We fear that we will only be blessed with a partial roster today, given the terrible profanity Chuck (Liam Morgan) used to describe his weekend - a tire fell off his car, his house needed $400 in tilework, and he ended up stewing for two hours at Wally World. However, he does demonstrate that he still has his priorities in check by showing up to hang out with his layabout friends. As usual, Chris is in charge, though how much anybody can be said to be "in charge" of the rest of us is doubtful. The balance of the horde is comprised of: Bruce (Jack Rowell), Tim (Clayton Burrell), and Paul (Allen MaCavity).
We open the scene just after the characters' successful escape from the less than stable Brujah Marigold. Most of the characters head back to the office in the Colfield Plaza to spend the day securely locked in their biohazard-marked refrigerators.
When the characters awaken on Wednesday night, Allen MaCavity (down to three blood points and feeling the burn) rushes out instantly to bonk somebody over the head and feed from them. Jack Rowell is down to six blood points and joins him. Both of them hunt for two hours. MaCavity heads to the Ad Hoc Club and reaps eight blood points. Rowell picks out the homeless and the downtrodden and does equally well.
Rowell gets a phone call from one of the Prince's functionaries, commanding him to appear, along with his "presentable" minions. He agrees to appear in an hour at the Prince's office building downtown, but determines that only Liam is presentable enough among his companions to accompany him. It is fortunate that Liam Morgan gets a call from the same functionary only a couple of minutes later, offering the same invitation.
Out in the sticks, Clayton Burrell is watching COPS on a 13" TV in his double-wide when he gets a call from Sheriff Glenn Tanner. The Sheriff is surprisingly polite, if a touch brusque, and asks him to show up to a meeting at the old Texas Nut Roasters building, a disused peanut cannery. Burrell agrees to appear, just as soon as he is finished watching his program.
In a wholly predictable follow-up, Sheriff Tanner also calls Allen MaCavity and gives him the exact same pitch. MaCavity has somewhat more sense than Burrell, and agrees to appear on Sheriff Tanner's schedule, not Fox's.
Clayton Burrell surprises everyone by leaving his guns in the car before heading in to talk to the Sheriff. He pulls up to Texas Nut Roasters to find Allen MaCavity waiting for him on the sidewalk. They walk into the building, and are directed into an office area where Sheriff Tanner is waiting for them.
The Sheriff starts out by asking the characters what kind of problems they had been briefed on when they acquired their territory from "some Brujah or other." Burrell start ratting off the list of known problems, including:
Sheriff Tanner listens to Burrell rant about the various disasters that are currently consuming the characters' fief, then comments that Burrell has come up with a rather longer list than he had been aware of. He scoffs at the notion that the Nation of Islam folk might become witch hunters, throwing an aged can of nuts at Burrell's head to punctuate his comments.
The Sheriff then asks why the characters blew up a bunch of guys in a motor home at a State park. Burrell dances all around the question for no readily apparent reason, then admits that the characters did it to get rid of Jon Gilliard's suddenly-independent ghouls.
The Sheriff listens to this explanation with some skepticism, and then responds. He offers the "short" version: he can't simply kill Burrell, because there's no blood hunt out against him. Even worse, he also took care of a problem that was developing into a potential serious annoyance. However, subtlety is a virtue difficult to underrate, and one that Burrell should endeavor to embrace in his future projects. In particular, Sheriff Tanner emphasizes that there should be no big explosions, no gasoline bombs, and certainly no firefights at hospitals.
At this point, Sheriff Tanner turns to MaCavity and points out that he should also be paying close attention to all this wisdom.
Sheriff Tanner then offers a loaded question backed with Majestic Presence to both Burrell and MaCavity: "Do you have any firearms on you?" Burrell says that he doesn't, while MaCavity admits that he is carrying two revolvers. Sheriff Tanner asks him to hand them over. MaCavity complies only to see the Sheriff break them into pieces. He then grabs MaCavity's arm and breaks it as an "object lesson." To compound the issue, he uses Majesty to force MaCavity to heal the break into a crooked position. Burrell is next, and gets the exact same treatment. Burrell decides that spending Willpower to resist the Sheriff's Presence is preferable to having a deformed limb, so Sheriff Tanner compromises and simply slaps him around to the tune of three levels of damage.
