Last game, everyone had a lot of fun but Bruce wasn't present, so no Session Summary exists. From what folks say, everyone's characters suffered a lot of aggravated damage from fire last time except for Byron Ignatiou, leaving Tim to conclude that everyone else was either stupid or incompetent. By popular demand, Chris decides that a story ended last week so everyone can get their Willpower back.
This time, everyone shows up, including Tim (Byron Ignatiou), Paul (Allen MaCavity), Chuck (Derek Stone), Bruce (Jack Rowell) and Chris.
As the session opens, most of the characters are pretty deeply messed up, so they spend a good long time hunting.
The characters broke into the home of the two afflicted Young Republicans, then Dominated them into telling what they knew. The couple knew that they were ill, but though that they had the flu. They also very helpfully explained that they were taking pills to cure the problem. The characters quickly determined that the pills were nothing more than sugar pills.
Next stop was the pharmacy that the couple bought the pills from. With typical subtlety, the characters simply Dominated the pharmacist. The pharmacist didn't know much, but did know that Dr. Ajax's patients (among them, the two Young Republicans) got their drugs from a special shelf. The shelf proved to contain a variety of drugs, all of them nothing more than sugar pills. The pharmacist provided a list of thirteen patients who came from Dr. Ajax.
From there, the characters went to Dr. Ajax' office, which was on the 10th floor of the same building. His office looked fairly mundane right up until Derek Stone turned on the computer, which responded by exploding. Right on schedule, the sprinklers came on and sprayed the characters with gasoline. Desperate to escape the sudden inferno, the characters ran into the hallway to come face to face with men in fireproof suits armed with machine guns. Allen MaCavity stayed behind and engaged the gunmen, downing one of them before staggering beneath a hail of machine-gun fire. Derek Stone and Byron Ignatiou fled up to the 11th floor. From there, Derek went back down to the 10th by the stairs and ambushed two guys who had been waiting in ambush themselves. Sadly, he was unable to defeat them. By the end, both Derek Stone and Allen MaCavity were staked an dragged off.
Byron Ignatiou went down to the 9th floor and called the Scourge and the Sheriff. The Scourge brought in a chopper, using it to follow the gunmen in their van. The gunmen drove to a warehouse. Ignatiou and the Scourge's men peer inside to find the staked characters being interrogated (to no great effect) by gunmen, hunters, and several of the Mad Bomber's ghouls.
Byron Ignatiou found a gun and tried to rescue the characters. He is initially foiled by a locked door, but managed to get through it by the expedient of waiting until someone else opened it. He finds the characters left behind, strapped to explosives. The Scourge's bomb expert comes in to try and defuse the bombs, failing dramatically. The resulting explosion delivers even more shattering damage to both Allen MaCavity and Derek Stone (Ignatiou remained at a safe distance).
In between the disasters, the characters learned that the Mad Bomber's real name is Mel Topps. Derek Stone also discovered that the two Young Republicans were real estate lawyers. He suspected that the Mad Bomber might have been using them to research vampire-owned properties, and imagined that they could be very useful to him. He decided to exploit the Mad Bomber's erstwhile herd by ghouling both of them.
Jack Rowell spent his time finding a replacement neighborhood activist. He settles upon the Reverend Leonard Delray, the preacher for the Tell Ridge Methodist church. The Reverend Delray finds himself both as Rowell's' ghoul and as the new President of the Carter Arms Community Development Corporation.
Scourge Jeffrey Harper managed to determine that the Toreador Carmine Rooker has been feeding information to the Mad Bomber over the course of the last several years. His best evidence is the fact that she makes long calls to a message system, though exactly what the content of these messages might be remains unknown.
Jack Rowell was out of the loop last week, so he really doesn't know how useful this information really is. Or how Harper might have found this information out.
Byron Ignaciou and Jack Rowell head over to the pharmacy to interrogate the pharmacist again. They find that even though the 9th through 11th floors of the building have been burned out, the pharmacy is still open. Rowell rather incompetently manages to Dominate his way into the pharmacist's stockroom, first claiming that he has a prescription from Dr. Ajax, and then saying that he'd prefer to fill it himself, and finally simply Dominating the pharmacist's assistant into letting him through. Sadly, a different person is on duty, and he claims that the cops have already taken away all the records for Dr. Ajax's clients. Jack Rowell makes the somewhat paper-thin explanation that he is a cop, and needs to know who took the information away. The pharmacist doesn't know the cop's name or badge number, but he does provide the name, number and address for the woman who had been on duty the night before.
At this point, Ignatiou pokes his head through the window sideways and makes some random comments. The pharmacist asks, "Is he a cop too?" Rowell says that he is, and offers up some pocket lint as Ignatiou's badge. The pharmacist seems somewhat confused by this until Rowell explains, "I carry his badge for him because he keeps losing it. We issue him a rubber gun - he can gnaw on it between calls." The pharmacist says nothing.
