, so Chiba tells him to focus on stealth and defense, and he comes up a bit short, taking a beating. She slaps him on a bruise as he’s leaving and tells him to remember the sting, to motivate him to improve. She has some kinds of disappointed mom vibes that seem really effective at getting him to do what she wants, so far. He heads home, heals up a bit, and thinks about what skills he needs to improve next, and what gear to prioritize acquiring….

He rests a bit at his condo, gets the newest gear he’s ordered from Don Michael, and decides to run to Downtown to link up with Creep and 9 Tails, figuring he’s pretty quick and he doesn’t want to use the private cab service that Chiba recommended for his first real shadowrun. It takes him 4 hours. They decide to look into the mysterious yacht first, and 9 Tails decide to hang back a bit, saying it’s got weird astral vibes- sort of a smell of the sea, but she can’t tell if anyone’ aboard. Creep and Tabasco sneak onboard, with Tabasco showing off with his hydraulic legs. They poke around and figure out that this is likely a gunrunner’s boat, based on some mods and Interpol info, strangely that particular gunrunner went missing aboard his yacht 2 decades back.

Rumors says, he made a lot of enemies and one of them was the Sea Dragon, and she claimed her prize. The yacht does look to have been submerged for some time and then magically repaired, so could check out. Seeing noone on the next deck down with his radar sensor, they head down. Creep sneaks into some vent shafts, his preferred locale, and they reach the bottom deck before someone reveals their presence- an elf women appears to be bathing nude in a seawater pool in the former engine room. Tabasco is stoked, but then upset to discover that the area jammer built into the yacht is preventing him from recording to his comm from his cybereyes… add internal router to the shopping list.

They find themselves sealed below decks with a large spirit to keep them there, so Tabasco decides to converse with the elf as she requested. He refuses to ID their Johnson, and she commends his professionalism, and says she expects the same courtesy. She confirms that she is an agent of the Sea Dragon called Eletheria, though she won’t say why she’s in town. She tells them to put her in touch with their hirer, as a conversation is obviously needed. They agree, and she lets them leave. 9 Tails seems to have the heebee geebees from a spirit encounter.

The night is still young so they decide to move onto the next investigation, and check out the Iron Jungle club since they’re already Downtown. They do some recon, and spot some ‘Weeners dealing drugs inside, and some Disassemblers waiting nearby in cleaner suits with a generic van. Creepy. Creep hops on the van roof with his magnet handle and waits to see if they go anywhere. 9 Tails and Tabasco head into the club, and find a Marry Me! room, some weird Toon viewing rooms, a dance area and a chill room. Tabasco looks around for any suspicious behavior, and see a couple leaving where one of them looks reaaaal messed up and the other doesn’t. He intercedes but they do actually seem to know each other and are just trying to get home.

He keeps eyes on them for a bit just in case, and then Creep reports the Disassembler van is on the move. The van pulls up next to the couple and the messed up women gets a weird maniacal look in her eyes and pushes her partner into the van, before collapsing limp as one of the gangers grabs her and hauls her in too. Creep hears some taser bursts and an auto-injector noise from outside, and hangs atop the van as it heads to Redmond, obeying traffic laws carefully. Tabasco checks in and realizes 9 Tails seems pretty out of it too, worried a bit he gets her to switch to astral and she snaps out of it. She says she took some random drugs she pick-pocketed, and then was watching Toons. Tabasco records a bit of the programming without actually watching it, just in case.

Atop the van, Creep rides along to a warehouse in the north Barrens, and see the gangers pass the woman off to a weird burned scientist lady named “Alice” after she scans both the kidnap victims with a Wuxing Frequency technomancer detector. She rejects the man, and the gangers say he’s headed for the Death Ships. Alice tells them she’ll have some more bits she doesn’t need for them soon. Creep stays aboard as the van drives carefully to the Tacoma port, he dips off as it heads in, but sees which entrance it uses. Feeling like this is enough, and with daylight approaching, they report into Annie, and debrief her. She tells them to follow up on the Death Ship, the warehouse/scientist, the club, and thanks them for the contact info for Eletheria. She pays them and they all head off to rest.

Creep plays Marry Me! for quite a while while 9 Tails lounges and basks in the sun. Tabasco gets a tiny bit of rest before calling his new cabbie contact, Bernie Carter, who turns out to be a retired UCAS tank driver who got sick of the army but still likes the thrill of combat. So he drives an armored cab ANYWHERE in town, if you’ll pay his rate. Tabasco finally arrives early (aka on time) to practice. Chiba seems impressed with that and some of his new gear, and tells him to really go for it today. With that encouragement, Tabasco finally hits his stride and excels. Chiba tells him after practice he’s ready for his debut, but takes him aside and tells him she needs him to take a fall in his first match, sometime in the 3rd quarter- just make it look like he took a hit harder than expected, she tells him the team doctor’s will back it up so he doesn’t have to worry beyond selling it to the crowd, who will love it.

Tabasco is disturbed but he doesn’t know what else to do, so he agrees. He decides to run home to have time to think and burn off energy, and luckily doesn’t encounter any strange animals on the Puyallup trails.He rests for a short spell, and links up with 9T and Creep again. They check out the club again first, spotting the ‘Weeners and securing a sample of the drug they suspect as being involved, since Annie reported the footage along wasn’t enough to induce some kind of hypnosis/strange activation. Tabasco gets a good audio recording, not listening, to go with the video. They spot the Disassemblers in the same spot again, but don’t see them move on anyone tonight. They do see someone moving a little robotically head out the front of the club and get picked up by someone in a sedan flashing a credstick. They make note, and toss a tracker on the car, figuring why not.

They then head to the Tacoma docks, and scout it out a bit. They find a promising spot to sneak in, and manage to get up on top of some isotainer stacks to take a look around. They determine that the port is split into 3 areas of control: Yakuza, Mafia, and Vory. Their target came to the Vory zone, and they spot the ship that is likely the Death Ship, based on the large number of living but drugged auras aboard. They send the registration info to Annie, who confirms that this is likely a live body shipment to Asamando- a useful way to dispose of enemies and unwanted test subjects. She says she’s going to call some people to try to secure it before it gets out of local jurisdictions. She also gives them the contact for a dangerous alchemist who she says to be careful with, but to take the drug sample to for analysis.

Tabasco also calls in a favor on ShadowSEA and gets an intro to another local club owner named Nyssa Hallas, who might have some intel on who owns/operates Iron Jungle. Annie also recommends a retired street sam named Hard Case who now does consulting for newb runners, and they agree that she’ll just cut his pay to pay for some sessions to help him get his feet under him, since he’s noticed he’s missing a few basics. He also feels like he’s a little closer to figuring out what exactly his Code of Honor is….. luckily it isn’t sportsmanlike conduct, as he goes along with Chiba’s request to throw the next day’s Urban Brawl match, doing a reasonably convincing dive and faking a short in his electronics that takes him out in the 3rd quarter.

After getting cleared by the team doc and commiserating with the others on the team about the close loss, he fails to sneak up on Chiba’s private convo with someone and stumbles into a slightly tense meeting she’s having with a mafia type who after some research he ID’s as the Puyallup capo, Enzo Gianelli. Enzo tells Tabasco that he did well in the day’s match and that they would make a lot of money together. Chiba seems slightly on edge at being “caught” and reminds Tabasco that Enzo was never there, before Tabasco heads home. Having taken some damage in the match, he rests for a bit and does some more digging online re: Enzo and the mob.

He heads out and grabs a meal with Hard Case, getting his first “how to be a runner” lesson, and feeling it was worth his while. HC gives him basic intro tips and helps him refine his code a bit. Next, he heads Downtown to meet Nyssa Hallas at the recently renamed Penumbra Station. It’s before opening, so he chats with her at the bar while she checks stocks. They trade some info and he finds out that the mafia has been trying to move in on some Downtown clubs, but that Hallas and her “silent partners” had fended them off of Penumbra, and had reached out to Iron Jungle and other clubs to talk about working together against the mob. IJ didn’t even give a reply, so she dug into their ownership a bit- some kind of regressive Dutch policlub called the Freedom Network owns it through a Carib League shell corp.

Tabasco heads back to IJ to do some more surveillance, and researches Freedom Network while he’s at it. He spots some of their Popular Will street thugs using a side entrance to gain access to a floor above the club, and feels this is confirmation enough for now, not seeing anything else going on there except a “Marry Me…” tournament. He heads to the last know location of the tracker Creep placed on the suspicious car on a previous stakeout, and finds that it leads to the inner edge of the Glow City dump in Redmond.

Tabasco warily approaches, and digs around, eventually finding a what he at first things is a corpse (based on the bloodiness and missing eyes), but turns out to be a barely living PI named Tommy Vermont. After he rallies a bit, he explains that he used to be a Knight Errant cop, caught CFD on the job, got rescued by runners and “cured” of CFD by a street doc, which involved a lot of cyber replacement- probably what kept him alive. Plus, he was wearing murder armor and has gotten good at playing dead. He explains that he’s on a case hunting a serial killer who seems to target Monads, and might be one themselves. Most disturbingly, they apparently shapeshift or otherwise change their appearance between kills- the only identifying feature is that they swap in the eyes of their previous victim. Gross.

Anyway, Vermont was posing as a naive Monad at IJ the night he got picked up, and got hit with a powerful EMP and then shot multiple times, stripped of his armor and gear, and dumped. If he was actually a Monad, he would be dead, and he still might be if he doesn’t get help soon- he asks Tabasco to assist getting him back to his office in Stuck’s Carnival, and Tabasco agrees. Unfortunately, they’ve attracted the attention of some Halloweener goons, one of whom has knife fingers and a rotting pumpkin mask. The other one tells Tabasco to ditch his gear and leave, but doesn’t seem let down when Tabasco insists on a fight. He manages to light both the ‘Weeners’ candles real good with some phosphorous arrows, quickly eliminating the threat- though Vermont only hears the fight, he seems impressed.

Tabasco also received some distracting assistance from a woman the Weeners had been hassling prior, who comes over and says they better skedaddle before reinforcements or mutants show up. Hearing some loud pipes firing in the distance, Tabasco agrees, and they scrabblle out over the dump pile, assisting Vermont, and make their escape all comically overloaded on the woman’s scooter. She introduces herself as Iva Linus Hathaway, and thanks Tabasco for the inadvertent intervention. She says she’s hung around the Weeners a good bit and they’’ve gotten weirder and scarier lately. Tabasco notices she’s wearing muted Weener colors, but also a surprisingly well-made custom tailored garment made of multiple bits of different items/outfits.

She explains that she’s a materials engineering student at UW, who also does custom tailoring, makes her own clothes, and makes costumery for the theater department and others. She gives her number to Tabasco in case he needs her services in future, and then drops them both off at Vermont’s office. Realizing he can’t get in without eyes for biometrics or a commlink as a backup, he has to borrow Tabasco’s ‘link to call Stucks’ property manager, Ranya Zhong, a dryad woman, who shows up after they’ve sat on the curb and Vermont has smoked a crushed cigarette from his pocket.

Tabasco and Vermont share notes in his office, and manage to put together a few theories based on what they’ve both found out. It seems the Freedom Network is using their club to make money off of luring identity groups they dislike to a single locale, and then selling intel on their presence to various people who seek Technomancers and Monads for nefarious purposes. The Death Ships seem to be a separate conspiracy, but a useful way to get rid of the bodies as needed. Since Weeners and Disassemblers are seemingly working in concert, it implies they’re being paid by a third party. They also watch a video of the Death Ship Tabasco, Creep and 9 Tails ID’ed trying to flee at KE closes in- the crew scuttles the Death Ship as a distraction but all get gunned down. Tabasco finds the name of the officer who lead the KE takedown and rescued some of the captives from the ship at least, a troll named Tosh Athack.

