Everyone makes it, though some of us make it earlier than others: Tim (Shepherd), Bruce (Cyrus Billings), and Nick (Vincent Cray). Everyone expresses hopes that the decisiveness and car bombings from last session carry over to this one.
Cyrus burns through a lot of experience points, based upon his dramatic overuse of Animalism powers. He increases Charisma to 2 (4 points), Animal Ken to 2 (2 points), Survival to 3 (4 points) and Willpower to 7 (6 points). As a side effect of these changes, his die pools for both Sweet Whispers (Animalism 1) and The Beckoning (Animalism 2) have increased to 5 dice.
Vincent (who was on autopilot last session) catches up by working on his aura-changing ritual. He finally learns enough to determine that the ritual will need to be a fifth-level ritual. It will take an hour to cast, must be recast nightly, and will give his aura a single color. He also determines that it may well be impossible for him to develop a ritual to conceal the taste of diablerie in his blood. Finally, he estimates that he's managed to get about a third of the way through the development process.
In the days after Cyrus and Shepherd make their highway attempt upon Beezel's life, the two of them make some preparations to stave off potential reprisals. Vincent, meanwhile, continues to play the grasshopper.
Cyrus, interested in improving his personal security, gets a couple of big, mean dogs from the local animal shelter and sets them up in a kennel out behind his garage. He then trains them to obey his commands. He also makes an effort to train them to tell him when they smell unfamiliar smells. His goal is to provide a way to determine if Obfuscated Kindred (or anybody else, for that matter) have been sneaking around the garage. After a couple days' work and a substantial amount of Animalism, he believes that his efforts have been at least reasonably successful.
He also gets his car fixed again.
Shepherd moves into Don Chapman's spare room, and sets up a very elaborate inspection system to ensure that nobody is able to put explosive devices into his car. He thinks about simply stealing a different vehicle every night, but discards it as something only a Malkavian would do. Hey, wait a moment…
Vincent spends his weekend at Mad Dog's, drinking from his herd and generally enjoying his unlife. Halfway through the weekend Cyrus asks him to check up on Beezel. He finds that Beezel is just staying to his room, then calls up Cyrus to complain that he's bored. Frustrated, Cyrus tells him to go back to his games.
When Shepherd wakes on Saturday evening, he finds that Don Chapman is nowhere to be seen, the entire store is cleared out of guns and ammunition, and the windows and doors are taped off with ATF tape. The upper floor (where he and Don lived) was only touched in that guns and ammunition have been removed. Shepherd is even more upset to note that many of his spare weapons have disappeared, including most of the H&K G11 rifles Don had gotten in (six of them) and most of the ammunition for them.
Shepherd quickly learns that the closest ATF office is in Austin. He calls them, and is able to determine that Don is being held at the Wackenhut Federal Detention Facility in San Antonio, and that visiting hours are possible up to 21:00. Shepherd equips himself with appropriate false ID and goes to visit.
Don appears to be quite happy that Shepherd came to see him. Don tells him that the ATF raided him and found some evidence that they can use to bust him. They originally showed up with a search warrant stating that they were looking for illegally purchased weapons that were going to be resold, and while they didn't find anything like that, they did find enough unusual and quasi-legal equipment to make them take action. In particular, they found Shepherd's H&K assault rifles, caseless ammunition, dragonsbreath rounds, Don's semi-legal gun collection, and a number of other unusual items. Don thinks he's facing fines, jail time, loss of his license, and possible flogging. Shepherd promises to get him a good lawyer. Shepherd also finds that Don's bail has been set at $100,000, though if he can demonstrate that he has some collateral he can work through a bail bondsman and pay only $5000.
Right after leaving Don, he calls up his pet lawyer, Theodore Lippo, and asks him to recommend a lawyer to defend Don. Theodore agrees that he can recommend a couple of people, and provides Shepherd with some names. Shepherd chooses to speak to Martin Goldstein, of the Goldstein & Rothschilde law firm. He asks Goldstein to figure out what the ATF has on Don, and to try and figure out how best to treat the case. He is primarily interested in having Don avoid jail time and keep his dealer's license. Goldstein assures him that he'll do what he can.
Shepherd then calls up the Prince's agent Crask to evaluate the possible extent of the Masquerade breach resulting from this raid. Shepherd explains the contents of the arsenal the ATF confiscated. Crask listens and does not seem to think there is likely to be a problem unless Don talks. Shepherd reassures Crask that he last fed Don six days ago, and has had him as a (well-treated) ghoul for many years. Shepherd explains that he'll just hire a lawyer and see how things go. Crask tells him he's probably not at risk.