The characters leave the pharmacist to visit the woman's house. They talk to her husband, who tells them that she was arrested and taken to the Wackenhut facility. He claims that he doesn't like cops, but it turns out that he does after Rowell gets finished with his Dominate.
At this point, Ignatiou mentions that the characters already have a list of thirteen of Dr. Ajax's patients. This pretty much deflates any need for the characters to try and talk to the woman pharmacist. Most of them appear somehow to be part of the intelligentsia.
The characters start the process of hiring seven private investigators to watch the people on Dr. Ajax's patient list. They expect that either Jack Rowell or Derek Stone will Dominate the PI's to ensure both good rates and loyalty.
Both Allen MaCavity and Derek Stone hit Wednesday night hard, eager to hunt their way to satiety. Jack Rowell and Byron Ignatiou both watch them with faint entertainment. They then go off and hire all five investigators from the Brattle & Mix Agency. They also arrange with Tom Brattle to hire two extra guys, with a 10% bonus to make him happy. Byron Ignatiou's money pays for it all. Tom Brattle is a touch unhappy when the characters then ask for a guy who can tap phones, arguing that, "That's not legal", until Jack Rowell reminds him of how much money he's collecting. The fact that neither Rowell nor Ignaciou acts like he really cares about the law doesn't inspire Brattle too much. But for all his reservations, he is still willing to take the characters' money, and the characters get their PI's.
The electronics guy Brattle recommends is more willing to do illegal wiretaps, but explains that it will take him a while to get total coverage of everyone's phones. He also notes that he can only tap landlines: cellphones are beyond his skills.
To fill this remaining gap, Byron Ignaciou tracks down Scourge Harper and asks him to monitor these folks' cellphone conversations. He urges them to act like they don't even know he can do this, because this is something of a secret capability, one that could get him killed were it to become widely known. Harper asks if the characters know that Mel Topps is still feeding from these people. They admit that they don't, but are interested in finding out. Derek Stone points out that several of the folks on the list have skills that are otherwise useful, and that Topps might still associate with them even if he's not trying to feed from them.
While the characters wait for their investigators to come up with something, they disperse on their own projects. Derek Stone looks into the Toreador Carmen Rooker, trying to learn anything useful about her. He learns that she is quite technically adept, but not so well-placed socially. She tends to avoid most of the Toreador social functions and soirees. Narda Cash tells him that Rooker must talk to people, because she couldn't possibly be a vampire otherwise. She also tells him that Rooker's Sire was Simon Dixon. By the end of the conversation, he is convinced that Narda is on to him - why else would he be asking questions about some random Toreador chickie-boo?
Jack Rowell spends his time making sure that the Reverend Leonard Delray is settled in to his new office. He also comes up with a really good way to do some real estate fraud, and spends hours chuckling madly to himself, while thinking of ways to put it into practice (He wants to create multiple bogus Section Seven tenants, then have them placed in the same address, using properties owned by other folks, collecting the extra money through intermediaries).
Allen MaCavity spends his time spying on the Gangrel Martin and hunting his way out of the aggravated-wound pit he'd gotten himself into. Over a couple of days' effort he hears only one conversation between Martin and Majid, on the subject of shipping product. MaCavity gets the idea that "product" is actually people, possibly kept in jars (live). During the conversation, Martin tells Majid "We've got a quiet period, I'm going to send you some more product from the factory. There will be about a dozen of them, assuming that none of the product goes bad during shipping."
On Saturday night, February 17th, Jack Rowell gets a call from Tom Brattle. Brattle reports that the same car has shown up at three of the addresses his people are watching. In two cases, the people left with the car. This happened between 14:00 and 18:00 during the day. He says that he have photographs of the driver and some other information, and asks Rowell and his friends to meet him at his office.
Byron Ignatiou assumes that this must be a trap. He warns Scourge Harper that he and the rest of the characters are going to talk to their detective agency, pointing out that everywhere they've been in the last week has been a trap. Harper asks, "Why are you dealing with these guys if you don't think you can trust them?" Ignatiou shoots back, "Jack hired them." Harper is dubious: "Oh. So you can't trust Jack?" Ignatiou explains, "No, we're just cautious." Harper assures Ignatiou that he will send some of his guys over.
The other characters pay attention to Ignatiou's warnings and gear up for the trip. Several of them (Derek Stone, Byron Ignatiou) wear lightweight body armor, and everyone carries guns.
The Bratton and Mix Agency offices are up on the third floor. There is also a watchman at the door to allow building access after hours. The characters take the elevator up to the third floor, even though they suspect it might be a bomb. Halfway between the second and third floor the elevator stops and something drops onto the roof. The characters waste no time in reacting. Byron Ignatiou levers the elevator doors open while Jack Rowell trains his revolver on the roof hatch. Derek Stone follows Rowell's lead, rather more convincingly (he knows which end of the gun produces the bullets). Allen MaCavity also follows suit, but Obfuscates first.