Across town, Jack Rowell and Liam Morgan are going through the normal security routine maintained at the Prince's office building: first a run-through with the piggish guards and their metal detectors, and then an escort into the elevator and up to the 13th floor. Rowell and Morgan find themselves once again escorted into the big boardroom where they are instructed to wait until the Prince appears.
The characters end up waiting for fifteen minutes, whereupon the Prince walks in and makes a big deal of the fact that though he has no chin and bad teeth he is staggeringly charismatic. He asks the standard question about explosions and trailer parks. Rowell answers, doing his best to put the best possible spin on it. The Prince is very polite and understanding, and asks that next time there not be so many explosions or witnesses. As an aside, he adds that he's not the only one who gets involved in this sort of incident (and the subsequent cover-ups), and that some others might not be nearly as understanding if the characters are responsible for many more.
Having let both Rowell and Morgan off with surprising ease, the Prince addresses Morgan, saying that he has heard that he is something of a swordsman. He calls a servant to bring in a mahogany case containing a very nice claymore-type blade with a basket hilt. It has the Brujah Clan symbol embossed on the handle. It functions as a two-handed sword, and is totally unconcealable. Morgan accepts the gift with good humor and a touch of suspicion. The Prince summons a second retainer bearing another mahogany case, which he presents to Rowell. It proves to contain a high-quality, chrome-plated, large-caliber handgun with the Ventrue Clan symbol embossed on the hilt. As Morgan before him, Rowell accepts the gift with both gratitude and bemusement.
The characters bid farewell to the Prince, who seems very pleased with them. Both of them remain deeply confused by his behavior.
When Clayton Burrell hears how the Prince treated Rowell and Morgan, he is deeply upset. He screams profanities at Rowell, and then heads out to hunt. He beats people upside the head, looking in particular for people who look like the Sheriff. His cries of "You damn Clan people!" echo through the night.
The characters encounter an unfamiliar young fellow waiting at the disused shoeshine stand in the Colfield Plaza lobby. He appears to be more than a little anxious, rather in the manner of a junkie waiting for his fix. When he sees the characters, he walks up and claims that he is waiting for them. He says that he knows that the characters have strange stuff going down in the office upstairs, and he wants a piece of it. The characters become confused, but not in the good Las Vegas way. At this point, the young man recognizes that he is only seconds from a terrible, anonymous death, and introduces himself as Malcolm Carter, one of the local Tremere. Rowell makes the dryly sarcastic comment, You seem awful insecure for a Tremere." Carter stammers back, "Ahh, look, ahh, I don't need to talk to you if you're upset… ahhh…"
The characters eventually agree to talk to him at a Starbuck's down the road (outside the characters' territory). He doesn't seem substantially less nervous about this new setting, but every little bit counts.
Once the characters have gotten themselves seated, Carter explains what he wants. He is especially interested in doing thaumaturgical analysis on a series of strange green glowing jars he knows were kept in Jon Gilliard's apartment. He also wants to know what happened to Jon's ghouls, whether the characters have seen anything weird and mystical in their territory, and the fate of some enchanted containers Jon purchased from a Tremere in San Antonio about eight years ago (they were enchanted to hold blood without spoiling, but they weren't big enough to really serve as a crisis store). He also comments that he could be working on a whole array of other projects, except that all of them would require that he either study or read books. The characters become even more impressed by the indomitable Mr. Carter.
Liam Morgan gives voice to a question in the minds of all the characters: "Who the hell Embraced you?" Carter's rather stiff response: "I came from the East Coast." Figuring that no real Tremere could possibly act this naïve, Rowell tries to figure out (using Empathy+Perception) if Carter really is as insecure as he looks, or if he's a 400-year-old Elder with a great cover story. It's hard for him to tell, but he is inclined to think that Carter is for real.
