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…