In addition to the normal crew of Chris, Chuck (Derek Stone), Paul (Allen MaCavity), Bruce (Jack Rowell) and Tim (Byron Ignatiou), we are blessed with the presence of Ray (Raphael Tiber Giovanni).
Raphael Tiber Giovanni's entire brief life was directed towards his entry into the ranks of the undead. A child of the widespread Giovanni clan, he was born with a caul over his head, a sign that he has unnatural awareness of the spirit worlds. He was cultivated by his undead ancestors until his Embrace upon his twentieth birthday. Five years later, he is now through his apprenticeship and the time of adjustment and has been sent out from his inbred, dysfunctional family into the world, equipped only with a letter of introduction to the Prince Simon Bradford.
The characters open the session in a small decrepit room, feeding blood from a derelict into Byron Ignatiou's injured body. Byron is bound hand and foot, and a good thing too given his periodic descents into Frenzy. To compound the situation further, the characters also have Allen MaCavity's staked and starving body in a car trunk outside. To add even another complication, Jack Rowell has already managed to use up his entire supply of winos and derelicts. He suspects that it will take some time before he is able to scare up any more
Jack Rowell short-circuits the derelict shortage in the crudest way possible: he uses Presence to collect five homeless guys from the street. As soon as the first points of blood touch Byron's lips, he bursts into Frenzy and burns half of the blood on Celerity. The other characters get tired of this and decide to simply stake him so he'll stay calm during feeding. Their first few attempts aren't particularly successful, leading to the discovery that Byron no longer has a heart. The characters leave Byron with three normal wounds, three aggravated wounds, and one blood point. They give up and turn to helping MaCavity.
Before a drop of blood enters MaCavity's mouth the characters take some precautions. They have him staked. And tied to a wall. And outlined with silver paint. Just to make sure there will be no funny business.
Allen MaCavity responds much better to treatment. Eleven points of blood heal him up nicely. Once the characters pull the stake from his chest, he asks Jack, "Did you feed homeless people to me?" Jack lies, telling him that the blood came from a blood donation center. Allen (for some reason) believes him implicitly, despite the fact that Jack has lied to him often.
MaCavity finds (or doesn't find) that he doesn't remember his encounter with Kali at all, though he does recall the little dragons.
The characters get a call from Sheriff Tanner. He is brusque and to the point, asking "What are you doing, and can I talk to Byron?" The characters explain their current problems and how they relate to their inability to put Byron on the phone. Tanner rather lamely suggests that some vampires might have their hearts in different places, refusing to suggest that he might have something to do with the problem (not that anyone should suspect that he might have anything to do with it). He does promise to bring somebody by to help.
Jack Rowell and Derek Stone head out to the street after warning the newly-revived Allen MaCavity to expect Sheriff Tanner and a friend as a visitor: "Allen - watch the fort, we're gonna go procuring. And whatever Ignatiou says, don't let him out of the chains."
Raphael Tiber Giovanni arrives in Houston and promptly endeavours to contact Prince Simon Bradford to make the appropriate introductions. He is guided to the Prince's office building downtown, where he undergoes the normal routine of search and seizure before being allowed to take the elevator up to the sixth floor and the Mysterious Glass Booth.
Once the Prince's scuttling minions are convinced that he is not a present threat, they send him into the plush boardroom, where the Prince eventually arrives to speak with him. The two of them sit at the extreme ends of the boardroom table, far enough away that only the room's unreal acoustics allow them to converse.
The Prince is quite polite, asking Raphael about his plans in the city, and his Sire's plans for him. Raphael explains that he is not familiar with his Sire's ultimate motivation, but that he suspects he may get called back to Georgia as soon as a year from now. Otherwise he expects to spend some time in Houston, perhaps serving in some incidental way as an aide to the Prince's own plans.
Prince Bradford accepts this explanation, and offers him some advice on proper behaviour in Houston. He is quite pleased to find that Raphael knows the Traditions, and is able to recite them back to him. He tells Raphael that the other major rule in force is that the creation of ghouls requires the Prince's permission. Raphael explains that he already has a ghoul, his cousin Dino, who serves as a bodyguard.
The Prince urges Raphael to provide contact information and a permanent address when he manages to get one. Raphael says that he is currently staying at the Four Seasons hotel, but will be sure to provide more permanent information when he finds more permanent accommodations.
The Prince introduces Raphael to Sheriff Glen Tanner, whom he rather generously describes as someone who looks out for the interests of the younger vampires in the city. Raphael thanks the Prince for his graciousness and regard. The Prince responds by leaving him with the Sheriff.
Tanner looks Raphael over in the way that a slaughterman considers a poxy-looking heifer, then asks him if he is Giovanni. Raphael admits that he is Giovanni in a slightly tenuous voice, but then tries to reassure Tanner by saying that he can't actually talk to the dead, though he can see the death vision of a fresh corpse. Tanner grunts, then leads him to a janitorial closet. He pulls out a laundry cart and points him at the two bodies inside. He orders Raphael to tell him what he can about the two of them.