Clayton Burrell asks if Carter knows anything about the video game shooting spree phenomenon that the ghoul David Patchmaier had been researching. Carter doesn't know anything. The characters fill him in on the details, that there has been a rash of youth shooting sprees afflicting the patrons of Blood Adventure video game parlors. Burrell does his best to persuade him that he'd like to investigate this, considering that it does have the scent of the mystical about it. As an incentive, Burrell also explains what happened to Jon Gilliard's ghouls. Carter looks a bit pale after Burrell finishes his story.
Allen MaCavity reassures Carter that, "If we should run into anything weird and supernatural but not at all dangerous, we'll let you know." With this comment, Carter walks away.
With Malcolm Carter off looking at video arcades, the characters decide to take a look at another of the mysteries in Patchmaier's little black book. Specifically, his list of people who suddenly waste away and die of "heart failure." Based upon Patchmaier's notes, all of these people are university students of one sort or another. The most recent victim is a sophomore Economics student, and should be near to the end of his cycle.
Allen MaCavity heads to the University and looks up the victim. Patchmaier already has the fellow's typical daily itinerary sketched out, and from that MaCavity is able to deduce that he is probably asleep in his room. He is easily able to find the fellow, and then watches him as he heads to the library to work on an economics project ("What if People With Brains Made Economic Decisions?") with a study group. It looks like one of the study group members is a library employee, allowing them to just pull out books from the stacks easily. MaCavity waits until the probable employee goes to fetch a book, and then follows him. As he is walking away, he sees another individual show up and talk to the sickly student. The sickly student looks very fascinated. Abnormally fascinated. Supernaturally fascinated. They walk off into a dark corner. MaCavity abandons his plan to follow the library employee and follows them instead, under the comforting cover of Obfuscate. The newcomer feeds from the sickly economics student, tells him nothing happened, and walks away. The student staggers off into a corner and drops dead.
Allen MaCavity follows the vampire deeper into the library. The vampire sits down at a study carrel covered with blueprints, electrical layouts, and books on thinks like metal strength and materials science. MaCavity steps up and introduces himself. He gets him into a conversation in which the two of them quickly establish that everyone is a member of the Camarilla. The vampire introduces himself as Roy Mills, a Ventrue. MaCavity introduces himself in turn, and points out that Roy isn't being as discreet about his habits as might be hoped, and that someone (a "vampire groupie") was tracking him. MaCavity assures Roy that for all intensive purposes the fellow is dead, but suggests that Roy might want to be a bit more careful in future. MaCavity points out that he learned of Roy through notes taken on his victims.
MaCavity wanders off, while Roy starts putting things away. MaCavity reflects later on that the information that Mills was looking at would have been rather helpful if you wanted to blow something up.
When Allen MaCavity returns from his little expedition and reports to the other characters, discussion ensues. Rowell suggests that Mills might be carrying some sort of wasting disease. He poses the question of whether the characters really know what killed the student. MaCavity argues for the obvious, claiming that he didn't see anything that would suggest a cause of death other than anemia. He notes that Kindred don't normally feed repeatedly from one victim, and therefore don't really know what would happen.
Patchmaier's notes indicate that only one of Roy Mills' victims was autopsied, by the Harris County coroner. The notes do not contain a copy of the coroner's report, but do state that the victim had a severe bout of flu, plus lower white blood cell count and anemia.
Burrell brings up the obvious question: why was Patchmaier following Mills around? He answers his own question, suggesting that he may have started out on him because Galliard told him to. Once he figured out that Mills was a vampire, he may have kept up with the trail because he thought he could blackmail the guy, or persuade him to Embrace him.
Jack Rowell asks the next question: is Roy Mills really Ventrue? Rowell doesn't know of any Ventrue by that name, but he might just be visiting the area. Besides, Rowell isn't guaranteed to know all of the Ventrue in the area. Just to clear the matter up a bit, Rowell sends a note to the Ventrue Primogen Dmitri Meloft asking for a meeting.