Doing some research, Athack seems to be part of KE fast response group known informally as the Black Knights, who seem like KE’s equivalent of runners, and seems like he sometime will work with runners when it benefits him. Vermont also suggests that he’s being paid by some kind of anti-human trafficking network, and suggests they keep working together. Tabasco agrees, pending Annie’s approval. Next he heads to east Auburn to pay a visit to the alchemist Squeamish, to get the Weener club drug analyzed. Squeamish turns out to be a paranoid and kind of gross ork, with some upsetting “brain in a jar” cyberzombies and biodrones guarding his lab. He does confirm that the drug would put users in a highly suggestible state, and distills some down so Tabasco could use it with an injection arrow if he wanted to.

Tabasco then heads out and calls Annie, giving her the update on everything. She confirms that the video + audio that Tabasco recorded of Toon Horizon, when combined, are laced with hidden messages, and that combined with the drug these could likely implant certain triggerable commands in people, or activate those same commands if they were pre-implanted. With the info on club ownership, Annie feels like they have enough for now there. She says she does want to get in touch with Vermont’s employers, suspecting they may by the network known as Las Muñecas, who she didn’t think operated this far North. She also wants Tabasco to look into “Alice’s” lab (which Creep found in Redmond), and find out why fixers/fences etc are going missing.

Doing a bit more digging, Tabasco confirms that all the fixers, fences, info brokers, etc who have gone missing are low to mid-tier freelancers, so probably not connected to the gang/syndicate wars, and probably not corporate unless they’re trying to eliminate all competition. He finds a promising bar to check out and maybe meet some of these types, see if he can get any info. He also gets a mysterious message on ShadowSEA from “n1nj@” and begins chatting- it seems like he’s caught the eye of local hooder named Yoko Aruki, who gives him props for saving those folks on the Death Ship, and suggests they perhaps work together if he’s into doing more of the same….

Tabasco heads to training the next day, and gets another illicit task from Chiba- finding a hidden perch with good visibility, somewhere in the arena, and not letting anyone know he’s doing it. He succeeds and has a good day at training overall. He jogs back to his spot and does some research after Chiba won’t tell him anything about her Mafia entanglements. He finds out that she’s likely in the pocket of the Gianelli family, but can’t figure out why, and also finds out that his godfather, Don Michael, is actually a higher-up in the local branch of the Cutters, a “pro” gang.

He calls Michael and they chat a bit about the life of crime- Tabasco talks about some early running exploits, and Michael tells him about growing up with his dad and joining the gang together, before Carter got recruited by ARES. Tabasco also orders an off-road bike to be able to get around on his own a bit more efficiently. He (on grid guide) drives up to the Iron Jungle and takes one more look, but it’s daytime so he doesn’t get much. He chats with Annie, and she says she looked into the attempted mafia takeover and that it seemed like all the mafia goons sent to intimidate the owners turned up dead in mysterious traffic accidents and the like shortly thereafter.

He then cruises to Stuck’s and meets up with Vermont, and passes along Annie’s message to try to get her in touch with Las Muñecas, after confirming with Vermont that they seem to be his employers. Vermont says he looked into the one other group the Freedom Network doesn’t like, magic users (or at least those with Mentor spirits), and found some hints that occasional awakened attendees of the Iron Jungle also have gone missing, and it seems like the Blue Dragon biker gang (a Yakuza affiliate) have been the ones grabbing them up. They agree to continue working together on this missing persons investigation, and head to “Alice’s” lab in Redmond, that being their next lead.

Vermont calls some gang contacts he has in the area to get backup, and Tabasco meets one of them, a First Nations biker named Cheeks, who is very good-looking, and covered in tats except his chiselled face. Cheeks and the other bikers set a perimeter, and Vermont and Tabasco sneak up onto the roof of the lab building. They try to break in through a skylight, but bungle it and break the old assemblage, jumping down in the lab. Tabasco gets a message from an unknown caller saying “look out!” just as he jumps in, and is stunned by a flashbang trap, though his cyber prevents disorientation at least.

Vermont flops in behind him less gracefully, and Tabasco regains his feet only to be sprayed with acid by a burned woman in a lab coat, who quickly discards the squirt gun and runs for a room at the back, slamming the door behind her. Tabasco gives chase, while Vermont frees the lone prisoner- the technomancer that Creep had tracked here. Tabasco bashes through the door and barely avoids a point-blank shotgun blast from another trap. The woman is nowhere in sight, so he searches the room, eventually finding a trap door hidden under the bed. Vermont tells him they have to get out of there as the woman blew her servers when she left, which started a fire.

Tabasco says he has to chase her, and Vermont says he’ll grab what data he can, and get the catatonic women to safety with Cheeks and the others. Tabasco says he’ll meet him later, and carefully disarms another grenade trap on the hatch, before jumping down into the sewers. He barely manages to follow a trail out, and avoids a toxin trap on the ladder up, emerging in the outer barrens, and just avoiding stumbling into some sort of conflict between the Isotopes and some other gangers from the Spiders. He hoofs it back to the rendezvous point, and agrees to take the TM woman to a street doc Vermont knows, while Vermont take the First Nations bikers out for drinks as thanks. Cheeks warns him that the Spiders have been getting creepy and territorial- they used to hunt bugs but there aren’t many left in Seattle so people are less tolerant of their kidnapping and brainwashing. Also, they’re whispering of some new leader/totem called “Grandmother”…

Grid-guiding south, Tabasco gets to a gym called Sticks and Stones in north Puyallup, and meets a street doc named RIot, after getting scanned by a rigger called Hans Yolo. He passes off the TM woman, and Riot says she thinks recovery is promising based on an initial survey, and also patches Tabasco up while Hans patches his armor. Now he knows a street doc! Cool. He also gets some intel from Don Michael on the state of the syndicate war in Puyallup and some names of who to talk to if more is needed- essentially the Kenran-Kai yakuza tricked the Gianelli mafia into fighting off a Vory incursion, and the Yak gained some turf while the mafia was distracted. He calls it into Annie and calls it a night, getting paid and getting another “how to be a runner” session with Hard Case paid for. Next up: figuring out the gang and syndicate situation in Redmond…

Tabasco heads to practice the next day, where they keep it pretty light with the game the next day. However, worried about what he might be caught up in, he buys a nanny cam in a fake rock on the way and hides it (poorly) in the lookout spot that he had scouted out in the arena for Chiba. He heads home after practice, and calls up Hard Case to grab dinner again. He gets some tips on client management, and also the usual mix of aphorisms and cliches- though much of the advice is useful. Tabasco gets interested at the end of the dinner when he notice that he has older trainer/mentors in both the shadow and Urban Brawl worlds right now who managed to make it big enough to get out and teach others- maybe something to keep in mind for a long while from now!

Back at his condo, he does his usual batch of research and connects with some contacts. He’s primarily looking for Redmond info now to finish getting Annie up to speed, and Cheeks agrees to give him the rundown in exchange for Tabasco’s help the next night providing overwatch on a dangerous gang meeting. Tabasco agrees and recruits 9 Tails and Creep to help out, Cheeks promises that if all goes well he’ll introduce them to a person who can help with fake ID’s and stuff too. Tabasco comes to realization that Chiba is likely planning to insert one of Enzo Gianelli’s people into the lookout to swing the match in his team’s favor, since she’s ensured they’ve lost the last few they’re ranked low and the odds are against them- so it seems like this is all money business/gambling, which feels a little sleazy to him.

He gets a call from Yoko Aruki who asks for him to put together a last minute crew and help rescue some kids who were kidnapped. He agrees, and pulls 9 Tails and Creep into this one too. The target is a Hand of Five warehouse in Renton, where they’ll all meet up. Having some time to kill before then, Tabasco heads to the Murdered Mime in Renton and chats briefly on comms with Nyssa Hallas about ownership stuff in the area, getting the lowdown on the mafia vs Yak vs KE drama. He then meets the supposedly sketchy fixer Flipside, who seems to have signed on really hard with the Shadow Chapters, though the SC seems a little more violent or potentially sinister here. Tabasco gets added to Flipside’s rolodex but doesn’t take any jobs yet and doesn’t immediately sign up for the SC.

Doing some further research, he finds out that Flipside used to be a real bottom of the barrel fixer out of Redmond who would frequently betray or sloppily screw over newb runners, but not badly enough that anyone killed him yet. However, he vanished for about a week recently and seems to have emerged with a whole new spin on things. Tabasco wonders if the SC is threatening or otherwise forcing people to conform to their policies, but figures this is good intel to get to Annie, since Flipside admitted that the SC has had to dispose of some freelancers who didn’t heed their initial warnings already- possibly explaining one of the last open areas of the missing persons case.

Tabasco heads east and meets the crew for the rescue job, Yoko seems to be a badass ninja and says she’ll hit the front loud and hard, and wants 2 of them on the back and one on the front to make sure none of the Hand of Five goons escape, and all the kids get rescued, if possible. 9 Tails doesn’t like killing, but noone else minds, so she heads out back with Tabasco while Creep watches the front and Yoko busts in the door yelling something in Japanese and chucking flashbangs. 9T and Creep both sabotage all the cars on their end except 1, to which they each attach a data tap for Yoko’s offsite hacker to take over the vehicles through.

9T calls out some incoming targets to Tabasco, who scampers up onto a nearby roof and easily picks off 3 HoF goons with some flashpak assistance from 9T. They get 6 kids loaded into the hacked car and 9T heads off with them to the rendezvous point. Out front, Creep takes out the lone HoF escapee and gets 6 more kids loaded into the car, also heading out. Tabasco heads in, finding 2 more kids and deciding to hoof it with them. He texts Yoko the codes to his dirtbike so she can link up. He reaches the rendezvous point on foot, avoiding metaracist neighborhood watch patrols, and they wait a little bit for Yoko, who eventually arrives on the bike with the 2 remaining kids, but looking pretty messed up.

She tells them that they had a Flaming Sword member there- radical race terrorists, and his flaming blade almost was a match for her skills. She slaps some stim patches on and tells them to follow her to the safehouse, and they head up to Redmond, and are introduced to the Crypt, seemingly a squatter/runner safe zone that Yoko and some others help run. Yoko starts getting packed up by a crusty old ork who keeps insisting that he isn’t really a doctor, and Tabasco meets Dr, Digitalis (the decker) and a Mouse shaman named Mish. They explain that they’re the last survivors of a crew who got mixed up in some Yak cybersoldier drama around something called Project Iapetus, and show Tabasco some flatvid footage of a crew of pro runners taking out one of these Yak soldiers somewhere in the SSC. They say that they heard that the pro runner team might be in town, and if so, they owe them a drink and could share info.

Tabasco, not needing a safehouse, says he appreciates the offer and may make use of the Crypt in the future, but 9T and Creep both seem stoked to have a doss to fall back on when needed. Having gotten back on her feet, Yoko also introduces Tabasco to Professor Magnusson, and arcanolinguist at UW who seems to also help run this spot. He tells Tabasco to feel free to call on him with any esoteric needs, as they appreciate the rescue of the children, and the slaying of the metaracists. Feeling clever, Tabasco gets Didge to secure the feed from his surveillance device at the Urban Brawl arena, and heads home and rests up before the big game.

His team wins with a timely fumble by one of the enemy goalkeeps, and they all celebrate. Tabasco gets personally congratulated by Chiba, who tells him that’s he impressed the right people and is getting the boost up to the big leagues. She seems disappointed that he wants to take time to think about it, but gives him a day. He leaves the celebrations as early as he can, and asks Didge what his device captured. He sees a stereoptypical hermetic mage arrive, seemingly by spirit, and set up to hide there and presumably interfere with the match. Unfortunately, the mage quickly finds and destroys his device, but from his various markings, Tabasco is able to easily identify his as Uranus, the mage from the Order of Merlyn who seems to be one of Enzo Gianelli’s righthand men.

