Chris brings a bunch of new Unreal Tournament assault maps, so we spend a lot of time right from the get-go engaging in lots of vicarious violence. Tim (Byron Ignatiou) warns us that he's going to show up late, but by the time the rest of us get started he turns out to be right on time. The rest of the slackers include: Chuck (Derek Stone), Bruce (Jack Rowell) and Paul (Allen MaCavity).
Bruce describes how he is terribly happy that he found a miniature optical USB mouse for his laptop. Chris nettles Bruce's love of gadgets until Bruce is forced to admit, "I hate you all."
Jack Rowell spends some experience points on Alertness 2 (2 points), Empathy 2 (2 points), Subterfuge 3 (4 points), and Firearms 2 (2 points).
The characters start out the session a strip mall being interrogated by Sheriff Glen Tanner about the events of the evening (a firefight with the Sabbat in an office building). Byron Ignatiou, still dizzy from his latest brush with diablerie, gets escorted away by the Sheriff's Childe Marigold.
The Sheriff is surprisingly polite to the characters, making only one demand of them: he wants a copy of the documents the characters took from one of the Mad Bomber's hideouts. He explains that even though he knows who the Sabbat mole is (the Toreador Carmen Rooker), nobody has seen fit to provide him with any proof. The characters are more than willing to provide this information on CD-ROM, but none of them are currently carrying a copy. The Sheriff gives them a phone number for a guy in his employ who will pick up the documents. Jack ends up with the phone number.
Derek Stone asks the Sheriff who is responsible for dealing with the Sabbat. The Sheriff explains that the official Camarilla position is that the Sabbat is everyone's problem, so there is no specific political office responsible. Under normal circumstances, individual Camarilla members are allowed to engage in freelance activities against the Sabbat, provided that they do not unduly upset the status quo or the Masquerade. In higher pressure situations, the Prince will organize a formal response. Faced with an actual offensive, Justicars and other old vampires will become involved, which may or may not have any good effects beyond providing the Sabbat with ever-juicier morsels. Derek thanks the Sheriff, still not yet convinced that the Camarilla has what it takes to win the upcoming struggle.
The Sheriff bids the characters good evening and departs.
Byron Ignatiou is led into the back of a van, where Marigold watches over him. He attempts to engage her in conversation, but she ignores him with steely resolution. Eventually, the Sheriff shows up and asks him, "So, what happened tonight, you diablerist son of a bitch?" Byron starts out, "You mean the parts I remember?" The Sheriff glares at him, so Byron opts to avoid immediate damage through full cooperation. He provides a blow-by-blow description of the evening's events, very sincerely doing his best to sound like he had only the safety and best interests of his coterie mates in mind right up until he was hit by a grenade and plunged into Frenzy.
He explains that he can still feel the knife girl in his head, so he is certain that something terrible happened. The Sheriff listens to this and asks, "This is a familiar feeling to you, isn't it?" Byron flatly denies it, though he does admit that he feels that the Beast has become stronger within him. He finishes his description by saying that at the end he was covered in blood, knew that the situation was way out of control, and called the Sheriff.
Sheriff Tanner is curious that Byron Ignatiou chose to call him even though he was fairly sure that he'd done something that would cause him to be killed. Byron suggests that the Masquerade must be preserved, and that he doesn't want anything bad to happen to the other members of his coterie.
The Sheriff asks Byron, "So what sort of career do you envision for yourself? Going to strap a bomb to your chest and take a run at the Prince? Spend the rest of your miserable days hunting Sabbat?" Byron points out that he has no particular desire to hurt the Prince, and that he has already been cut out of most of the normal social activities that Toreador follow, so soldiering against the Sabbat is all he has left.
The Sheriff finally gets to the point: "I want to know what the Scourge is up to, so if you can see to it to ignore the calls of friendship and duty, then I think we can make a deal. I don't really want to kill you , but you have committed diablerie and there is never any excuse for that in the minds of most Elders, unless they or one of their Childer did it." He goes on to point out Byron's history of making inflammatory statements and his tendency towards a lack of self-restraint. He tells Byron that he is going to let him out for a couple of weeks as a "trial period", with the understanding that his future fate will depend upon his behaviour. He also wants Byron to do odd jobs for him as needed, and is unwilling to accept argument upon this point.