Liam Morgan looks up the class schedules and academic backgrounds of Roy Mills' victims. He finds that they've all maintained high GPA's all through high school and college, and that they have all taken Spanish and German survey classes from an instructor named Roy Mills. The world is a poorer place for their loss. It starts to look very much like Roy Mills' habit is to feed from smart people until they die.
Four nights later, Dmitri responds to Rowell's request. He says that he will have time to talk at a social gathering on the upcoming Saturday. He can arrange to be free for perhaps a half-hour. Rowell thinks that the event sounds like some sort of Toreador soiree, something likely to be painfully insipid.
Allan MaCavity has long been interested in turning Don Marcos, the local drug kingpin, into one of his ghouls. He has thus far been unable to even find out what Marcos looks like, let alone get the fellow to drink his blood. To rectify this problem, he comes up with what he thinks is a tremendous plan. He soaks some of Galliard's crack in his own blood and offers it to one of the local drug dealer's goons as a sample of a "designer" product that he has available for sale. The other characters, upon hearing what he has done, start to mention some of its rather serious flaws. They mention that if this stuff gets onto the street there will be ghouled crackheads romping around, going into frenzy, and tearing people apart with Potence. MaCavity doesn't agree that these problems are serious enough to merit abandoning the plan.
A couple of days later, he meets up with an old drinking buddy of his who asks if he's getting involved with the Marcos gang. When he says that he is trying to do some deals with them, his contact tells him that those guys are dangerous, and generally bad to mess around with. MaCavity smiles and says that he's planning on being careful.
The next evening, he gets a call from Martin, one of Marcos' street-level dealers. They talk. Martin says that Don Marcos isn't likely to want to meet. Instead, he wants to pay MaCavity a finder's fee in exchange for the name of the supplier. MaCavity refuses to accept this offer, and insists that he wants to meet Don Marcos personally.
That Saturday evening, MaCavity gets the word that Don Marcos is interested in meeting him in a room in the Blue Oasis Motel, one of the hourly-rate motels near the Streetwalker Alley. The room is up on the second floor. MaCavity heads up to it. Martin lets him into the room. There is one other man sitting in the room; Martin introduces him as Don Marcos. Don Marcos asks him to spread-eagle against the wall so Martin can search him for weapons. As it turns out, MaCavity is polite enough that he didn't bring any weapons to the meeting, but he did bring some additional samples of blood-soaked crack. He hands these over to Don Marcos. MaCavity asks Don Marcos if he has tried it. Marcos explains that he hasn't, but he gave some to a friend who seemed to enjoy it. MaCavity comments that the stuff is very powerful, and can make you stronger, rather like PCP. Don Marcos stares at him, and then tries to negotiate terms. Once again, he offers a finder's fee, but MaCavity claims that he wants to handle the exchange personally. He finally goes on to admit that he actually manufactures the stuff, and can't turn over the recipe to Don Marcos. They say goodbye to each other. MaCavity leaves.
Clayton Burrell decides that the group needs some high-performance vehicles that won't be too conspicuous. His initial plan is to buy four cheap (<$1000) cars on the sly, then to add high-performance engines, nitrous oxide injectors, roll-cages, better-quality tires, armored gas tanks, and bullet-proof glass to each of them. He expects to get some of his parts from after-market kits, and to make the rest. He estimates that the final cost of each vehicle will be around $40,000.
Allan MaCavity offers to use his underworld contacts to help fund and support this effort. In particular, he offers to use them to fence the pound of uncut gemstones the characters took from Jon Gilliard's apartment. Unfortunately, he quickly determines that the gemstones will only bring in about $20,000 total (at a rate of $0.20 to the dollar).