Tabasco calls Don Michaels and gets the rundown- the Gianelli’s are likely fixing fam league matches for gambling purposes, but also use the big leagues as a “clean” money laundering opportunity, writing off massive cyber expenses and the like while performing them on the cheap. Michaels once again advises avoiding getting in with the mob, as right now Tabasco has avoided any debts. Tabasco agrees and calls Chiba back, and tells her he’s leaving the league. He owns up to planting the device when she calls him on it, and she suggests that if anyone ever hears about what’s on it she won’t protect him. Unable to convince him to rethink his decision, she tells him to get lost and stop wasting her time, and blocks his number.

Feeling sad but resolved, Tabasco heads north to Redmond and meets up with Cheeks and the First Nations leader Scout Who Kills Six Times. They explain that Urubia, expanding on the idea of the Funhouse, is trying to establish a gang cooperative to keep Redmond safe®, and Kalanyr is helping entice gangers by smuggling in weapons via the Isotopes, presumably with some cooperation from those in the SSC and Metroplex government who would like to see the sprawl get a little more chaotic. The First Nations and the Crimson Crush are both basically already on board, but reps from multiple other gangs will also be arriving soon to discuss, and everyone’s worried about sabotage and false flags, which is what they want Tabasco looking out for.

He makes a perimeter with Creep and 9T, and they watch as Red Hot Nukes, 405 Hellhounds, Deaths Heads all roll in. A single mutant from the Rusted Stilettos shows, as do 4 low level Halloweeners. Feeling that’s enough for now, Scout starts the meet, and the Isotopes explain the weapons angle while she and some CC members explain Urubia’s coop plan. 9T spots some concealed figures approaching on the astral, and says they have a spider-y vibe, which Tabasco reports in. The assorted gangers waste no time bombarding the stealth approach area, which is probably for the best as the 4 Weeners all detonate shortly thereafter, taking out some gangers but none of the leadership. They seem to have been unwitting suicide bombers.

Picking through the carnage after the brief engagement (the Isotope’s weapons seem to work quite well), they find the remains of what looks to be a few Spider gangers, as well as multiple others who look like gangers but aren’t in colors, and show signs of recent tattoo removal. This could match up with recent reports of the Spiders recruiting non-consensually, and seems worth looking into further as well. For now having prevented a gangland disaster that could have stopped this coop before it started, Cheeks follows through on his promise. He introduces Tabasco, Creep and 9Tails to Jamaal Quigley, who explains that he can get them fake SINs through a corp contact, and then Cheeks gives Tabasco the Redmond crime breakdown.

Essentially, the syndicate war happened because someone tried to hit Chrome Ciarniello, and it’s still not clear he’s going to make it, and the mob thought it was the Seoul’pa, but it seems like it was actually a Yak assassin using some sort of magical disguise. The gang coop is intended to be able to leverage the power and reach of the gangs in Redmond (unparalleled in other districts) to compete as basically another syndicate. While explaining this, some louche Ancients roll up, tardy and saucy about it, but once they get the rundown on what happened they make clear that they actually are interested (as they have a local alliance with the First Nations), and were just late as a power play, not as the people who set the ambush. Appropriately humbled, tensions lower again and everyone heads home.

Tabasco reports all this in to Annie, and she pays him as usual, and he cuts Creep and 9T in as promised. She then gives him a last solo job: scout out a team that just arrived from Chicago, they seem real pro and she has reason to believe they may be just the crew she needs to follow up on all this intel, but wants Tabasco to feel them out and make sure they’re on the level and up to snuff….

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia

The team parties, mourns, and heals for a few days after the Battle of Chicago. Melissa Truman gets in touch and offers to fund a wake/funeral for Avocado, which the team accepts, and they make a plan for it. All of them speak or at least say a few words in memory of their fallen friend, and Melissa uses the opportunity to announce that she is seizing control of Truman Tech back from Horizon after some behind the scenes maneuvering. In the spirit of Avocado, she says she will be bringing jobs and representation back to the people of the Zone, and announces a hiring surge as well as a SIN drive. She has been quietly acquiring rights to vast swaths of the Shattergraves, which the other corps haven’t been touching, and plans to repair and rebuild. She also sets aside some land where the battle took place in a trust via STV, and agrees to fund Kit’s plan for a permanent memorial there, with the names of all those who dies fighting the bugs inscribed.

Over the next few days, AZT, SK, Wuxing and “local assets” get the main credit for saving the city, plus lesser credit for Renraku and MCT, and they also expose the UCAS plan to nuke the city.The UCAS III Corps is chased out/tactically retreats as the citizens are ready to revolt. Corporations move in full force, using the UCAS exit/chaos/threat of bugs as an excuse (and to get folks on their side). Ares is persona non grata after they bail on helping city before the big battle. Jonathon Pyke and his Shadow Chapters step in to consolidate (much like in Boston) after many of the trusted local Johnsons are killed, corrupted, retired or traumatized by all that happened. The ASPS heavily involved in leyline repair/investigation, along with Wuxing Geomancers. Ghostwalker agents and the “Real Americans” policlub start agitating in town, reaching out on Shadow Chapters/NooseNet etc to push for “Free City Chicago”, since “the UCAS apparently doesn’t care about them.”

The team lays low and recovers in Ahabitat for a while, catches up with Otoko, etc. Big Meat and other Merrow fetch a pile of lake-floor debris for Kit to feed on to get their strength back to regenerate their medic half, as she died in the missile assault on the dragon, so Kit is down to only their driver half for now. Creature hears some Dragonspeech in their head, and agrees to swear fealty to the Sea Dragon in exchange for a boon, and feels xyr body begin to change in some way as xe sleeps underwater the next few nights. The team gets a comm from Fargus Sol via the buoy, saying he’s in town and they should come meet him at elemental hall at their earliest convenience. They agree, and head back to the surface. Upon reaching Elemental Hall, they find themselves somewhat overwhelmed at the strangeness of the floating ASPS fortress, but luckily don’t have to venture far inside for their meeting.

Sol, Lu Wendao, Dr. Kersh, Daytripper and some others all meet them. They say Lothan was supposed to attend but has apparently become somewhat agoraphobic after catching a glimpse of Vhortas during the dragon’s attempt to portal away from the fight, Aradia cheers him up a bit by promising to share distracting data and research. The ASPS/Grey Cell group tell the team that the main physical battle is over, but Chicago isn’t saved yet- they still need to save it’s soul. They go back through what they’ve learned- Calumet, the former Spirit of the City was thought killed in ARES’ FABIII assault all those years ago, but was actually corrupted and horribly twisted, and has become the behind the scenes manipulator of much of what has gone wrong in Chicago in the last few years: V’Golkatl.

They tell the team that they don’t know if this spirit can be “killed” per se, but that it can be trapped. They explain that the team will need to track down as many other powerful local spirits as they can of any that survive, and will also need to figure out V’Golkatl’s exact location, as it has been using powerful dark magic to hide itself both physically and astrally while it twists and corrupts it’s servitors throughout the city. They give the team a FAB meter to detect strong competing background counts to help in their search, and Fargus Sol provides them with 4 ritual tokens to aid in their quest: these will allow 1 hour each of regeneration, piercing vision, intangibility, and luck. He says they may prove essential to the team’s success, and to choose their moment well.

The team heads out and decides to start in the Shattergraves. The city feels strange at first and they eventually realize why as they drive: the bugs seems to be well and truly gone, and most of the gunfire and shouting seems to be celebratory, for once. They make their way through the Shattergraves, disturbed by strange spectral visions and entities, until Aradia decide to do some classic Quimbanda summoning, and calls forth The Wailing Ghost, a powerful spirit who mourns and gains power from all who die in the city, who seems to have formed after the incident which created the Shattergraves: the Alamos 20k terror attack in 2039. She tells them that she knows of V’Golkatl and will tell them more if they eliminate an enemy of hers: a spirit of the bugs named Pestilence, who dwells nearby in the Cermak crater.

They agree and head over, and find a bizarre and massive spirit seemingly restrained with toxic fetters. It looks like a combination of all the different types of bugs (including mantids and spiders), but seems more like a manifestation of the city’s fear of the bugs, as it doesn’t have an actual insect aura. It begins singing a strange tempting song, harmonizing amongst it’s many mouths, which lures Carol in. Luckily the others aren’t strongly effected, and Creature notices that xe can’t be: xe is already sworn to one Queen and cannot accept another. Aradia manages to mind control Carol and make him fire, which breaks the spell, and they quickly slay the spirit, though it melts TT’s armor pretty good. It seems badly depleted by the bugs’ defeat and exodus. Aradia surmises that the Swamp Things were likely responsible for fettering the spirit, probably at V’Golkatl’s command in order to ensure Pestilence didn’t get too much power during the return of the bugs.

Reporting back to the Wailing Ghost, she tells them that V’Golkatl also managed to limit her growth, and that since the UCAS/shedim didn’t get their way and nuke the city she won’t be able to compete with it for power, but tells the team there are 5 other spirits that survive that might be powerful enough to help to contain V’Golkatl, if the team can make deals with them. The team forwards the list of spirit names back to their ASPS/Grey Cell Johnsons, and get some last know locations. Ibu AIr, a powerful free air spirit, tells them that he distributed tokens amongst the various powerful spirit entities of the city some time ago, and that if they can get all 5 spirits to agree to assist and provide their tokens, they should be able to trap V’Golkatl using an alchemical canister that Ibu Air himself has created for the purpose.

The team heads out to start making friends. First, Creature sneaks into Tamir Grey housing block past a Popular Will protest/blockade, after TT fails to take sense into some trolls there, though everyone at the protest applauds him for saving the city. Creature makes an offering at the commemorative stature of Tamir, and his spirit (or at least the spirit that uses his name) appears, and agrees to help them in exchange for Creature vowing to help find a new, safe home for Chicago’s ghouls. They next head to Archer, and Kit manages to do a strange impromptu dance performance with the van and it’s arm, summoning the Dancer on Archer, who dances with them for a while and promises her assistance as well.

Carol calls in a favor from ARES and gets the contact number from The Greek, the head of local branch of the Detroit mob, one of three mafia factions in town. He gets some ideas of where to find Joey the Pig from The Greek, in exchange for promising to put in a good word to favor his family over the others. They call in some rep with the Merrow, who retrieve some old lost bootlegger cargo from the lake floor, and head to an old smuggler’s tunnel where soldato leave offerings to Joey. He appears, and accepts the shipment, complimenting Carol’s ability to track down lost things. He agrees to help, and also to favor The Greek/Detroit mob going forward, impressed by their and Carol’s gumption.

The team then heads to the WInd Transit Terminal squatter community, and with help from some friendly locals, manage to track down Fury, a spirit of the desperate and dispossessed. Calling on their history of good deeds and friendship to the communities Fury protects, they request his assistance, which he grants, but doesn’t promise them anything beyond that. For the last one, they head for old city hall, seeking Daley, a spirit of backroom deals, corruption, business, and governance. They find city hall overrun by Gutsmen, a new extremist ghoul gang who are responding to the anti-ghoul violence by openly embracing their nature. Luckily, Aradia finds a note, and the team follows Daley to his new base in O’Hare Sprawl.

They arrange a meeting through some corp contacts, and encounter the jovial but somewhat slimy spirit info broker. He agrees to assist in exchange for intro’s to corp movers and shakers, which the team easily provides. Reporting back on their successes, they are told that they will need to have one person go with each spirit to make a rough pentagram around V’Golkatl’s location once they discern it, and bury their tokens at the 5 points. They will then just need to defend themselves and maintain their position while the ritual does it’s work, and whoever holds the canister keeps it intact until V’Golkatl is trapped inside. TT and Carol decide to be on team “spot/hold the canister”, Creature will go with Tamir, Kit with the Dancer, and Aradia with Fury. Fargus Sol will go with Joey the Pig, and Lu Wendao with Daley.