Byron Ignatiou pulls the doors open to see a heavyset woman on the second floor pointing a shotgun up at his crotch. He leaps out up onto the third floor with brutal speed, deftly avoiding her initial shot. He comes face to face with a guy with perfect, jet-black features and a grenade in each hand. The grenade-bearer looks somewhat puzzled, but this doesn't stop him from tossing a grenade into the elevator car anyway. The situation becomes even more complicated when a waif of a girl, skin so pale it is virtually white, draws out a pair of knives and looks very much like she is eager to find trouble.
Byron Ignatiou lunges to catch the grenade and throw it away. He elegantly catches the thing, then drops it at his feet. It explodes, staggering him. At this point, chaos breaks out: shotgun blasts tear out and the second grenade goes off in the attacker's hand. The pale knife girl makes it worse by dashing up to Ignatiou and stabbing him ragged.
The situation declines even more when a scrawny-looking fellow with a goatee opens the roof hatch of the elevator. MaCavity opens fire on him with little effect. The goatee gunman responds by spraying the elevator car with an assault rifle, hitting Rowell and Stone. The shotgun-armed matron on the second floor joins in, opening fire on Derek Stone. She misses him and hits Jack instead, learning in the process that he has no vulnerable tissue in his leg.
The scrawny gunman on top of the elevator car ducks out of the way to reload. The matron with the shotgun blasts Rowell again, crippling him. Jack Rowell bonelessly slides out of the elevator and onto the second floor, taking yet another bullet in the money clip in the process.
Up on the third floor, it quickly becomes clear that the knife girl has gone into Frenzy, while the erstwhile grenade carrier backs off out of range. Ignatiou and knife girl tear at each other with insane intensity until she sags to the ground. Ignatiou, unprepared for middling gestures, savagely tearing at her supine carcass with his teeth. Tasting the sweet flavor of her soul, he loses control and drains her dry. He finds himself to be 10th generation and lets out an inhuman scream of furious passion.
Just as Ignatiou finishes his latest dalliance with forbidden fruit, all the lights go out. He rushes after the fleeing grenade-bearer, but gets lost in the darkness.
Derek Stone and Allen MaCavity engage in a fruitless gun battle against the shotgun matron. They start to suspect that her substantial bulk may be made up largely of bullet rounds that have harmlessly embedded themselves in her shape. Jack Rowell tries to contribute, but concludes that Stone and MaCavity were right at the start: she is bulletproof. This continues until she throws away her shotgun and goes berserk. Stone and Rowell get one last opportunity to fail to stop her before she plows straight into Stone, tackling and pinning him. Things are looking extremely bad until MaCavity comes up behind her and shoots her head off. Everyone in the corridor is utterly shocked.
Jack Rowell finds that he can no longer hear well enough to use a cellphone, so he heads for a stairwell. Just as he gets to the door, Allen MaCavity senses that the door is dangerous. MaCavity tries yelling out a warning only to see Jack blown out of sight by a grenade explosion. Jack is incapacitated by the blast. He reacts to the problem by frenzying.
Derek Stone heads up to the third floor to find areas of darkness on either side of the stairwell. He grabs a fire hose and tries spraying down the black areas. He eventually decides that someone is in the grips of frenzy on the third floor and heads back down to the first floor. He discovers that this stairwell door is also trapped with a grenade, but on his side of the door. He leaves the building to find two black minivans in the parking lot. One of them is surrounded by bodies. A shapeless figure standing on the roof of the vehicle is busy tearing apart a black-uniformed man. Several men in similar uniforms are under cover near the second vehicle, firing at various distant targets. Stone determines that one of the targets is hiding behind several bushes near the building wall. He pulls the grenade from the first-floor door and throws it at the bushes. He doesn't see the actual effect of his attack, but does note that the Scourge's men cease firing at that point.
At this point, Allen MaCavity's hearing recovers to the extent that he can hear the gunfire outside, plus the sounds of chaos and water upstairs on the third floor. He looks outside upon the scene in the parking lot.
The sounds of sirens start to mount in the distance. The Scourge's men appear to be reloading and preparing for another assault. None of them look very happy. As Derek Stone watches, he sees a bag (it might even be a "satchel") fly out from behind the second van, coming to rest underneath the first van. He yells a warning to the Scourge's men, two or three of whom run for safety before the van explodes. After the blast, one ghoul lies flopping on the ground next to the van. A very ugly woman carrying a machete, a satchel and an assault rifle runs towards the man. Derek Stone and Allen MaCavity, both sensing what she must intend, open fire. They fail to stop her, and are forced to watch as she ravages the ghoul on the ground, chopping him to hamburger with her machete.
