Tim continues to think that family is more important than hanging about with his layabout friends, so he gives us the miss. This leaves only Bruce (Jack Rowell), Paul (Alan MaCavity), Chuck (Derek Stone) and Chris (who thinks he's in charge).
There is no summary from the last session, but those players who were there feel that this is just as well: the characters located an underground hideout belonging to the Mad Bomber. They found a lot of important-looking paperwork only moments before they found a rather large pile of explosives. After the explosion, it took Scourge Jeffrey Harper several hours to dig them out. Jack Rowell is quite glad that he spent this session doing paperwork in his comfy office out at the Colfield Plaza.
Derek Stone has recently acquired a small army consisting of one car thief and two thugs, plus a fair number of assault weapons. All of this is intended to help him in his nigh-impossible quest to assassinate Susan Jackson.
It is Thursday night, February 8th. Allen MaCavity emits an almost perverse sigh of relief when he realizes that with the sunset his last clotted blood point has finally dissipated. Immediately thereafter, Scourge Jeffrey Harper calls him and tells him that he has some information out at the Ranch House. He asks MaCavity to head out to talk to him, ideally with all of his friends alongside. MaCavity wastes no time in calling up Jack Rowell ("Where have you been?" "In my office. Doing paperwork." "Oh. We got blown up!") and Derek Stone. They agree to go out and talk to Harper.
Only moments later, Jack Rowell gets a call from his dear friend Sheriff Glen Tanner. Tanner asks Rowell to meet him at 21:00, in a manner that leaves Rowell with little doubt that the invitation isn't strictly voluntary. Rowell says that he'll be there, but that he'll bring his friends MaCavity and Stone. Tanner seems to expect no less of him, telling him that the meet will be at a small pecan cannery outside town, Texas Nut Roasters.
The characters appear at the building on schedule. They are met by a night watchman who has obviously been told to expect them - the man opens the gate upon seeing their car. He tells the characters that Tanner wants to talk to Rowell alone, leaving MaCavity and Stone to wait in the car.
The guard takes Rowell to a back room. Rowell can tell that there is more than one person inside, and is allowed to join them only through a door kept as closed as possible, doubtless to keep Obfuscators away. Once he gets through the door ritual, Rowell finds that the room's occupants are Sheriff Tanner and his Childe Marigold.
Tanner and Rowell have a conversation relating to the characters' expedition to Texas City and the deaths of Gary the Nosferatu and Norman Faircloth the Ventrue. Tanner says that the Texas City vampires are very angry about Faircloth's death, but didn't even mention Gary's. Rowell offers a version of the events that paints the characters in a moderately favorable light (they were looking for the witch hunters who had been operating in their territory, but stumbled onto some of the locals' secrets instead). He admits that fighting took place, but claims that he only knows about the death of the Nosferatu Gary. He further mitigates this statement by saying that he doesn't even absolutely know that Gary is dead, as he didn't see the body. He did, however, know that the characters used fire upon the fellow, so it is unlikely that he survived. He concludes that the Texas City Kindred appear to have some strange hobbies that involve underground altars and cauldrons full of blood, and that they are far more sensitive about them than he really understands.
Tanner points out that the Texas City coterie are angry enough to want all of the characters spitted over a slow flame, but that they barely even mentioned that Gary had been killed. He thinks that the case will probably go to court in a few months, and that the characters shouldn't rely too much on Harper to testify on their behalf or stick his neck out for them.
Tanner bids Rowell farewell, cautioning that he might have to break some arms soon. He gives Rowell some roasted pecans.
The characters head out to the Ranch house, where a female ghoul shows them around. In particular, she reviews the intelligence gathered from the ruins of the Mad Bomber's house for the characters. Based upon the documents recovered from the scene, he has been studying a variety of properties owned by Amber Cash over the last ten years. None of these properties have been blown up, and some of the documents are years old. His more recent documents relate to three properties, each researched within the last six months. One is an exclusive apartment downtown, a second is a jewelry boutique, and the third is a strip mall in the suburbs. It looks like Cash owns these properties as investments or possibly havens. Derek Stone asks for (and is given) a copy of the big list of properties and the dates the Mad Bomber looked at them.
The characters return to the offices in the Colfield Plaza, put a big map on the wall and mark out the locations of all the properties. There is a strong cluster of eight properties in the upscale Greenbrier district of Houston. The others are scattered all over the metropolitan area and beyond. Even MaCavity isn't able to see a pattern in them.
The characters put their heads together on what they know about the Mad Bomber. They know that he was the unannounced Ventrue who had been preying on college students. They know that he operated under the name of Roy Mills. They know that almost everyone thinks he blew up the Malkavian Primogen Harold Jacobs. They know that the blast was a fuel-air explosive device demanding a certain amount of sophistication to assemble. Derek Stone seems to think that Mills might not be Ventrue, but his consistent string of victims tends to put the lie to this.
Rowell reasons that there is a chance that Roy Mills might have been a Professional Engineer or the holder of a Commercial Demolitions License at some point in his life. He uses his government connections to try and pull a list of everyone with a name like "R. Mills" who has held a PE or CD license in Texas in the last thirty years. Derek Stone tries a different approach, asking people in the VA for veterans with names matching "R. Mills" who held specialties in demolitions. Finally, MaCavity calls up his professional researcher friend Tommy Newman to look into deaths matching Mills' established pattern: smart people (especially students) dying of heart attacks or anemia. The characters reason that they should be able to find a pattern going back at least ten years or more.
Looking at military records, Derek Stone comes up with 15 people with names resembling "R. Mills" who have had demolitions experience. The list actually goes back to Korea, but most of the people are more recent (from the 70's). Eliminating people who are still alive and folks who were KIA or MIA reduces the list to only five candidates. None of these guys have anything to do with Texas: the closest one is in Arkansas. Stone spends some time looking at the dead ones, and eliminates them all as well.
Jack Rowell's list of PE's and licensed demolitions experts yields only one name, Robert Millson. Millson is a retired civil engineer, currently living in Huntsville. One of his big projects involved converting large quantities of East Texas swamp into forest land. The characters get a photograph of Millson that convinces them that he looks like a really old guy, someone who should be retired. They decide that he isn't Mills.
MaCavity's guy comes back after a couple of days with a five-year trail of deaths, amounting to some 32 people. Fourteen of them came from a Literary Society, an Astronomy Club and a chapter of the Young Republicans. The most recent death was two months ago. Roy Mills left his lecturer's position at the University some eight months ago, which matches this time scale very nicely. The most recent death was a member of the Young Republicans.
Derek Stone spends his free time learning the upcoming Toreador social schedule. He finds out about four events scheduled for February:
The characters figure out that the next group to meet is the Young Republicans, on the 12th. The Astronomy Society will meet three days later, on the 15th. The Literary Club won't meet for a while (they only hold meetings once a month). They decide to sent MaCavity in to crash the party.
The Young Republicans have rented a rather expensive historical house for their meeting. There are about forty people expected, divided into 20 couples plus kids. MaCavity has little trouble sneaking into the meeting room. Everyone else waits outside, watching the attendees.
MaCavity doesn't see Roy Mills, but he does see one very pale-looking couple show up rather late. His Auspex tells him that they are human, but that they're really very tired. He concludes that they are smart because they both wear glasses, taking them off to emphasize points. He learns that the couple is Darren and Sandra Davis. They arrive late (21:00) and leave early (22:30). It is easy to follow them home. They live in a nice two-story home in Houston. The characters feel very conspicuous watching them.
The session ends with the characters lurking around outside the Davis home, trying to decide if they want to break in. Each character gains three experience points.