The team decides all 4 artifacts should go with team spot/canister, except the luck one which Kit holds onto to be able to race around town at breakneck speed as needed. Carol and TT get a ride from Roddy Steelsky, another Spire pilot, up to the top of the old, ruined Truman Tower, where they first saw V’Golkatl’s storm form. Using the piercing vision, Carol confirms this is it’s hiding spot, but distrubingly, it’s up to something he can’t see, through some kind of rift it has opened. The various spirit teams all call in some allies to help defend them and Kit races around dropping them all off before getting themself set up on Archer. They bury the stones, with Joey dropping his out in the lake, and Carol sees 5 beams of energy shoot into the base of Truman tower, up the central shaft, and emerge from the canister as TT opens it. The beams surround V’Golkatl’s form and begin pulling it in, as Ibu Air guides the ritual from Elemental Hall.

It doesn’t go without a fight though, it repeatedly lashes out at the small VTOL they’re in, and Carol uses intangibility and TT uses regen to stay alive long enough to get the ritual done. Still, it is a close things, as TT passes out just as the canister finally snaps closed around V’Golkatl. Roddy has jumped out of the shredded VTOL long ago, and Carol has been struggling to keep it aloft, but he manages to catch the canister as TT drops it, and grab a chute. TT regens back to consciousness, and also grabs a chute and both leap free of the wreckage, Carol having piloted just well enough to get them safely clear of the tower. Kit uses luck to pilot them remotely both safely to ground. They pass the canister off to Fargus Sol for Arleesh to store in her Vault, and Ibu AIr explains they’ve created what is known in alchemical circles as a Bottle Demon: a terrible tool which will make the user a nigh-unstoppable spellcaster, even as it consumes them.

Also, Fargus debriefs with Carol about what he saw as V’Golkatl was pulled away an the rift it had opened closed behind it: a door has opened in Kadath. And through that door, many lessor Horrors (m’flesits, crawlers, and gum toads amongst them) have entered the endless city, and now roam it’s labyrinthine pathways. Fargus tells the team that though they have saved Chicago, the world is still in grave danger…
But for now, a grand success. Fargus also tells them they’re in a somewhat unique position: they know the 6 remaining spirits who might be powerful enough to become spirit of the city, and they have a ton of solid rep and good will around town that they could expend to try to make it so.

The team heads to a bar to debate. They rule out the Wailing Ghost immediately, on principle. They also rule out Tamir as being too weak and depleted. They decide against Joey, though Carol has a fanboy crush. They also eventually rule against Fury, not trusting his motives, and feeling they don’t know enough. They decide between Daley (potentially a big payout) and the Dancer (party city!) and eventually decide to go unanimously in on the Dancer. They call in just about every last favor, token, and debt they’ve amassed, and the ASPS announces an effort through their new global endeavor, The Concord, to try to establish urban tribes who’s longterm mission is to bolster, support, and stabilize spirits of cities around the world, to try to stave off their corruption.

The team preps to head for space, and collects some additional jobs to do while there. Carol really wants to get out of debt with the Tan Robes as he has a disturbing sensation that when he stared into the abyss beyond Kadath, something stared back and spotted him. They decide to keep paying rent on Ahabitat for now, in case they need a spot to retreat to, and leave their other vehicles with Goober for the time being.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Avocado
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia
and the return of: Blue

The team heads back above the surface to meet up with Juan at a Taco Temple in the Zone, and find out what this “final mission” he needs them for is. On the way they hear that the Spider cult at Camp Lincoln has come under attack, and head that way to try to intervene. Finding a 100’s-strong group made of gangers, civ militias, and Popular Will thugs they decide intervention might be hard, and while they dither the assault concludes: a massive energy wave blasts out from the center of the park as the attackers breach the last maze-like defenses. Aradia, in the astral, determines a few things: this energy burst was from a metaplanar portal, likely to one of the Spider planes, closing, and V’golkatl seems to be stirring up some of the magically active members of the crowd.

TT encourages taking them out but is talked out of it by Kit and others, and Aradia decides to warn one of them that they’re being targeted, but this just seems to get one of the few magically active people going after the others and further riling the crowd. Deciding they don’t have any great options, they decide to head to the meet. On the way they make some calls, getting in touch with Fargus Sol to see about any useful anti-dragon/anti-bug artifacts they might be able to borrow. He says he’ll ask, and also vouches for The Collector, to an extent, in terms of selling home plate if they want a payday, but they decide to hold onto it and see if it will boost a future ritual.

Aradia does manage to get an enchancted nose ring in memory of Simon Andres, inscribed with “Fuck The Bugs”, that has a limited rasnge bug detector, that she also makes into a power focus with the help of the Ash Union. While this is getting made, they head to the meet at Taco Temple and find a somewhat impatient Juan, a little bit undercover. He leads them back into the freezer, bribing an employee, and they find that it seems to be both magically and wirelessly sealed: a good meeting spot. He explains to them that he’s heard rumors that the shedim faction within the UCAS military is pushing for some kind of drastic solution to the Chicago problem, so they need to act quickly.

His sources have told him that the UCAS military at Wrigley have recovered 2 members of the corp strike team, he doesn’t know if they’re alive or dead, but he needs the team to retrieve them (if alive) or their data (if not). He provides photo’s of the 2 members he heard were recovered: the Wuxing geomancer Lu Wendao and the AZT Shorn One Hector Ramirez. Juan also tells them what he knows of what happened to the team: they reported in after reaching the ritual chamber where the team saw the bug dragon, and didn’t find the dragon but were engaging in heavy fighting with the bugs. Lu had reported that he was mapping multiple converging bug-aspected leylines beneath the city, and Hector said the team was getting good mapping data of the tunnel systems.

However, the team was not in touch again after that, so Juan assumes they failed in their ultimate goal, and he will need to team to complete it while he causes a distraction topside. They agree on a price, and resupply at some generous rates through Juan. He also provides some AZT mages to perform some kind of blood ritual on Avocado and Aradia to temporarily aspect them towards bug magic so they won’t suffer such ill effects from the heavy background count underground. Both their Mentors, Seducer and Peacekeeper, seem to go along with this, for very different reasons.

The team heads out overnight, and finds Wrigley transformed from their last visit: the shanytown has been levelled and the surviving population has been relocated outside the stadium in trailers and other temp structures. The UCAS appears to have also demoed about 1/4 of the stadium itself, and appears to be using ground penetrating radar to spot tunnels underneath and deploy sappers. It is also fenced and a bit fortified, with checkpoints guarded both physically and magically. They plot out the guard routes, and plan a way in, having failed to get much meaningful assistance from Stereotype Abellard, though he warns them to get out of town if possible, or at least try to be somewhere without underground infrastructure.

Kit pulls the ruthenium-cloaked van up to the fence by the demo-ed stadium area, and use the arm as a bridge to allow people to cross the barbed wire layer. They then pull the van away remotely while the team sneaks in and clambers over the rubble. Avocado uses social skills and some adept magic to get in at one of the checkpoints, not trusting his physical skills to remain hidden. They rendezvous and with a quick look around, decide to focus on searching the medical and brig areas. Avocado, Carol, and TT get into the brig but find it empty, though there is evidence of 1 prisoner having been here recently.

Kit, Creature, and Aradia (invisible) enter the Med building, and find a stack of body bags, and 2 MP’s guarding a door to secure room in the back. The MP’s tell them medical has been relocated to the mess hall, and Kit fakes a work injury from hauling debris to stumble over to them, while Aradia sneaks up and Creature apes Kit’s movements to approach undetected. With Kit jamming, they manage to take out the 2 guards nonlethally without raising any obvious alarms, and the rest of the team joins them.

Kit uses their Monad abilities to try to use one of the MP’s prints to unlock the door, but they appear to not have clearance, and Kit sets off an alarm (luckily they are still jamming). TT pops the door with a crowbar, and the team comes under concerted assault from a nerdy looking interrogator, as well as spotting Lu Wendao alive. Kit is nearly felled as the interrogator chucks a knife into them, but luckily their Monad nature rejects the poison that coated the blade, and TT is shot up pretty good with some surprisingly fast light pistol firing, before he responds by killing the spy in one brutal javelin throw.

TT quickly pops Lu free from the table restraints but leaves the mage cuffs on for now, while Aradia casts a massive detox spell on him and convinces him to come with them, and talk later. Meanwhile, Carol, Creature, and Avocado have searched the body bag pile and found Hector Ramirez’s badly damaged corpse. Kit races over and manages to extract a bunch of data, though they don’t have any time to sort through it. Since the spy’s gun wasn’t silenced, even with Kit jamming, they expect a response incoming quickly, so Kit starts pulling the van up nearby again, and they prepare to race for the exit….

As Aradia casts a massive illusion of bugs breaking forth in the center of the UCAS camp, her new slightly buggy (temporary) aura seems to call to some actual bugs, who shortly thereafter also break forth in the middle of the camp, in an upsetting mirroring. Luckily, this causes a huge distraction for the team to break for some of the tunnels that the UCAS sapper team has exposed. Creature blasts some lube grenades and they get a call from another shadow asset, Blue, who Juan hired for hacking and sniper support, who is wiping camera footage of them and using stick and shock to clear a path.

They send Blue the data they got from Hector’s corpse and she very politely makes them an overlay map of a way out of the tunnels from where they jump in, and they get clear of the base as large firefight occurs behind them. They link up with Blue at the tunnel exit with the van. Heading to a Taco Temple to debrief, they bribe an employee again and step into the freezer. Conversing with Lu Wendao, they agree to let him send a rerouted code phrase to his handler, a “Mr. Hong”, to alert him that he made it out the tunnels in exchange for giving them all the info. He also helps them piece together the fragmented data and footage they recovered from Hector’s corpse.

What happened: the corp team made it to the chamber where the Queen was inhabited, fighting heavily the whole way, but the Queen had been moved. The different corp factions started getting more suspicious of each other as they went on, and Lu noticed corrupting influences from some strange leylines- the team suspects V’golkatl using it’s influence to turn the corp team against each other using their innate rivalries. This lack of cooperation proved fatal when they finally did encounter the Queen, and Lu spotted a convergence point of the terrible leylines at a disturbing artifact. He says this is likely the source of the leyline alteration towards bugs, and what is allowing the bugs to cooperate, according to his quick analysis.

Blue and Kit also manage to assemble the data into a coherent timeline of footage, maps, and comms logs and confirm the story. They send Lu on his way after popping off the mage cuffs and he thanks them for saving his life. They tell him to return with more assistance if possible after telling him Juan’s plan-they feel allies are more important than secrecy at the moment. They leave TT after Blue finishes scarfing some Bigger Badder Battered Butter Balls and make/receive some calls. Stereotype Abellard calls on a burner and warns TT that he is on a CIA watchlist now since he killed one of their guys with a distinctive javelin. He says he won’t be in touch for a while since Agents are crawling all over.

Tate calls, and tries to convince them all to leave town for a massive payday. He is very polite and friendly, but seems fully corrupted. They refuse the offer, and Creature tells him a knock knock joke ending in “y’urt me real bad” to express xyr feelings about the betrayal. He seems disappointed and apologizes, but doesn’t shift his goals or requests. They then call Juan to share the data as well as some extra info they’ve put together- he shares info back, seemingly sharing their philosophy that they need to cooperate now. He reveals that V’golkatl was created by the corruption and destruction of Calumet, the former Spirit of the City, in ARES’ FABIII assault decades ago, V’golkatl has been growing in power slowly ever since, and only recently has been able to act openly, but Juan confirms that this is a second sign of the coming of the endtime Horrors, the arrival of bug spirits being the first warning.

Juan says his corp has been studying dark magics and preparing for decades for this eventuality, but they hope to stave it off a bit longer. To that end: part 2 of his plan. AZT forces will lure the bugs out near the UCAS, forcing them to engage, and hopefully pulling the Queen away from the artifact. The runners will infiltrate using the corp team’s map data, and destroy the artifact, hopefully destabilizing the bugs or reducing their power. The team agrees, but needs some time to prep and whatnot, so they decide to go the next day. They start calling in allies and favors, expending much of their local rep to get everyone they can get to show up to a rally point that Juan will control to assess for bug infiltration. They will then relocate to the battle site and hopefully lure enough bugs out for the team to succeed.