Derek Stone resolves to stop this savagery as quickly as possible, and rushes out to engage the ugly woman. As she turns to face him, he realizes that she is actually a (Malkavian) man in a dress. Violence breaks out between the two of them, ending only when the Malkavian has been knocked down three times. Stone is forced to shoot him many times. Many, many times. Stone heads over to the Malkavian, picking up the machete on the way.
At this point, four cops arrive on the scene. They are clearly in no mood for nonsense, and instruct Derek to get down on his belly. They are unimpressed with his protestations that he is a doctor, at least in part because he was carrying a machete when they arrived. They are also inclined to note that there are several firearms and an array of bodies scattered around the parking lot. Derek refuses to let up, shouting out, "No! I'm a doctor! This is my wife! This isn't my machete!"
Allan MaCavity sees this sorry scene and Obfuscates. He watches as Derek Stone is put into handcuffs and pushed into the back seat of a police car. He sneaks up to the car and pops the lock, freeing Stone. This process also breaks his Obfuscate.
Derek Stone finally leaves the scene by Dominating a cop into "arresting" him and driving him off. He gives the cop the memory of turning Stone over to the FBI, then tries taking two blood from him. Rather unfortunately, he falls into frenzy and kills the cop. He regains consciousness only when someone removes a stake from his heart and instructs him, "don't frenzy".
Byron Ignatiou comes out of Frenzy up on the third floor. He is a mess. He has the remains of a potted plant stuck through his shirt. He's done all manner of damage. He picks up a phone and calls Sheriff Tanner. He explains that the characters were ambushed by a bunch of Sabbat guys. He sounds very disoriented. The Sheriff asks if the characters are at an office building to which many police cars have just been dispatched. He admits that he is. The Sheriff urges him to contain the situation, or to play dead if that's not possible.
Knowing that the colors of diablerie are bright in his spirit, he decides to escape the area. He tries to make his way out of the back of the building, but is intercepted by several cops, who arrange to subdue him. They leave him handcuffed on his belly. All through the process of being restrained, he screams bloody murder and acts like he is deaf. The cops don't appear to care. Once the cops have him securely handcuffed, they frisk him, making Ignatiou deeply glad that he has already lost all of his guns. His final trick is to act like he is on the verge of death, then flopping down unmoving. The cops note that they cannot find either breath or a pulse, and (with some reluctance) call an ambulance. The vehicle that shows up looks very official, but it is driven by Sheriff Tanner's associate Ricky Sanchez.
Jack Rowell comes out of Frenzy on the second floor, cleans himself up a bit, then moves to the back of the building to escape through a broken window. He runs into two cops, whom he evades with Dominate (a shout of "Freeze!", followed by some light memory erasure). He heads into the darkness to find a homeless person to feed from. He spends two Willpower trying not to Frenzy and kill the man, but it doesn't work. After some unknown time, he comes to in an abandoned strip mall with a dead wino and a bicycle nearby. He uses blood to heal himself partially, then rides the bike towards the Colfield Plaza. Along the way he runs into a gang of muggers, which he manages to make short work of thanks to Dominate. He sends them packing with the memory of how a fat white man beat one of them silly, feeding from one of them in the process.
He arrives at the Colfield Plaza to find Sheriff Tanner's Childe Marigold waiting for him. She refuses to allow him to put on a new suit, dragging him back to the strip mall to be braced by Tanner in short order.
Allen MaCavity waits until Sheriff Tanner has the situation fairly well in hand. He sees Tanner talking to Ricky Sultan, another Brujah. He waits until the conversation ends, then appears and tells him that the guy in the dress was a vampire. Tanner says, "I know. What happened?" MaCavity says, "We were ambushed by Sabbat. I know of at least one that died, I don't know about the one in the dress." He tells Tanner everything.
The session ends with all the characters assembled in an abandoned strip mall, about to suffer damage from Sheriff Tanner for the events of the evening. Some of them make snide side comments about why the Sabbat is winning against the Camarilla.
Several characters are forced to make Humanity rolls for their deeds. Jack manages to make a Humanity roll for killing a wino while feeding. Derek Stone fails his attempt and loses a point each of Humanity and Conscience. Byron Ignaciou doesn't even get a chance to roll: he automatically loses Humanity and Conscience thanks to his act of diablerie.
Byron Ignatiou is rightly concerned that the Sheriff will notice his diablerie streaks, and is in no condition to fight him. The Sheriff notices, and explains that he's not going to do bad things if Ignatiou plays ball. His choices are: destruction, exile, blackmail, or Blood Bond to the Sheriff. Ignatiou's initial choice is to accept informal exile and head to Seattle. As a result, Tim might have a new character next time around.
Chris argues that nothing truly terrible has happened to Allen MaCavity this session, meaning that he will remember the things that have happened later.
Everyone gets three experience points.