Raphael can tell that both people died long and died hard. The first corpse appears to have been torn and bitten to death by small animals, creatures perhaps the size of small dogs. Raphael is easily able to bring up a vision of being in a car surrounded by flames, then swarmed by dozens of little chomping red lizards.
The second corpse is in somewhat poorer shape, and Raphael is unable to get a good reading from it.
After Raphael finishes his grisly task, Sheriff Tanner explains that there has been some recent excitement with a Sabbat pack around, and that there is a group of excitable neonates walking around looking for them. The Sheriff is none too sanguine about their chances of finding the Sabbat again, but he suggests that they might be well-advised to have his talents available if they should succeed. Raphael agrees to look them up.
Raphael Tiber arrives at the characters' godown with Sheriff Tanner. On the way, he stops by to pick up another guy, a strangely-tanned vampire Tanner needs, "To do your spooky Animalism thing again. Yes, the candidate is tied up this time." The tanned vampire introduces himself to Raphael as Chet Ferguson, one of the Gangrels. Raphael notices that Tanner introduces him to Ferguson as, "a visitor in the city."
Meanwhile, Jack Rowell and Derek Stone have managed to find four prostitutes as feeding material for Ignatiou. MaCavity thinks they just don't look clean. Or healthy. He notes that one of them inhales with a whistle and exhales with a gurgle. MaCavity stays Obfuscated.
Chet Ferguson solves the characters' problems in restoring Byron Ignatiou by using a neat Animalism trick to steal Byron's Beast and put it into a rat. The rat instantly goes berserk, while Ignatiou shows little interest in doing anything. Anything at all. The characters find that they need to stick a neoprene hose down his throat even to get him to swallow the blood they feed him. The blood from the prostitutes is enough to revive Byron, but not enough to satisfy his hunger. He finds that he must spend Willpower to be able to call his ghouls to get them to buy dogs for him to feed from. His self-will is almost gone.
While Byron tries to talk to his ghouls, Jack Rowell takes advantage of the momentary quiet to offer the traditional "welcome pack" to Raphael Tiber. Raphael is intrigued to note that the bag Byron hands him contains (among other things) a body bag, duct tape, a box cutter and a pair of corpse-handling gloves.
Byron Ignatiou's ghouls finally arrive in a van full of stray dogs. He massacres them. And becomes full. Then asks the ghouls to burn the bodies after he's gone: flame seems to bother him more than it used to. Jack Rowell is disappointed that Ignatiou doesn't slosh with the sheer volume of dog's blood that he has consumed.
It is now Tuesday, February 27th, 2001.
Raphael Tiber shops around for guns and drugs. He spends $1000. This is less than milk money to him.
Jack heads out and collects a fantastic quantity of blood in only three hours. He consumes twelve points. He burps red.
Derek Stone feeds copiously, healing his wounds as he goes.
Byron Ignatiou takes the rest of the characters to a nearby Starbuck's to explain his plan to search for the escaping survivors of the Red Army Hammerhead pack. He wants to watch the highways for stolen cars. It looks like there are a total of six ghouls available to carry out this plan. After some debate, the characters decide to use three cars and all six ghouls, with two of Ignatiou's guys acting as administration. Ignatiou equips everyone with map lights, roadmaps, binoculars and other stuff at Wal-Mart. The characters note that while the older ghouls are pretty good at planning, Jack Rowell's "fresh out of the box" ghouls are pretty much willing to agree to anything he says.
Raphael Tiber sends out word to his Mafia friends that if they can find anything about these guys, they'll get a nice Christmas bonus.
With the ghouls watching the highways, the characters pile into cars and venture out to Malcolm Carter's place. Allen MaCavity wants to give Raphael Tiber a crack at the place. The characters find the place exactly as they left it, except that there's now a terrible smell inside.
Raphael Tiber detects nothing until he enters the apartment. Once he crosses the threshold, he is able to sense two nearby spirits. One of them is a guy standing patiently next to the bathtub, hovering over the two decaying bodies. Raphael Tiber takes a reading off the first body, getting a vision of opening the apartment door to someone who looks and acts like Malcolm, but who turns out not to be, and then dying horribly. The intruder's description matches that of one of the Sabbat Panders (one who knows Obfuscate). Raphael isn't able to get a good reading from the second body, though he does manage to upset the ghost when he manhandles the top corpse out of the way.
Raphael Tiber remains unable to see the wraith, but he reasons that if he can sense it's anger, he might be able to talk to it. He tries asking why it still lingers. The wraith responds, "I'm soooo booored." The toilet flushes. The chain inside the tank rattles. Byron Ignatiou removes the lid and watches the chain rattle.
Seized by inspiration, Byron Ignatiou turns on the hot water and steams up the bathroom mirror. The wraith obliges by creating a little illustration suggesting the message, "bury me!" And then a second illustration suggesting something important at the foot of the bed.
Raphael Tiber turns his interest towards the second spirit, which lingers in the living room closet. It is a predatory spirit, obviously something nonhuman. In fact, something dark and nasty.