They talk to Fargus Sol and get and share some Tarot info. Remembering Prophecy 8 and it’s connection to Chicago, they pass along the coordinates, and Sol says they have a Grey Cell operative in the area who can investigate. They also make a deal with the Collector to hand home plate over in exchange for participating the ritual of 5’s, which Sol says should grant some boons for a week. They restock on ammo and gear and explosives, and do the ritual once the Collector arrives. Lothan leads it, and Aradia and Avocado also take part. The Collector say the will need a 5th with the presence of home plate, and TT jumps in, says the Collector explains that with home included they can also include mundanes. They also receive 5 levels of an adept ability, and go their separate ways, the Collector leaves her number if they come across interesting collectibles. Aradia and Avocado organize a big concert with Vendetta Violet and Morris Knight and others at Midway, and get the Neo-A’s their to guard it while the Ash Union coordinate dance/music/movement based ritual to try to create some positive mana energy to assist them. Kit also gets some destroyer nanites from Carol Staples in exchange for the promise of data on their use vs the bug dragon. Kit begins to research how to use their Monad powers to control nanites also.

Sol also reports that a Neo-Anarchist merc named Mara Ariel recovered a strange artifact known as the Net of Marduk at the coordinates in Turkmenistan and is headed to town with it. The team feels about as prepped as they’re gonna get, so they rest one last time and then head to the undiscovered hive entrance that Juan’s scouts found in the Shattergraves in an abandoned dump with a multi-story underground compactor. They sneak in, and use the Ant pheromones to bypass some ant guards. The squatter communities locally seem to have been fully depleted by bug kidnapping- worrying and upsetting. The team heads into the tunnels, navigating via the map they pieced together, assisted by Carol’s excellent perception spotting the detritus of the corp team’s running battle. They reach a central chamber and see an awful scene: dozens and dozens of filled cocoons with various spirit forms growing and changing inside. 3 resin pillars hold the chamber up, and multiple magical barriers maintained by 2 huge caretaker spirits protect the pillars and artifact at their apex. 2 soldiers leap out to defend the hive, and multiple workers start freeing hybrid flesh forms from their cocoons as the team enters.

They get in a brutal fire/fist/teeth-fight, but finally manage to fight back the bugs and demolition their way through the barriers, and TT uses his special orichalcum-tipped javelin that Lothan crafted for him to destroy the artifact. This massivelt destabilizes the local mana sphere (and the chamber), and the tunnel they came in on collapses as Blue finishes blasting through one of the pillars to prevent any bugs escaping, they head for the one other exit: a shaft of sunlight at the far side of the chamber at a steep upward angle. They blow the other pillars behind them to destroy the remaining cocoons, and find themselves crawling up a steep shaft that it looks the bug dragon clawed it’s way up.

They emerge into a hellscape: a pitched battle between masses of bugs and multiple opposing forces. They see the dragon taking out the final UCAS chopper with some acid breath, and chucking the wreckage of into an AZT hover tank that got a lucky shot in with a railgun but was unable to follow up with it’s missile launcher. The tank is tipped over and it’s hover capacity wrecked, but the weapons look intact. UCAS and AZT troops are holding the lines against waves of bug soldiers, but they seem to be losing ground and largely pinned in place. Luckily, they get a brief moment to get better emplaced due to the destruction of the artifact, and the bugs seems to be self-sorting away from each other in the magical confusion, as the artifact seems to have been the thing keeping them cooperating.

The team sees Big Meat and some merrow ferrying civilians out the sea to safety and drowning bugs that follow, as they emerged along the lakeside in Union turf near the Navy pier. They spot Wingman and another Spire pilot flying fast attack craft aways overhead trying to limit the bugs air advantage with missiles while flitting away from the dragon’s lunges. They see Jeff the Chef frantically handing out armor and ammo from a transit van as support rolls in from the staging site. They see Goober in a killdozer and Carol in Zone ambulance ferrying casualties back to a pop-up med tent that Hole Patcher and Horogront set up. They see Mara Ariel with the Arcance 3 and Red at the center of a wedge of Black Star Bug Hunters led by Old Crow while they try to punch through the bug lines to get close enough to the dragon to use the net.

They see Lu Wendao, Opti, Lothan and some ASPS mages doing some sort of ritual to contain the mana storm and alter the leylines to their advantage, while Scurry launches lightning spells and Ryu Quan, and Flurris frantically defend them with some sort of magical sword, which seem to repel the dragon in some way. They feel the energy of chaotic joy conflicting with the mana storm, from the ritual the Ash Union is performing at the huge concert and dance part at Midway. They see Opti’s team, the Silver Vixens, Jazz, Mrs. Clean, Matt Wrath and some baby runners, all in a mish-mash of new looking Renraku and MCT armor and gear trying to bolster the UCAS flanks. They see Mako defending some Freaktowners who seem to be brewing and mixing chems with explosives assembled by Byom and Jaro, and chucking them into the bug lines. And Blue gets a comm welcoming her to the matrix support squad: 3D, Hotkey, Grid Reaper, Dot-Execute, Chessick, S@m, Remo, Kobold, Skeleton Key and Orior are making sure the UCAS can’t call in the “Ripley Initiative” strike, and also trying to coordinate, but all the different groups aren’t talking to each other right/efficiently.

So the team makes some quick plans: they are behind the bug lines so they have a moment to assess before they get noticed. TT and Creature decide to use the team’s remaining pheromones to refill some lube grenades to chuck into the bug formations to try to sow some chaos. Then they, with Kit, will break through and make a run for the tank, where TT will physically retarget the rail gun and missile launcher, while Kit adds Destroyer nanites to the missile payload and Creature fires the heavy weapons. Aradia will levitate Avocado and Blue invisibly around to convince everyone to work together and touchlink all their comms systems to the massive Deep Resonance host the S@m and Remo are setting up, to better coordinate the battle. And Carol will bodyguard behind Kit’s deployed shield to make sure noone attacks Aradia while she magics.

TT and Creature begin crafting pheromone grenades to sow some chaos and TT calls in the Ogre and the Chemical Boyz, the foot soldiers that Egrend Alexkij sent on behalf of the Horde. They see them on comms injecting a bunch of intense looking combat drugs before revving their combat bikes and racing for the bug lines to try to make a hole so TT, Creature and Kit can reach the downed tank. Aradia levitates Avocado and Blue, invisibly, over the bug line where there’s less air action occurring and drops them in towards the main group of runners, and they convince them to link up. Blue gets them connected to huge matrix support/Resonance Well group.

The dragon chucks Jeff the Chef’s vehicle, with him inside, into Wingman’s jet, causing him to spiral out. Carol and Blue manage to snipe some pursuing Wasp spirits, allowing him to eject and get safely caught by Merrow. Shishi, Rune, and Prudence Rosier sacrifice their lives the save the med tent from the dragon while the Freaktowners start chucking chem grenades at it. This distracts the dragon, but unfortunately it charges towards the Freaktowners and scatters them back into the runners’ lines. Meanwhile, Avocado and Blue get levitated to the flagging UCAS line and convince Stereotype to let them link comms, and do so. The Chemical Boyz make a hole, aided by bug infighting triggered by the pheromone grenades. Unfortunately, the Chem Boyz and the Ogre are all killed doing so, but Kit, TT, and Creature reach the downed hover tank.

Avocado and Blue get levitated over the few AZT survivors and get the command codes for the BLue-227 missile that the tank is carrying from Tenoch, just before he dies. They also get them on comms. A complete tactical overlay comes online from the matrix support crew and they start efficiently directing the battle from their remote vantage. The Black Star Bug Hunters race in to protect the tank from getting surrounded and one of them suicide bombs with a FABIII grenade after getting pulled into the mass. The dragon directly assaults the ritual finally, and slays Flurris and Ryu Quan, but ends up with Imperial Sword embedded in it’s belly. The dragon then finishes wrecking the medical area, though Goober safely gets most of the staff and some of the patients out in his killdozer. The dragon calls bugs over to assault the ritual as well, and many of the mages are actively burning out from overcasting.Carol takes a sniper shot at the dragon to distract it and try to save the ritual.

The team in the tank, with the command codes, manages to get the weapons online- TT is on the top, having to physically haul the turret around to aim it, while Kit cracks open the missile and adds their own nanites as well as the destroyer nanites to the payload. Creature estimates they’ll need 2 hits from the rail gun to have any chance at the missile actually making contact, and loads 2 shells, since the auto-feeder is busted. The dragon races past and blasts Carol, who manages to hunker down behind Kit’s shield, which fully melts, along with his armor, but he survives and keeps Aradia alive (and casting). Ricky Steelsky, the other Spire pilot goes into a death dive against the dragon as it ascends towards him, battering it with missiles. The dragon bursts through the jet, damaged but alive, in a massive explosion.

Aradia and Avocado both tell Creature to shoot real good, and xe gets a first blow with the railgun- success! The dragon starts descending for another assault, frying a bunch of the the Black Star Bug Hunters as they defend the tank. The second rail shot misses, and Aradia levitates Blue and Avocado up to try to grab the sword that’s stuck in it. They mange to reach it and both grab the sword, but the dragon also grabs them. However, it seems to have some kind of dragon repelling effect and Avocado manages to “steer” it a bit towards the ground, while Blue hack the healing nanites Kit had implanted in the dragon weeks ago to assist.

As the dragon descends, Mara Ariel takes a flying leap with the Net of Marduk off of Old Crow’s back, snaring the dragon in it. The dragon lashes out, killing her and most of the rest of the Bug Hunters. The bugs are getting more chaotic along with the magic storm, and the pheromones are causing some infighting in their ranks. The UCAS troops, seeing the need, pull back from the front to protect the ritual, while Scurry and Lothan keep a magical shield (barely) intact. The runners crews start taking heavier casualties as a result. Red races into the tank to reload the rail gun.

The team all rallies together and acts as one- Avocado, Aradia and Carol all provide leadership as Creature manages to get a second hit with the railgun, with TT still turning the turret to aim. Kit then launches the missile, which they pilot in (as their other self, from their nanites they put in). They get a solid hit and the dragon starts dissolving faster than it can magically regenerate. Blue assists Kit’s nanites as they spread through the dragon and boost the destructive power of the missile payload. Unfortunately, Blue and Avocado are also splashed with the nanites and Avocado is instantly killed (and the Sword broken) when the dragon desperately swipes at them. Blue is knocked clear, barely avoiding a deadly blow herself.

The dragon begins attempting a ritual to open a portal, perhaps to escape, and Carol races forward and chucks his mysterious backpack at it- he tells Think Tank: “I’m setting you up!”. TT takes the hint and chucks a javelin at just the perfect moment, spearing the device and detonating the portal closer bomb inside. This sends a small explosion and a large magical ripple over the center of the battlefield, disrupting the dragon’s attempt to open a portal and flattening most of the people in the immediate vicinity (though most appear otherwise unhurt). Creature takes ones more shot with the railgun and blows straight through the dragon: everyone sees a huge burst of gross green energy flash and dissipate as the body fully dissolves into a slurry, destroying Avocado’s body, who was right underneath.

Blue is barely saved by the Arcane 3 and Old Crow, who also use an EMP on her to get the nanites off. With the queen dead, the rest of the bugs seems confused and demoralized, and the allied forces begin mopping them up. Lu Wendao, finally dominant in the ritual, is able to guide the mana storm to a close, and Aradia and other mages gather a ton of valuable reagents in the aftermath. AZT is onsite pretty quickly to reclaim property, but other battlefield pickers get some good finds. Everyone hears the good news that the party at Midway remained safe, and those that are conscious head over to celebrate and mourn. Many lives were lost this day, but the city seems to have been saved, at least for now.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Avocado
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia

While resting, Carol checks in with Candice, who reports that the tip line he set up is working well. Unfortunately, the Jackpoint-er Sticks posted a warning to not trust whatever ARES was up, said something cryptic about looking into Detroit, and them promptly disappeared from contact. Carol tells Candice this is a bad look, but Candice says she certainly doesn’t know anything about it, and gives Carol a compromat file on Sticks, seemingly compiled by ARES in-house intel services. She says he is welcome to use anything within it to get people off his back if needs be, by showing Sticks’ history of paranoia and instability when it comes to ARES/bugs.