At this point the Sheriff has Byron duct-taped to the chair and tries to scare him by roaring at him, fangs extended and eyes bulging. Byron, secure behind his almost unbreakable resistance to mind control effects, just sits there and explains that the Sheriff shouldn't be trying so hard. The Sheriff doesn't seem particularly upset by this, but does point out that Byron is going to drink some of his blood. He sticks a funnel down Byron's throat and pours three points of blood into it. Byron (who had been at one blood point) senses that it is important for him to spend Willpower on his Self-Control rolls. Sadly, this estimable plan doesn't work: he falls into Frenzy anyway. He comes back to consciousness as the Sheriff (now looking somewhat more tattered than normal) pulls a stake out of his chest and instructs him to be careful.
Derek Stone realizes that he only has a limited amount of time left to complete his contract to assassinate Susan Jackson. He determines that it is too late tonight to catch any of the social events he had hoped to attend. He spends some time lurking around outside the building where Susan shares a common Haven with her Regnant, Narda Cash. He doesn't actually do anything.
The characters reflect that two of the Sabbat attackers from earlier that evening (the fellow with the goatee and the Lasombra with the grenades) both escaped from the attack at the investigators' building and remain at large (though four of their compatriots did not). Jack Rowell and Byron Ignatiou reflect upon what the two of them might be doing. Byron suggests that they are probably either hunting or finding new recruits. Jack decides to try and find some more information on them and gets in touch with his contact in the Housing Police. He asks the guy to get a sketch artist to make drawings of the Shotgun Matron and the Goatee Guy (the only two Sabbat Jack personally saw), then have a search run to match the images with missing persons reports from the last year or so between Texas and Louisiana. Jack hopes that he might be able to get a name or address upon one of them, even if this is something of an outside shot. Jack goes to a police station house to work with the artist and get the process under way.
Jack also asks his contact to forward him any new missing persons reports issued in the next seven days. He hopes to use this to determine the identities of any new Sabbat recruits.
After finishing his errands, Jack goes home to the Colfield Plaza to gear up. On the landing of the seventh floor, he spots something rather odd. A white guy dressed as a janitor is mopping up some red stuff on the floor. Jack swiftly notes that the guy is not the normal building maintenance guy (one of Jack's ghouls). The guy spots Jack and tells him to stop, saying that he's a cop. He produces a monster handgun, the sort that cops don't normally carry around. Suspecting something awry, Jack expertly Dominates the fellow into submission, guiding him into the nearby janitorial closet and disarming him. A touch of quick interrogation determines that the fellow's name is Darren Davis, and that he's looking for Jack Rowell with the intent of killing him. He was sent by a guy with a goatee, but he seemed to take his orders from a middling-tall guy with very pale skin. Both of them talked to him at his home. Jack tells him to sit quietly and act like he's asleep until Jack's returns. This doesn't have the effect Jack wants, as Davis howls and attacks him. Jack responds by using his Presence to terrify Davis into jelly. Unsure how to make sure Davis stays put, Jack decides to try feeding from him until he loses consciousness. Much to Jack's surprise, Davis turns out to be an actual vampire. Noting that things have gone from bad to much, much worse, Jack takes Davis' massive gun and shoots him until the gun goes click-click-click. After three shots, Davis falls, only to rise back up in Frenzy a moment later. Jack responds by emptying the clip into him, felling him for good.
It is at this point that Jack hears a horrific scream from behind him. Someone female leaps upon him and grapples him. He struggles in vain as this new attacker wrenches his arm up behind him and tears it off. He staggers as she attempts to beat him with his own severed arm. Jack shrugs off these blows, then finally manages to catch her glance and stops her dead with Dominate. He parks her in the sixth floor electrical closet, with orders to not move.
Hoping for a moment of spare breathing space, Jack calls Derek Stone to explain the situation. After a brief and confused conversation, he sticks his arm down his pants and heads down the stairwell. He gets as far as the fourth floor landing when he meets yet another attacker, this one armed with a knife. Jack runs into the fifth floor, realizes that there is only one stairwell, then turns to face the guy. He takes a stab in his capacious stomach (with no real effect) then howls back with all the force of Presence he can muster. He eventually manages to terrify the guy into running away.