Ignatiou takes inspiration from the first spirit's message and pries up the floorboards near the foot of the bed. He comes up with a small, fireproof safe. Several characters try and fail to pick the lock, leading Ignatiou to simply rip the thing open in disgust. He pulls the box open, revealing to all that it contains hateful, hateful sunlight. Everyone tries their best to make some Courage rolls. Jack Rowell falls into Rotschreck and flees. Byron Ignatiou things about trying bravery, then elects to follow Jack into Rotschreck instead.
The remaining characters find that the box contains a large, hardcover book, plus an opened test tube covered with black paint ("bottled sunlight"). Raphael Tiber opens the book and screams as two points of his blood are replaced with acid. His feet, calves and lower legs emit acrid, unhealthy smoke. He feels quite pained. He suspects that the trap would have been quite lethal for a human.
The book is written in English, and turns out to by Malcolm Carter's diary. It is a treasure trove of information, including exterior drawings of several buildings (among them a warehouse and a plantation house) and lists of names. One list is obviously a list of spirits. The entries run from January 1998 to June 1998, then start up again from late 1999.
The warehouse sketch resembles a warehouse the characters have seen in Texas City. It goes with a short entry from June 1998, reading: "Debra and Ted have gone to check the last walking corpse, finally I get to write something rather than just being a lowly lackey." From the tone of the writing, the characters decide that Malcolm wasn't supposed to be keeping a diary.
The entries make it sound like Malcolm isn't supposed to be keeping a diary. The characters read more entries and learn that most of the entries were written shortly after the city fell back into Camarilla control. Malcolm, along with the Tremere Debra and Ted are searching the city looking for spirit magnets and prominent spirits, under the orders of the Tremere Primogen. Malcolm is the spirit medium and errand boy of the group.
Malcolm lists out several entities, most of which sound like minor spirits who have simply not passed on (at least to Raphael Tiber's expert opinion). The "walking corpse" entry is the last entry in the first part of the diary.
There are several interesting entries in the first section, including a reference to a nest of shapeshifters who feed on human flesh (Malcolm thinks they might be Hindu or Pakistani). The three Tremere decided to not tell the Primogen, because they thought that investigating the group would be very dangerous.
There are also references to "Spoiled Milk" and three significant spirits (or manifestations): the Spearman, the Winged Serpent, and The Crowd (who are noted for hanging around auto accidents). There is no entry for acid-spitting voodoo guys.
The diary picks up again in 1999. Carter mentions Majid and his progress at buying his way into the trust of a bunch of neonates. He seems terribly happy that he's managed to get himself out of the Chantry. He also mentions a pack of renegade ghouls, something that is making a lot of prostitutes disappear, and Majid's carnivorous car. The diary ends when Malcolm claims that he doesn't want to write things down any more.
The characters notice that in the first part of the diary, Malcolm doesn't sound like a gutless weasel. After the gap, it seems like he forgot everything about his earlier spirit-hunting adventures. He also seems to have developed a tremendous fear of the Tremere Primogen Servio Morales.
While the other characters pore over Malcolm Carter's diary, Raphael Tiber takes an interest in the spectre in the closet. He manages to have a short, to-the-point conversation with the thing:
Raphael: "Why are you here?"
Spectre: "Guard. Guard floor. Guard closet."
Raphael: "Who put you here?"
Spectre: "Little Coward."
Raphael: "Why do you stay?"
Spectre: "Nothing better to do."
Raphael: "Is there anything we haven't found?"
Spectre: "No."
Raphael: "Do you want to be free?"
Spectre: "What is freedom?"
Raphael: "Do you want to stay in the shadows of life?"
Spectre: "The shadows are good..."
Convinced that the spectre isn't likely to attack him, Raphael Tiber searches the closet. He finds a book and an unframed painting.
The book contains descriptions of Ted Eastman and Debra Landez. Both of them are Tremere. Ted has Movement of the Mind and Lure of the Flames, and is a master of Blood Thaumaturgy. He is also supposed to be good at Dominate. Malcolm is dead convinced that the Texas City vampire Patrick Hagler is actually Ted Eastman. He comments that the "real" Patrick Hagler had had his knee broken before his Embrace, and always walked with a limp. He notes that the vampire currently calling himself Hagler does not walk with a limp. Debra has good Auspex, good Thaumaturgy, and some Dominate. She knows a Thaumaturgy Path allowing her to extract information from glasses (vases and drinking glasses, maybe windows) and calm pools of water. Malcolm think that this trick was very useful - with a good pool of water, she could get an image that could be photographed with a camera. Malcolm explicitly says that he doesn't see anyone among the Texas City kindred matching either her Disciplines or her habits.
The painting depicts a farmhouse. It is clearly of quality, but neither the scene nor the style is recognizable to the characters. The painting is signed "SP", which some of the characters suggest might stand for Sara Packard, the mysterious possibly-Toreador artist whose work is in such demand that it is never seen.
Each character gains two experience points, except for Raphael Tiber who gets four on the "catch up" plan. Chris says that this is session represents the end of a story, and everyone can recover their Willpower.
The characters' ghouls return unscathed from watching the freeways. They report that they didn't spot any stolen vehicles.