Candice also inquires about the Desolation Angels, as some mages on Ellis’ team got a look at their knife and auras during the rescue in the previous mission. Carol confers with the team but confirms that they have a Mantis internal order, since ARES already knows. The team spends the day putting together a proposal and calling in favors to set up a meeting, and ends up arranging a deal: the DA’s will act as on the ground investigators and hitters for ARES in town for dealing with bugs that Carol’s tip line turns up, and ARES will not target the DA’s and will supply them with arms and equipment ensure success. Becky99 reports that the only weird part of the arrangement is that ARES is very insistent on live capture for shamans, who are sedated and taken out of town somewhere, but all in all this feels like a win.

They get a call from Matt Wrath, telling them he’s got work and to get down to the Vault. They do so, and find a few janitors cleaning up and SImon Andrews (secretly) waiting in the green room. Kit waits in the van to make sure the team isn’t all caught in a trap again. Simon apologizes for not calling directly, but says everyone needs to be more careful due to bugs being seemingly everywhere. He tells them that he’s gotten intel that Tate might have moved the bug dragon down underneath Wrigley Field- there’s a huge shanty-town on top, perfect astral masking, perfect source for fresh hosts, and perfect place to make a warren of tunnels.

He has an old smuggler’s tunnel that can get them in, but most of the team decides to use their new UCAS rep to get past the guards at the gate that the UCAS just took control off, LoneStar still runs the other entrance. Simon tells them they just need to get in, get pics of Tate and the dragon, and get out- this will be the proof he needs to get a majority of the corp reps in town enough evidence to get to their superiors to force a corp intervention at the Corporate Court. The team agrees, after negotiating pay up significantly.

They head out, with Carol and SImon taking the smuggler’s tunnel in and finding it compromised by bug tunnels. Probably not a good escape route, then. The rest of the team gets past the UCAS gate by name-dropping Abellard and the rescue, but are warned not to make any trouble inside since it’s a jurisdictional nightmare right now. The team also recalls that the set of 5’s in the 6WT have some Wrigley connections, and review the images they’ve seen. With Simon’s help, and some assensing, they notice home plate glowing on the cards, and Simon leads them to a speak easy called “Slide Home.”

Heading in, they see a few decrepit patrons drinking moonshine, a surly dwarven bartender, and what looks like a 2050’s era home plate mounted over the bar. They decide to steal it, as the cards suggest, and TT makes quick work of it as Aradia conjures up an illusion of some Fraternitas Insectorum gangers busting in to rob the joint. Weirdly, none of the people who were inside seem surprised to see the FI “members”, believing the illusion, but seem to more be waiting to see how the team responds. Spotting a low door leading down behind the bar, they decide to bum rush it, feeling the Tarot cards must’ve lead them here.

They race past as the bartender blasts with a sawed-off, and Creature drops a lube grenade behind. Finding a tunnel entrance under a tarp in the floor of the cellar, they descend, and quickly get into it with some lice spirits that were well-concealed within the bizarre, organic walls of the tunnel structure. They manage to defeat the spirits but it is a close one. They prepare to continue on, feeling that speed is their best bet given how they entered….

Trying to move quickly but stealthily, they find a small connecting chamber that leads to a large central domed room- all made of the same resinous material. Inside, Carol is distressed to see Tate cutting open a massive cocoon inside of a magical barrier, containing what is very obviously a Bug Queen-inhabited dragon, the very same dragon they had rescued from a previous ritual and given to Tate. Unfortunately, the room also contains a huge number of worker spirits and one huge caretaker spirit, who all spot Carol and turn to approach.

Fearing both cops and bugs if they exit back the way they came in, they decide to chance taking a different tunnel out. Everyone but Aradia makes it through the chamber successfully, but Aradia is snatched up by the massive Caretaker spirit that is overseeing the workers tending to the dozens of cocoons in the domed chamber. Simon Andrews makes a heroic speech and manages to cut Aradia free, shoving her into the tunnel with the rest of the team as he seals the tunnel entrance with a mana barrier. He is quickly swarmed by bugs on the other side of the barrier, but the team makes good use of his sacrifice to flee into the tunnels. Carol pauses to quickly document the whole scene with the Quicksilver Camera for good measure.

They get into another brutal fight with some termite spirits this time, and barely manage to fight their way free, with TT nearly dying and the rest of the team’s armor shredded. Using Kit’s excellent navigational sense and some good fortune on their parts, they finally emerge in a ruined parking structure not far from Wrigley. They find a call waiting from Juan Xiuhuitl, who says they must meet immediately, and explains that he and Simon were collaborating on this job. He convinces the team, and they head to the AZT compound springing up in the NW Zone.

Spotting some Jaguar guards onsite, they appreciate that AZT at least seems to be taking this all seriously. Juan tells them that job isn’t done yet- they need to get a strong majority of CC members to vote in favor of a surgical strike here to prevent Chicago from getting FABed or carpet bombed again. Juan says he can get his corp on board with all the evidence the team got, and that Simon had prepped SK for the same. Juan needs the team to reach out to Renraku, Wuxing, and MCT. He suspects that Spinrad will sit it out, as will Shiawase and EVO, not having strong local ops, and that ARES and Horizon will go against anything AZT proposes at the moment, and can’t be trusted anyway given their bug ties (his words).

They agree, and get a partial payment. They call up the Johnsons they know at the 3 corps, and get some small favors to do for each of them in exchange for their help, as Juan had warned they might. They document the corruption of leylines by V’Golkatl for Ryu Quan, suggesting that Tate was slowly corrupted over time as dark magics were warped around his clinic sites, and get Wuxing on board. Quan is still working to resummon Flurris from his formula after the ally spirit was destroyed getting Quan to safety during the bug ambush at the big meeting.

They pick up the broken man, Clay Foster, whose life the team totally dismantled during Aradia’s first mission with them, and pass him off to Carol Staples, who has replaced her old boss Maggie Goldberg, after Maggie’s untimely death in the Wasp/Ant Queen ritual on Truman Tower. She says MCT will join on with Juan’s plan. They also convince a disgraced ex-Seelie Court financier, Gregor Stassen, to leave town for Metropole, permanently, as the corps don’t operate openly there and there aren’t a ton of Seelie connections, so he can likely manage to start fresh. This satisfies Sarah Silverleaf, who wanted him kept away from Renraku’s areas of influence, and she says they will also join the plan.

The team reports back to Juan, who seems well-satisfied, and pays them, as well as offering them some discounts on some specialty gear. He tells them to lay low and heal up for a few days but keep their comms on. They head back down to Ahabitat to heal, patch up armor, and keep their heads down, but they hear some interesting and disturbing news while under the sea. Ghouls have come under aggressive attack locally by the Freedom Network and others, after the news that bugs have been using ghoul nests to masks their auras, and the local ghoul population has been pushed back to Long Pig Farms and Tamir Grey Towers, or else killed or driven out of town. Popular Will thugs are “keeping an eye” on both locations for further bug trouble, but it seems Chicago is no longer a safe place for ghouls at the moment.

They hear of a bunch of legendary corporate heavy-hitters showing up in town and joining forces, but apparently the surgical strike doesn’t quite go to plan, and the UCAS III Corps moves fully in in the aftermath, booting LoneStar from a lot of their security ops, and bombing and flattening the Wrigley enclave before establishing a major FOB there. They seem to be taking a “shoot first” policy towards any suspected bugs, and due to the ongoing pissing contest between ARES corporate and the UCAS are going especially hard after ARES and their allies- including the Desolation Angels. As a response to this, and pissed at being excluded from the strike team plan, ARES pulls out all their public local presence (Carol knows that some of this was planned as lead-up to the execution of Latvian Gambit).

ARES offers to help the DA’s relocate to Detroit as well, and Becky99 and Praxis call the team looking for advice. Their other best option is heading for the PWV sprawl in Azania, which has grown significantly in the last few years as a manufacturing hub. Apparently there is also some local reverence and tolerance in varying degrees for different bug species, and bug hunts are also common there, so it seems like it could be a good fit. After a lengthy discussion, Praxis and a few of the other Mantids head for Detroit with ARES, while Becky, Blue, Misa, and most of the rest of the gang head to PWV. The team manages to call in another favor with Stereotype Abellard and ensure that the DA’s can leave town without further run-in’s with the military, and the DA’s all sadly swap out their Chicago patches on their cuts for their new cities.

Kit especially feels their loss as good allies and skilled bug-fighters, but there doesn’t seem to be much the team can do- Abellard doesn’t have enough power to change command decisions at that level, so they wish them safe travels and hope to reconnect someday. Worried about the outcome of that corp strike team mission, they are somewhat relieved to hear from Juan, who says he needs them for one last job, and will explain everything once they meet up.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Avocado
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia

The team gets a call from Samuel Collingsworth, the AZT Johnson Juan Xiuhuitl had warned them to expect, and seemingly wants to sabotage. They set up a matrix meet, and attending, find him to be a total human supremacist, just as they had deduced from his image. He hires them for a data retrieval in the Shattergraves, and says it needs to happen ASAP. They negotiate pay, and get some upfront. They then report in to Juan, who says he’ll make sure the team gets paid regardless of how the job plays out as long as he gets what he wants. For now, he tells them to proceed with the job as planned.

They load up and head deeper into the Zone, noticing some changes. Horizon is reopening Tate’s clinics under their corporate banner, Popular Will attacks and protests are up given Tate’s reported treachery, and the CZ borders are once again sealed and patrolled astrally, seemingly to prevent bugs leaving the Zone. They also hear and see some UCAS military vehicles moving around overhead, all marked with a “III Corps” logo.

Heading towards their target destination, they roll up to a gang checkpoint, the gangers having fortified a major intersection. Sensing some buggy vibes, they decide to shoot and bash through, though Kit insists on minimal lethality since this seems like more low-level gangers caught up in the Fraternitas Insectorum, though the rest of the team doesn’t share Kit’s empathy. They lay down some suppressing fire while Aradia uses some area Foreboding to make gangers think twice, and Creature grenades the jury-rigged gates. Kit bashes through the first one, with the van taking minimal damage from some small arms fire.

They then see a ganger getting a rocket launcher ready to blast them, which confusingly seems to have been fired recently as well. Carol manages to shoot the launcher out of the gangers grip, and TT chucks a harpoon through it without setting it off, and then as Creature grenades the second gate and Aradia uses some illusions to distract gangers, Kit bashes their way out of the trap and they continue on their way.

Driving a bit more, they see an oily cloud of smoke ahead. Investigating, they find the wreck of one of the UCAS choppers they’d seen flying over. It looks like it took a missile hit to the tail section but a very skilled pilot managed to put it down largely intact, though it is now on fire. What to do?! They decide to take a more thorough look and find that a team of UCAS soldiers seems to have fled the scene, but that the pilot seems to have barely survived inside a rigger cocoon. With some spirit assistance, sheet muscle, and engineering know how, they managed to gain access to the partially crushed cocoon and get the pilot, a dwarf, free.

Kit and Aradia manage to stabilize and heal him a bit and get some info- the UCAS feels the corps have failed to contain Chicago and President Colloton sees a wedge issue she can use for political gain in her and her parties favor in the upcoming elections. They’re conducting scout flights with ground penetrating radar to map out the hive network under the city and see if it’s really as bad as rumors say, and early reports do not look good for Chicago. Jenkins, the pilot, agrees to share the data with the team if they help get any other survivors from the flight out of the Zone safely. They agree and use a fire spirit to finish detonating the chopper before the nearby Fraternitas Insectorum gangers can get their and claim the weapons and ammo aboard.