The final insult happens when the fourth attacker appears. She pins Jack in the fifth floor corridor, menacing him with a fire axe. Jack does his best to stop her with Dominate and Presence, but she proves resistant to his mental powers. There is a brief struggle. By the end of it, a near-crippled Jack manages to make it to the fire escape and leaps for the ground. He is crippled by the impact. Behind him, he hears the chopped-meat impact of the woman hitting the ground. Both of them struggle to stand.
A big black guy in Muslim dress exclaims his shock as he sees the two of them hit ground and (apparently) keep going. Jack tries to stagger away, but the woman drops into Frenzy and catches up with him easily. He is crippled and unable to avoid her grapple, then feels her drain away his blood and life. The shocked witness watches, then elects to take incredibly heroic action to save Jack's unlife.
Derek Stone calls everyone else and heads over towards the Colfield Plaza with blazing speed. He treats Jack Rowell's call for help with utter seriousness.
Byron Ignatiou gets Derek Stone's alert and likewise leaps into action. He calls the Sheriff and the Scourge to tell him that the group has been ambushed again, and weren't even looking for any trouble at the time. The Scourge is interested in specifics, but all Byron knows is garbled and third-hand. He gathers up body armor and a machine gun, then leaps onto his motorcycle and heads for the Colfield Plaza with inhuman disregard of not only traffic laws but also safe driving practices. He's on a motorcycle, and driving like crazy.
Allen MaCavity hears the warning, then opts to take a much more casual approach, sauntering over to a bus stop to await the arrival of public transportation. Thereby ensuring that whenever he arrives, it will be long after any possible danger has already been dealt with. He reflects that he could have sworn that he owned a motorcycle at one time.
Derek gets to the scene first. He finds that a crowd has already gathered, including some lowrider club members and a lot of the local Carter Arms residents. Ambulance sirens call out from the distance. Derek hides his shotgun under his jacket and heads over to take a look at the situation. He sees Jack on the ground, one arm ripped off, looking very dead. The heroic bystander is lying dead next to him. He talks to a woman with about three teeth in her head who explains that some white woman killed the poor black man and then ran into the Carter Arms. Derek believes her story, as he can hear screaming from inside the building. She mentions in passing that the crazy white woman also killed some white guy.
Derek finds that Jack is not diablerized, but he's not sure if he is in torpor or not. He Dominates some paramedics and feeds Jack a point of his blood to keep him safely out of torpor. By this time, Byron Ignatiou is on site and calls the Scourge for guidance. The Scourge tells them to send the Dominated paramedics to a nearby Stop-N-Go, where a guy named Eric Taylor will pick up the body.
Derek Stone and Byron Ignatiou capture and stake the remaining vampire. Byron drinks from her, but remains in control (at a cost of four Willpower). He then feeds a point of blood back to her to keep her out of torpor.
Derek walks around Dominating onlookers until the Sheriff shows up. When he does appear, Byron tries talking to the Sheriff, but the Sheriff tells him, "You did good. Now go away." Everyone else engages in damage control. Sheriff Tanner, Scourge Harper and Derek Stone all agree that the story will be that a PCP-crazed woman ran amok in the neighborhood, spreading havoc and causing a terrible car accident.
Derek and the Sheriff eventually head in to clear out the two vampires left in the Colfield Plaza, roughly a half hour before dawn. They find the unwounded woman who refuses to leave the electrical closet, the dead guy, a dead maintenance man on the 7th floor, a dead priest on the 7th floor, and a guy in the stairwell who is crying, "Just don't hurt me" over and over again. They handcuff the terrified guy and give him over to Ricky Sultan for safekeeping. They simply stake the woman and cart her off.
On the way back down, Derek Stone notes that bodies are being removed from an office on the third floor by city employees. It is close to dawn and he needs to find someplace to hide, so he tries calling his attorney ghouls. Nobody answers the phone. He suddenly realizes that the vampires in the electrical and maintenance closets were his ghouls. He hits a wall and swears, "Son of a bitch"
At this point, Byron calls up his ghouls to make sure they're okay. They seem to be just fine.