Shepherd gets Theodore Lippo to deal directly with the lawyers (who normally keep daytime hours). Theo is extremely glad to help out his undead master, even though the thought of paying for all the legal fees is an agonizing experience for him. Theo explains that the ATF will be able to discover who bailed Don out just by checking in the records, so Shepherd has Vincent accompany him to the bondsman's office to work a few Jedi mind tricks. They pay off the $5000 but leave no useful records as to whom they are.
To further remove suspicion from Don, Shepherd relocates the remains of his gun collection to Cyrus's garage. Cyrus hides the weapons by duct-taping them to the inside of the stainless-steel roof, then stapling insulation over them.
Declining Cyrus' generous invitation to sleep in the garage, Shepherd instead elects to move in to Vincent's palatial house (7 bedrooms, occupied only by Vincent and Jimmy) as an interim step towards getting a new apartment.
Cyrus calls up his friend in the SAPD records office to get the ATF casefiles on Don Chapman's arrest. During the conversation, Cyrus mentions how some of the new barbecue grills look really nice. His friend agrees to get the files, and in exchange Cyrus sends him a catalog of barbecue grills with a couple $100 bills tucked inside. Cyrus gets copies of the files on Tuesday, after they've been typed up (which doesn't happen until Monday).
Around midday on Monday, Shepherd and Vincent are comfortably resting in Vincent's mansion when they are roused by a vague sense of alarm. Shepherd, whom Vincent offered an upstairs closet for the day, only briefly claws himself into awareness. He smells smoke and hears screaming mixed with sporadic gunfire, before he sags back into unconsciousness.
Vincent, ensconced in his locked basement chamber, rises more dramatically to the smells of tear gas and the sounds of gunfire. He tries to call Jimmy on his cellphone and gets no answer. Becoming more concerned, heads up to the basement door and hears people shouting. Slipping out of the basement, he finds an armored man searching through the kitchen. He swiftly shoots the fellow in the temple with a silenced gun, killing him instantly.
A second man looks from a nearby room to check on his companion. He is armed with what looks like a small hand-held flamethrower (no backpack, pump action to spray). Vincent uses Thaumaturgy to pull blood from the man and incapacitate him. The flamethrower falls to the ground and sets a curtain on fire. Vincent rushes to spray the area with a fire extinguisher. In the midst of this, yet another heavily armed man appears and is quickly dispatched by Vincent's Thaumaturgical blood siphon. Vincent then feels the tendrils of sleep encircling him, and hurries back to his chambers to hide.
Meanwhile, Shepherd wakes again to find himself being held down by one man while a second man holds a stake to his chest. Shepherd turns on Celerity and tries to shoot the man with the stake and the hammer in a burst of day-sogged action. Unfortunately, Shepherd is groggy from sleep and armed only with a revolver loaded with phosphorous rounds, making his attack less than successful. The shells shatter harmlessly upon the man's bulletproof vest. To complicate matters, while Shepherd is busy with the first man, the second picks up his fireman's ax (STR+5 damage, DIFF 7) and makes a completely ineffectual blow to Shepherd's guts.
Shepherd swiftly realizes that he is unable to fight effectively due to his low Humanity, so he elects to flee into the hallway with Celerity. On the way out, he takes another ax blow (which hurts somewhat) and a bullet from the pistol (which doesn't). Thence follows a running battle down the hall that ends with Shepherd staked and chopped into small pieces (and very much in Torpor, for the next fifty years).
After dispatching Shepherd, the hunters (as they appear to be) cart what is left of his body off, leaving the house behind to burn.
Vincent regains consciousness in the Prince's residence. He finds himself in a small chamber with no obvious exit. Crask eventually enters to debrief him. Crask tells him that his residence was attacked over the day, that several people were killed or wounded, including Vincent's ghoul Jimmy. The building remains standing, though much of it has been destroyed. The authorities who responded to the incident did not see anyone, but some witnesses reported men fleeing in a black van. Ghouls reporting to the Prince and Crask arrived at the scene somewhat later, and managed to pull Vincent out of the building before he was destroyed.
Vincent asks about Shepherd. Cyrus explains that he didn't know that Shepherd was in the building, and that there was no evidence of a vampire conflagration (from that point of view this was a "good" hit).
As a side note, Crask comments that he also ran into a private investigator who is trying to serve Vincent papers in a paternity suit. From what Crask learned, someone is bringing suit against him, claiming that Vincent worked his wicked (biological) ways upon an innocent sixteen-year-old girl. Crask offers no opinion, but Vincent is instantly convinced that someone is trying to push Vincent into a breach of the Masquerade.
Vincent calls his secretary to start insurance proceedings for his house, and then to sell the property. His secretary asks, "Will you be coming in tonight?" Vincent responds, "No, not for a while." He then calls up Cyrus, who agrees to pick him up and possibly to disappear with him for a while.