Using Jenkins TacNET conneciton, they find the other survivors, pinned down and surrounded by a hoard of ghouls pouring out of a ruined building nearby. They see the UCAS drone rigger go down as they approach, and Jenkins gets some stims from Kit to get in and take over as drone controller. Kit uses the van as a a ram to clear a path for the soldier to get clear, while laying down suppressing fire with the new mounted gun, along with Carol and Creature (using grenades). TT hops on top of the van to fend off ghouls with his javelins after the van nearly gets wrecked getting clear. Carol also gets a super lucky visual on a concealed toxic shaman who seems to be guiding the ghouls in some way, and 1-shots her with a sniper rifle. The team plus the surviving UCAS soldiers finish the ghouls off quickly after that, as they are all feral.

The soldiers agree to help the team gain access to their job site as they seem to be going to the same place: one of the nearby ruined buildings seems to be a tunnel nexus, and has collapsed in a sinkhole, leaving the data vault that the team needs to reach somewhere underground. The UCAS mage stays up top with Jenkins, who is crashing again from the stims, and they agree to guard the exit and watch the van. The team heads down with the other 3 soldiers, 2 nervous human privates, and a fairly calm troll LT named “Stereotype” Abellard who seems quite competent and skilled. As they begin heading deeper into the wrecked structure, an ominous storm blows in from nowhere and breaks overhead.

They find a lot of evidence of bugs below ground level, but it seems their astral signature was masked by the ghoul pack above- this being the 2nd time they’ve seen this now, they make a note to report this to the Shadow Chapters. They get to the vault without further trouble, and the UCAS soldiers get a lot of useful info as the area is filled with criss-crossing tunnels. Kit manages to use nanites to gain access to the vault, and hops on a terminal inside that is luckily still powered- the room seems quite well-built and sealed. Unfortunately, the opening of the vault door vibrates the whole tunnel around it and the team starts hearing buzzing approaching.

Kit decides to hurry and get the target data, skipping what could be some good paydata, and they hoof it. One of the UCAS soldiers gets grabbed as a side tunnel suddenly opens as they flee, and some spirits manifest to try to stop them but they manage to fight their way back to the surface. They find that the UCAS mage has been corrupted somehow and killed Jenkins and started cutting on himself, so they knock him out and restrain him with mage cuffs. Aradia spots that the dark storm cloud above has some wispy magical tendrils connecting to the mage, and drops out of astral quickly. She calls it in to Lothan, who confirms that V’golkatl is gaining power and acting more openly, having killed most of the other contenders for spirit of the city. The team decides to mage cuff Avocado too til they clear the area, just in case.

They drop the UCAS survivors off near a checkpoint, and Abellard says he’ll be in touch if he can use their help again. They call in to Juan, and are told to securely and secretly copy the file before giving it to Collingsworth. Kit calls in a favor from Remo, who makes quick work of it with a Resonance infusion. They get a copy for the team as well. The team meets digitally with Collingsworth, who is once again a metaracist dick, so they don’t feel bad about screwing him over. Checking the file, they find that it’s old blackmail material about Collingsworth hiring metahuman sex workers, which would be a problem for his human supremacist buddies. But now Juan has a copy too, so they feel comfortable knowing that Collingsworth is going to be in the hot seat, and had to pay out of pocket for the team to screw him.

Juan, as promised, signs up to the Shadow Chapters, and offers KEV ammo and stealth pheromones for sale at a reasonable rate to members taking the fight to the bugs. The team considers this a big bonus. Aradia heads off to learn some new spells from Lothan, having signed up with the Ash Union, and the rest of the team kicks back and patches up armor and vehicles in prep for whatever the next job is.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Avocado
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia

After healing up and agreeing to more future work from Juan, the team agrees to take a job from Matt Wrath, who just needs them to meet him and deliver a package within a few hours. They head to the diner where Matt is and are just sitting down and starting the meet when the windows are shot out by hybrid forms, a van screeches up and disgorges some ant spirits, and a sniper nearly kills Matt. The team scrambles to respond….

After a brutal firefight and with the help of a large spirit Aradia summons, the team defeats the attackers and stabilizes Matt Wrath, racing off from the scene in case more attackers are incoming. They rendezvous with his DocWagon pickup a little ways away and pass him off after confirming the DW crew aren’t bugs. Avocado rides with to keep an eye on the situation.

The team then follows Matt’s request and heads out to deliver the blade in the case he gave them to Becky 99 within 2 hours. Having already lost a little time, they call Becky 99 and try to plan a safe route. B99 warns them that many Ramblers have been corrupted by bugs, so Kit plans a backstreets route, with Aradia and Carol watching out for bugs and gang traps. They get pretty close before some cops pull them over, Aradia can detect some mind control traces on them. But luckily the team’s fake SINs hold up and they’re able to talk their way out, even at a severe disadvantage.

They get a few more blocks before the bug ambush strikes, with one large insect manifesting inside the car while others surround it. Kit, quick on their feet, manages to ram their way out of the trap, getting the van clear of most of the enemies while Creature grenades their pursuers and Aradia helps with spellcraft. TT and Carol fight the bug inside, but Carol gets an unlucky miss with his Alpha and catches TT in the chest with a full burst, nearly killing him. They do finally mange to finish off the bug after Carol switches to knife and gets a lucky hit in. However, a lot of their armor is pretty shredded and the van has seen better days.

They finally reach the meet site and hand off the dagger to B99, quickly assensing it Aradia thinks it is a powerful weapon foci suited to a tradition she is unfamiliar with. Some DA’s race back and report that ants are pouring out of nearby sewers, so the team decide to help the DA’s flee and figure out pay later. Kit again bashes through the ambush with van, with 2 DA vans staying close behind. Seeing that the bugs are lead by a large nymph spirit, Carol calls in Dr. Ellis, but requests no FABIII carpet-bombing this time as the situation is mobile.

The team sees some ARES stealthed VTOLs drop some figures in BugStomper suits with FAB throwers corralling all the pursuing bugs, and then some smoke bombs are dropped and a large container, similar to the ones they saw in DC, is dropped in the midst. Out come the horrifying hybrid bug things that ARES seems able to control, making short work of the bugs around them. The figures in BugStompers use some kind of pain controllers to get the ARES hybrids to respond to command, and manage to capture the nymph, which Ellis is thrilled about. The team is a bit stressed about all this, but what choice did they have…

Reaching DA safezone turf, B99 explains that the dagger was a gift from Arleesh’s vault, to help against the bugs, and would only be useful to members of her gang’s magical order. She pays the team, with a bonus for helping them escape, and the team heads back to the Bolthole to rest and restock on ammo. Kit and Carole head to Goober’s, and Kit etches some cool art onto Carol’s new armor playing for his cyber-legs (an abstract representation of the two different personalities within Kit, which merge into 1 image when together). Kit also gets some upgraded van armor and adds a concealed 360 degree turret with 2 ammo hoppers, so they can switch between KEV ammo and stick and shock, wanting a non-lethal option for non-bugs.

Carol posts a bounty of Jackpoint and NooseNet for info about any bugs/nests/hives anywhere in the world, and starts getting some leads and positive comments, especially once he starts paying out above market rate for the info on his ARES expense account. He sets up a protocol for MAMA to filter out junk messages and apply a pay scale, and then forward the leads to Candace.

The team waits around a bit, wondering what will come next.

Runners
Carol Turpentine
Avocado
Kitten Caboodle aka Kit
Creature
ThinkTank
Aradia

The team rests up and heals for a few days, and then decide to sell their massive paydata package to the Shadow Chapters. They use this as an enticement to get the last few holdout corp Johnsons in town (who survived the meeting) to sign on as well, except for Juan Xiuhuitl, who is still holding a grudge for the team not coming to his aid during the bug ambush. Since Carol couldn’t convince the team to sell to ARES first with an exclusivity window, he decides to meet with Candace Phillips personally to at least present the info well. They also convince the Shadow Chapters to pony up for a bounty for the traitor for whoever discovers them. The rest of the team decides they better check up on Tate, since he’s the only one they didn’t have proof of getting ambushed.

Tate reports that his Genesis Clinic is still under heavy guard and seclusion after the bug attack, so he suggests they meet at the Maker’s Collective clinic. The team heads in, and finds the MC even more corporatized/gentrified than before, as well as finding the Zone border crossing reinforced by LoneStar, presumably in response to news of the bugs’ return. They head into the clinic and find Tate has it cleared out for their meeting, he calls them back to his office. As Avocado and Creature step in, a security shutter slams shut behind them, trapping Aradia, Think Tank and Kit in the hall.

Avocado and Creature start talking to a holo-projection of Tate while gas starts to fill the room- he tells them that as trusted confidants, he is going to bring the 2 of them in on his new discoveries and plans, but that the 3 in the hall must be culled as they have not proven trustworthy yet and he can’t risk it. In the hall they hear an accelerating beeping in the walls, and taking some careful sniffs, TT figures out that they’re in a killbox wrapped in plastic explosives. Avo and Creature try to negotiate with Tate but don’t have any luck, he seems unusually fervid and they worry that the bugs have gotten to him after all.

Out in the hall, TT starts trying to blast through the door into Tate’s office but doesn’t have enough det cord, so Aradia summons a spirit to help, which makes quick work of it, with TT also bashing away. Kit tries to disrupt the bomb with some matrix attacks, but initially just triggers a security response from some waiting IC which seems confused by their odd Monad presence. The beeping seems to be accelerating, so the team bashes through the back wall of the office as well (with the help of some of Creature’s grenades) and tumbles out into a storage area, trying to get into cover just as Kit accidentally triggers a failsafe and sets off the bomb.

They take some massive damage to their armor, and make their escape from the MC amidst a scene of chaos- shrapnel from the explosion has blown out into the market and killed or injured dozens, it looks like. Aradia tasks her spirit to help with search and rescue as it’s final service, and the team bails, leaving drones behind. The drones spot a team that looks like Tate’s security, but moving with bug efficiency and unity, arriving a short while later and searching the clinic and wreckage. They ship their armor off to Goober to get repaired, and order in some replacement explosives from 3D, as well as paying rent on both safehouses.

They spread the word about Tate to their contact lists and the Shadow Chapters, to much surprise and dismay. They rest and heal for a few more days, and hear some disturbing bits of news: apparently a number of runners whose safehouses were known to Tate from house calls and the like have gone missing in the last few days, and some others have been noticed to be acting strangely. Paranoia rises. Simon Andrews gets the team the bounty payout for discovering the traitor, but they keep their name out of it for now, worried it will be suspicious that they proposed a bounty and almost immediately cashed in. They also hear that Freaktown has come under attack and some local changelings, including legendary Zone bus driver Murretta Burretta, have been killed, mistaken for bug flesh forms.

Simon also tells the team he’s done his best to make peace with Juan, and Aradia also uses her hold over Simonetta Chandra to try to get back into Juan’s good graces. Juan does eventually call them with some work, and summons them to a meeting at Club Apex, AZT’s new fight/sports bar. The team rolls over, noticing some heavy acrid smoke hovering over the Zone, and looks online to see what’s up. There was a big Urban Brawl match the previous night and the news is saying the celebrations got out of hand, and multiple large fires are burning, with gangers attacking LS first responders preventing them from getting the scenes. TT also gets a “kill penalty” alert- basically an open bounty on one of the Brawl players who is thought to have cheated. Kit wants no part of it, but the rest of the team seems open to partaking if they stumble across the guy.