At this point, the characters start modifying Burrell's ideas. Liam Morgan provides a particularly good idea: build up a car with a high-performance engine and transmission, on NASCAR-style quickmounts. When it becomes necessary to ditch the car, it won't be too hard to just pull the engine so it can be put into another vehicle.
This suggestion leads to the final version of the modified plan: Burrell buys the four cars, makes sure they'll run well, then makes a series of fairly low-cost additions, including nitrous kits, good tires, and homemade roll cages built up from steel pipes. This costs about $3000 total per car. $12,000 of gemstone money covers the cards, leaving a final $8000 to construct a good workshop for Burrell. Burrell estimates that the cars will be ready in about four weeks.
On Saturday night Jack Rowell struggles into his tuxedo and heads over to the Fifth Season Hotel and the Toreador event. He is able to get into the ballroom fairly easily, given his invitation (of sorts) from Dmitri Meloft. He walks into the ballroom to find that the attendees include a bunch of mortals, the Prince, and quite a few Kindred that Rowell doesn't recognize.
Dmitri Meloft is talking to Amber Cash, another member of the Ventrue Clan, when Rowell approaches. When they notice him, their conversation downshifts into very… mundane things.
Dmitri explains that he doesn't know Roy Mills, by name or by description. Rowell asks if he would introduce the two of them on a social basis, should he ever manage to find him. Dmitri agrees that this seems like a reasonable request.
On his way out, Rowell is intercepted by Narda Cash, the rather young-seeming Childe of Amber Cash. She makes a lot of rather giggly comments, leading Rowell to think that she is rather an insipid individual. He responds to her commentary with icy sarcasm. She is quite insulted by Rowell's responses, and slaps him very publicly. Rowell walks away. He resolves to try and become a touch more diplomatic in the future.
The next morning, the characters descend upon the nearest outlet of the Blood Adventure Arcade chain. It is located in an inner-city strip mall, and is distinctive for the rather large number of security guards and cameras outside. Liam Morgan shows up and looks around the place. He thinks the level of security is a little extreme for an arcade. Morgan is quickly able to spot Malcolm Carter and tries sneaking up on him. Carter demonstrates that he is alert if nothing else, spotting Morgan at some distance and attempting to get away. Morgan intercepts him anyway. Carter is just a bit freaked by the fact that Morgan was sneaking up on him, but is still willing to talk to him next to the Zaxxon game.
Carter is doing his best to dress down for the occasion, though he hasn't gone so far as to get the pants that hang down on his hips and the underwear that sticks out. He looks like a narc. Then again, Morgan looks like a mutant biker, so the two of them just blend.
Carter notes that he hasn't seen much thaumaturgical stuff going on, but he thinks that thinks aren't right - based on the auras of the kids, some of them are just wired, ready to do something, but at the same time somehow turned off. He suggests that they are almost like living zombies. Those kids most affected appear to spend a lot of time playing the Science Ninja Murder Squad game.
Science Ninja Murder Squad proves to be quite the nihilistic game. Any object in the game can be shot for points or bonus items - even shooting people is rewarded with things like money, blood or bones. Most of the time, the player is shooting werewolves, but anything that moves on the screen is evil and must die, including cops, the elderly, etc. The player watches the screen, and shoots into it with a little plastic gun. The warning label on the game reads, "Very very bad for children of any age!" Clayton Burrell records the manufacturer of the Science Ninja Murder Squad. He notes that no other game in the place is made by the same company.
Morgan notes that the kids Malcolm points out as most affected don't look any different from any other kids in the arcade.
Clayton Burrell and Liam Morgan both try actually playing the game. Malcolm's attitude to this decision is, "Do you think It's safe? It's a video game!" The two of them play for almost an hour. When they walk away, they feel a very satisfied sense of detachment from the world. They realize that they could take care of all the problems in their lives by shooting them. This feeling lasts until they remember that they're vampires and they can solve problems by killing people and drinking their blood.
The session ends with the characters standing outside the Blood Adventure Arcade, comparing notes and reliving their successful video gaming experiences. Each character gains three experience points.