Cyrus gathers up most of his gear and his two dogs (who find themselves ghouled on the way over) and heads to the Prince's mansion to pick up Vincent. Vincent is still dressed in his pajamas, so they make a stopover at a men's clothing store to replenish his wardrobe. The two of them then drive to the Tremere Chantry.
Along the way, Cyrus makes a call to his police friend and asks him to find any information about the attack on Vincent's house. His friend agrees to try and help, accepting the remaining contents of Cyrus' wallet in exchange.
At the Chantry, Vincent talks to Lucas about what happened. He offers the blandly obvious opinion that someone is out to get him, probably a gang of scarily effective vampire hunters, and suggests that the best plan is for him to disappear for a couple of years. Lucas is nonplused by this assertion, and points out that Vincent is unlikely to be able to persuade Nastasha to grant him more than one or two months of leave unless he has a ripping good reason. Lucas doesn't seem to think that wild stories about dead ghouls, burning buildings, and vampire hunters will do the trick. On the plus side, Lucas does suggest that if Vincent were to simply vanish without explanation, the clan would probably not cook him over a slow fire when he reappeared. Vincent interprets the insincere sound of Lucas' voice as a sign that this strategy may not be the flawless idea it seems upon first inspection.
After Vincent emerges from the Chantry, he and Cyrus debate the problem of locating whatever might be left of Shepherd, who remains extremely missing. Having concluded that there are few other useful plans, Cyrus suggests that they try and speak to Screaming Joe. He rationalizes that if anybody was keeping careful track of Shepherd's whereabouts, it would be his murderous Sire. Vincent, plainly still in shock from the events of the day, agrees that this sounds like a good plan.
By Wednesday, Cyrus' friend in the SAPD provides a copy of the police report for the events at Vincent's house. He finds that the whole disaster is being chalked up as a bungled robbery carried out by a strikingly well armed gang of hooligans. The report also notes that while there were signs of a struggle, the only body was that of Jimmy, who the police took to be the owner of the house. The police believe that Jimmy managed to surprise the hooligans, who shot him and then tried to burn the house to hide the murder. The report also claims that a couple of witnesses saw a black van tear away from the house after the disturbance, presumably the hooligans' getaway vehicle. Unfortunately, the onlookers' description did not include license plates or specific vehicle model.
Cyrus' friend also provides a copy of the ATF report on the raid on Don Chapman's gun store. The original raid was planned because the ATF had information suggesting that Don was trafficking in illegal firearms originating in China and Europe and routed through California. While this wouldn't normally be enough to make them raid a business, the quantities their sources cited were large enough to make them twitchy. Even more damning, their sources indicated that Don had sold about 200 firearms to questionable individuals at a recent Houston gun show.
By Wednesday, the characters are able to attract Screaming Joe's interest sufficiently to have him return their phone calls. Vincent explains the particulars of Shepherd's disappearance. Screaming Joe notes that he is holding a "personal court" at the Robert E. Lee Hotel, and gives permission for Cyrus and Vincent to attend. He suggests that they should show up around 01:30.
The characters drive to the hotel. Along the way, Vincent uses Thaumaturgy to lower his generation to 11th then fills himself with additional blood from his store of blood beads. Cyrus spends some of the intervening time feeding to ensure that he is at full blood capacity when he arrives at the Robert E. Lee.
The Robert E. Lee Hotel is familiar to the characters from their last venture to speak to San Antonio's Malkavian society. The whole place is surrounded by a rusting chain-link fence, and is visibly disintegrating from the outside. Cyrus and Vincent sneak inside through a hole in the fence, quickly discovering that the four-story structure is surprisingly well-preserved inside, considering it's shattered exterior. Even so, the interior is less than flawless: most of the walls and ceilings show substantial water damage, and the furniture is visibly rat-eaten. Derelicts have used the place as a toilet.
The characters find a string of lights leading to the downstairs ballroom, where Screaming Joe awaits with several other Malkavians. He is tarted up in a British magistrate's uniform, complete to the wig and the gavel. The centerpiece of the room is a badly-beaten body lying face down upon a plastic sheet. A series of well-used baseball bats are scattered about the sides of the plastic.
Joe leads the characters off to a side room, taking surprising care to keep Obfuscators out. Vincent fills Joe in on the details of what happened to Shepherd. Cyrus tries to put the proper tone upon the event by commenting, "You surely care nothing for Shepherd's misfortune, but are deeply insulted that someone else has slain your Childe." Joe offers the rather threatening praise that, "Your perception of the heart of the matter is stunning." Cyrus, characteristically blunt, responds "I want to gut them, but I cannot find them." At this point, Vincent does his best to prevent Cyrus from engaging in ritualistic acts of violence by offering Joe a description of what the attackers looked like: scary men in blue body armor, with axes, submachine guns, pistols, and rifles, admixed with men in slivered body armor equipped with hand flamethrowers.