At the club, they get sent back to a private meeting room and and briefed by Juan, and his 2 new assistants, Atzi and Tenoch. Apparently an AZT work crew that was extending GridGuide repairs into the Zone has gone missing, as has the sec team sent in to find them. AZT retrieved all of their vehicles using auto-pilots, so they don’t think it was an obvious gang hit or corp sabotage. There was no useful sensor data, though the sec vehicle had some small arms damage. Juan provides a list of names of the missing as well as their corp RFID’s, and the location of the work/last contact. TT doesn’t like Juan’s super corp-y energy, but the pay is decent and the team wants to be on his good side so they agree.

As they’re leaving, Atzi offers a small bonus if one of them will step into the fighting ring as a last minute replacement for a missing fighter. Avocado agrees, feeling maybe this will be good closure for the whole 6Cylinder thing. He gets whooped, but stays in long enough to get paid, and is mostly healed up by the ring doctor and Aradia. Outside, Kit is getting van ready to go when a Taco Temple driver backs into them in the lot. Kit gets out in a huff and thoroughly freaks out the driver, as the van begins to repair itself with the new nano repair suite that Kit just installed.

Avo and the rest of the team arrive and manage to cool Kit down, and gets a Taco Temple discount code for a 5 person 5 piece meal. The kid peels out and speeds off, but Creature, paranoid, looks up his info online. He seems to be an incredibly lucky/unlucky person, having been the lone survivor of multiple crashes and accidents. TT has a feeling and begins frantically looking around, and locates a Tarot card just under the van. It’s unclear if it dislodged when the van was hit, fell out of the kid’s pocket, or what, but they spend some time analyzing it, feeling that they have maybe found some sort of weird set showing the life of one person, TT thinks it might be an assassin who uses the name Hylda- another rare club/staff, and spear fighter in their world.

They head out for the last known sighting of the AZT crew, but get ambushed by gangers on the way. Kit luckily slams the brakes and avoids hitting a small ork girl who is thrown in the road ahead of them, but the van is quickly surrounded by a flaming dumpster pushed in front, and what looks to be a stolen fire truck pulling out in back. They notice wrecked cars making a sort of impromptu barricade on either side of the street just as the van is hit with a lube grenade. A massive fight breaks out, Avo and TT charge out, with Avo assaulting the fire truck and TT tipping over the flaming dumpster on the 2 gangers behind it just as Creature hits them with a lube grenade in return. Aradia sends a spirit up to take out the gang’s grenadier on a nearby roof, and turns TT and Avo invisible, as Kit gets the car unstuck and starts ramming their way out of the trap zone.

The team emerges victorious, but the van has come under attack from an as yet unknown hacker, and the gang was once again all wearing those bug masks and working with better coordination than their gear and skills would otherwise suggest… something is up! Carol zips in on the VTOL after he finishes getting briefed on the part he needs to play in ARES’ Latvian Gambit project, and grapples up to the apartment where the hacker is hiding after Kit spots her in the matrix. Carol finds that the gang hacker has plugged directly into the severed head of the AZT SecTeam hacker and seems to be using his deck (inexpertly). Carol pulls the plug and zip ties the hacker, which unfortunately also fries the head, so they maybe lose some paydata there.

There’s a debate about what to do with the hacker and Kit insists on not killing her, so they sedate her with some of Creature’s drugs. Aradia reads her mind and finds out that the Nasty Grrls gang has joined up with the Fraternitas Insectorum and some local bug shaman to gain power, feeling that they would otherwise just end up as victims, since they’re a small-ish gang. Carol and Think Tank also tell the small ork girl it’s ok to go back to her apartment, which is apparently the one the hacker was using, after Carol frantically cleans up the gore, and also leaves her a credstick

The team debriefs with Aradia and finds out that the work crew accidentally dug into a bug tunnel nearby and all got grabbed, and the gangers were told to ambush anyone who came looking, successfully trapping the AZT team and burning them and the building they were in (explaining the noxious smoke). The team heads to the dig site and finds the hole the work crew made covered over with some kind of fresh organic “concrete”, they confer and decide this must be termites. Doing some recon, they find a nearby building appears to be covered entirely on the inside with the same stuff- they can’t see in any windows etc. They explore into the tunnel a bit and find a commlink as well as one of the workers’ bodies.

Kit scans the link and they get some footage of the workers accidentally breaking into the tunnel, seeming confused, and then all getting pulled in by termite spirits. One is killed in the process, explaining the body. They call it in to Juan, who pays them extra to keep watch and make sure no one else goes in or out while he gathers another team and some materials. They do so, taking shelter at an old folks home that the gangers seem to have been raiding for meds and bug hosts. Kit heals up Avocado, still badly hurt from the fight, while the others take watch.

Hearing that a street doc named Hole-Patcher is trying to step into the void left behind by Tate’s betrayal, TT calls him up and arranges for a medic and bus to get sent over to get the surviving old folks to somewhere better, and Kit calls in a favor with the Shadow Chapters to send the restrained gang hacker along too to get rehabbed (or otherwise dealt with) as Aradia confirms that none of the gangers were actually inhabited. Carol sees the termites covering the tunnel opening again over the team’s excavations, and TT watches some AZT vehicles roll up as the sun rises.

They head down and get the briefing: Tenoch has brought a large explosive charge which the team will need to get down into the core of the hive- since it’s so reinforced inside the building this should focus and reflect the blast and ensure total destruction, but only in a very localized area. The team notices that the AZT sec team that came with all appear to be disgraced, so this seems a little suicide mission-y, but Juan assures the team that though the AZT team is potentially sacrificial, he hopes the runners will survive. Atzi has a chem sprayer with some new formulation in it, that Juan explains is an old AZT pheromonal experiment, that should make people sprayed with it undetectable to the bugs for around 5 minutes.

They send in the disgraced AZT team first to clear the way. They make it most of the way to the building before encountering another organic wall, which they manage to break through, but not without alerting some spirits to their presence. They fight further in but are overwhelmed, and all killed except one, though the only feed the team is getting is a weak bio-monitor signal. Tenoch passes the explosives to TT, and Aradia explains that given the terrible background count in the tunnel, she’ll guard the exit from inside the van.

The team heads in, after getting sprayed with the pheromones. They do seem to work, as they bypass multiple worker spirits with no issue. They find the lone AZT survivor getting walled up and begging to be killed, but manage to ignore his pleas and keep going- good thing they all took Guts beforehand. They emerge into a central chamber and find a termite Queen actively holding open a portal to Vhortas and pulling more spirits through to inhabit various prepared hosts: neighborhood denizens, the AZT work crew, staff and patients from the old folks home.

TT sneaks forward, counting on the pheromones, and sets the charge, with a short timer. The team starts hustling back to the exit but finds the way out walled over. Creature manages to sneak through but Kit gets stuck, and the rest of the team has to bash through the wall while holding off alerted worker spirits. As they race for the nearby exit, they get in a gun battle with some true form termites that manifest, and then luckily manage to all get out just ahead of the massive explosion, which levels the building and send some light debris flying for blocks.

Juan congratulates them and gives them the extra pay agreed upon. He also lets them keep the KE-V anti-bug ammo (another AZT experiment) that they didn’t use in the fight, but warns them against experimenting on it. Carol almost immediately wants to send some to ARES but decides not to, for now, though he sends a description of the KEV ammo and the pheromones. The team decides to drink and party a bit, getting some Hurlg (Avocado has a hard time as a vampire wishing to drink and ends up getting a little taste from some of Kit’s blood but then almost can’t stop himself drinking too much). They read some touching “in memorium” posts on the Rate My Johnsons channel about those already lost the bugs, and review some files that Sam uploaded there from the Endless Archive, where she seems to now reside as an e-ghost.

The files suggest a few thing: Tate seems to have been convinced or mind controlled by the dragon, rather than possessed by a bug. Also, he seems to work a lot more directly for Horizon that anyone had suspected. Also also, Horizon seems to have recently signed on for some kind of big PR push on behalf of ARES (specifics unknown) but was encouraging Tate to further his bug research and knowledge in order to better be able to deal with ARES stuff “if their plans go sideways.” Meanwhile, Carol has an upsetting convo with Candace and Dr. Ellis, where they share some info and theories. The worry is that the dragon that was being prepped for a Queen host may have gotten taken over by someone/something else, possibly the evil contender for the Spirit of the City, V’golkotl. This could imply some kind of master entity making moves behind the scenes, coordinating the bug alliance, etc. Candace tells Carol to accelerate his portion of the Latvian Gambit plan in response, and gives him access to a corporate credit line for the purpose.

The team then writes up another dossier about all of what they just found and put together, and uploads it to the Shadow Chapters for some good rep and meager pay, Carol is once again a little frustrated with the vote going that way. They get a call from Juan, who says that if they do another job for him, involving some internal AZT corp intrigue, he will join the Chapters as well, and that he is continuing to develop/bring out of mothballs all of AZT’s bug-fighting tech and experiments from the bad old days, so he will be able to share more the pheromones, KEV ammo, etc to the Chapters as well, once he’s a member. This job sounds a little shady to some on the team, but Juan’s resources are too valuable to ignore, so they agree.

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

The team, having set up the meeting and gotten (almost) everyone committed to attending, takes a chill day to restock on gear and upgrade some ‘ware. They cash in their payment bonuses from Tate’s clinic, with Carol getting some major cyberleg upgrades. They do a little checking around for any hints of ambushes or trouble for the meeting but don’t find any.

Simon Andrews asks them to do external security for the meeting but Avocado talks his way inside, not wanting to miss out on the moving and shaking. Old Crow and Quantum Princess are there already setting up the Faraday cage/matrix sec, and Red and Lothan the Wise are working on magical sec. Lothan keeps muttering about dark clouds and ill portents.

The attendees start arriving, the only notable friction is some tension between Wingman and Ken Ichiro/the Yak, and between Shiro Seto and many of the others, he seems quite haughty. Simon is bantering and keeping things light while they wait for the last few arrivals, when the team gets a call from Long Pig Farms: the BBQ came under attack by gangers and bug merges! They request assistance, and Kit, ThinkTank and Creature race up that way. Just as the reach the North Zone, the team receives another call: Becky 99, Praxis, and the other Desolation Angels who were planning to attend got caught in an ambush by some Ramblers wearing bug masks, and they also request aid. Carol, Avocado, and Aradia head that way, taking Candice’s car. Some of the bodyguards split off to do more exterior sec.

Both the teams reach their targets right around the same time, in time to intervene and help out, just as they receive a third call: Juan Xiuhuitl was also ambushed by bug gangers on the way in, and is pinned down and requesting aid. The gangers that hit him and B99 were using jammers, They also get a call from Tate that his facility is under attack and was hit with an EMP, so he won’t be able to make the meeting, but he says his defenses will hold and to help the others. The North team helps chase the bug gangers off- they fall back pretty quickly. The South team has the same experience: suspicious?

All of their armor battered, the team is horrified to receive yet another call from Maggie Goldberg’s assistant, Carol Staples: the meeting was attacked by bugs! It’s a whole disaster! They race back, abandoning Juan to his fate (luckily he survives, but loses his guards and rides, as well as his limited respect for the team). They find the warehouse the meeting was at on fire and collapsing. Avocado runs in, lighting on fire, and gets a quick scan of the area. Aradia also summons a fire spirit to look for survivors and manages to pull Carol Staples out from under a Blue Samurai corpse which was sheltering her. She shares video footage and seems somewhat shell-shocked, and they review the drone footage as well.

What they piece together: wasp spirits first assaulted the magical wards, bombarding them from the top. The bodyguards split off from the central area to cover entrances. Then, a massive crater opened under the central table, pouring out ant and roach spirits. This level of spirit cooperation is unheard of and strange. Many of the VIP’s at the meeting are dragged down into the crater by ants and roaches, while trapped in wasp spit. Seto seems to have killed himself with his guard’s assistance in order to avoid capture, and SId Gambetti was killed while fighting bugs. Candice and Simon look to have made it out together, with Candice using some kind of FABIII field effect suit mod.

Holmes manages to transfer his consciousness away, Mako is revealed as a free spirit a