Derek listens to the Sheriff's chilling phone conversation with a subordinate to arrange a stand-in body for Jack: "white guy, about 40, bad skin, chop off one arm. Which arm? Right arm. Yeah, right arm." Scourge Harper calls Byron Ignatiou to tell him that they have Jack, and are planning on feeding a lot of blood into him and then staking him to keep him under control. They arrange for a mutual an "unstaking party" the next evening. The Sheriff makes it known that he wants to talk to Jack Rowell when he becomes available.
Derek Stone wants to show up to the site as early as he can - he wants to feed Jack another point of blood so he can blood bond Jack. Scourge Harper's place is under heavy security, with a lot of armed guys standing around. At this point, Jack is both ugly and naked, his arm held on with pressure bandages. Allen MaCavity suggests that it wouldn't be that difficult to just cover him with a blanket. Scourge Harper opines, "Why didn't I think of that...?"
Derek Stone finds that Scourge Harper isn't willing to leave him alone with the body, though he tries several strategies. Byron Ignatiou shows up fairly quickly, swathed in medical bandages because he's still "mauled" (in technical terms), rendering Stone's plan moot. Allen MaCavity spends an hour hunting before the meet and shows up last.
Scourge Harper explains that he's already arranged to have Jack Rowell fed both the night before and tonight, and he thinks he's not in torpor. They tie him to a table and wake him up. Everyone comments on how incredibly ugly he is. Nobody knows what to do about reattaching his arm, so they give it back to Jack in the hopes that he will know what to do. Given no other choice, he decides to hope that his arm will simply grow back.
Byron Ignatiou manages to create a touching moment by offering his condolences to Scourge Harper for all his guys who died. Scourge Harper seems rather appreciative.
Derek Stone asks about being present for the interrogation of the captive Sabbat. He learns that the bodies he saw removed from the third floor of the Colfield Plaza blood were all blood piñatas. It seems that some prisoners were from the detective agency the characters hired, though it is still not clear who is who.
Byron Ignatiou gets a phone call from a woman who doesn't know his name well. She is a friend of the Nosferat Sally named Angela, and wants to know if he's seen her recently. Byron tells when and where he last saw Sally. Apparently, the characters had asked her to investigate several addresses. Byron is quite disturbed at the possibility that she might be missing, and provides whatever information he can to Angela.
After he finishes talking to Angela, Ignatiou tries reaching some other Nosferatu to try and confirm the information that Sally is missing. He manages to get in touch with someone who might be Spider's (mortal) cousin, but the guy proves less than helpful (with a background of loud rock music he explains that he doesn't know anyone except Spider). Ignatiou calls back Angela just to make sure that she really called him - he explains that he is being paranoid because there are active Sabbat in the city.
Byron Ignatiou gets another call from Arnie Cross, the manager at the Aquarium restaurant (and one of his ghouls). He says that some woman came by, asked for him, then left a letter. It is written on fancy paper and sealed with wax. Ignatiou asks Arnie to open it and read it to him. Arnie tells him that it says, "Byron, remember this: Prideful man, beware your chosen path. The painted woman is your ally." Arnie tries to be helpful, suggesting, "Do you think she's talking about Doris? She used to turn tricks..."
Derek Stone talks to Dmitri Meloft about his contract to kill Susan Jackson. He claims that he's been compromised, that there is a big target on his back. He explains that two of the vampires involved in the previous evening's Sabbat attack were once his ghouls: somebody else found them and Embraced them. Dmitri asks Derek if he thinks that Susan Jackson had anything to do with this. Derek says that he doesn't, but does think that this will push off the timetable on his ability to complete any contract. Dmitri refuses to extend his deadline, but does cancel the contract. It seems doubtful that Dmitri will be giving Derek Stone any further contracts.
Allen MaCavity gets a phone call from a Hispanic-sounding man who says his name is Steve Escamilla. He says that he's been told that he has some common interests and suggests that they get together over cigars and coffee to talk about it. MaCavity remembers that the fellow is the Childe of Howard Jacobs and tells him that he doesn't associate with Malkavians. Escamilla suggests that he should reconsider his comment, as it might be considered to be insulting. MaCavity continues his hard line and says that he's not interested. Escamilla hangs up the phone.
Each character gains three experience points.