Joe notes that the MO of the raid is similar to that of a group of witch-hunters who were active some years ago. This other group operated as a team of three, two men with axes who cut the door down and one who walked around with a flamethrower. Joe speculates that if this is the same group, the raid may be the first time they have ever suffered actual casualties.
Joe then asks Vincent what kind of vampire-friendly protection Shepherd's room had. Vincent admits that it just had shades on the windows. He also admits that he didn't have fire sprinklers, legions of armed ghouls, or really any other defenses. Joe responds by unsuccessfully attempting to Dominate Vincent into describing why he killed Shepherd. Vincent, of his own free will, protests that he didn't do any such thing, that Shepherd was one of his few friends!
Joe ends the interview with a totally bogus (but still convincing, thanks to Dominate) assertion that he grieves for Shepherd's passing. He finally tells the characters that he doesn't have any way to find Shepherd. He magnanimously gives Cyrus and Vincent permission to kill the hunters, as he's passed a death sentence upon them. He does say that two Brujah and a Toreador were the last targets of the witch-hunter's group. They were Alan Scanlan (Brujah), James Johnson (Toreador), and Kathleen Brown (Brujah). As far as he knows, they are all long dead.
Because Vincent skipped the Tuesday Tremere meeting, all of the local Tremere have been trying to get in touch with him. He finally talks to Lucas, who suggests that he should come in and talk to Nastasha. Vincent then asks, "Is she there with you?" Lucas admits that she is, so Vincent agrees to speak to her. She asks if he is going to come back to the Chantry. Vincent points out that he is trying to hide from witch-hunters, to which Nastasha comments that there are no hunters lurking around the Chantry, and that he can surely just stay there and be safe. "I'll be seeing you in an hour, then?" Vincent caves and agrees to show up. Cyrus drives him over.
At the Chantry, Cyrus is shown into the waiting room, where he sits and waits. And waits. And waits. The waiting skills he developed in the North Dakota Highway Patrol swiftly return to him.
Meanwhile, Vincent is shown into Nastasha's office. She looks down at him from her raised desk and offers him pleasantries and a chair. Vincent responds first with pleasantries and then with an explanation of how the witch-hunters destroyed his house and killed his ghoul. Vincent's explanation is a touch vague, probably justifiably so in light of all the events that happened during the day. Nastasha then notes, "I'll expect to see you at next Tuesday's meeting, then." Vincent argues that he needs time to find the witch-hunters, and that he shouldn't be showing up to the Chantry in the meantime. Nastasha doesn't accept this argument, and instead suggests that Vincent should simply live in the Chantry and drop all mortal contacts. She understands that Vincent can't accept these conditions because he is still young and foolish, but is willing to give him a month of leave. She insists that he call in to provide regular status reports.
Lucas calls Vincent after he gets free of Nastasha. He reports that the Tuesday meeting was uneventful. There were really only two pieces of interesting information that came to light. First, Karen returned quite early from the town of Van Horn (where several Ventrue had been killed some months before). She reported that an Archon named Malice, who works for the Toreador Justicar, is operating in the town and making any useful investigation impossible. Second, Beezel complained endlessly about a gang of ruffians who shot up his armored van on the highway.
Vincent acts appropriately blasé about these revelations, especially the second.
Cyrus conceives of a plan to fetch out the witch hunters. He asks Vincent to make him a doppelganger. Vincent, in spite of the fact that the plan involves taking an innocent man and tearing his very memories from him, readily agrees. It takes three days before the two of them are able to find a suitable candidate, and an additional four days for Vincent to Dominate him into completely believing that he is Cyrus. Vincent is colossally successful in his efforts (eight successes): by the time he is done, the doppelganger no longer even remembers his original name.
Cyrus and Vincent set their bait out with orders to "act like Cyrus." In particular, they tell him to operate only after dark, to hide from others, to work upon Cyrus' car, to care for Cyrus' dogs, and to spend some time poking through the ruins of Vincent's mansion. Cyrus tells his dogs to not attack the doppelganger, and to keep and eye out on the place.
Sadly, the results are anticlimactic: the characters wake one evening to find Cyrus' garage door chopped in, blood everywhere, and the place smashed up. Cyrus' dogs are still okay, and report that people "who weren't mailmen" showed up and took away the man who had been feeding them (after pushing a stake through his chest).
Vincent tries Psychometry and manages to get traces from two different men. He gets only vague impressions from the first man, a daredevil and some kind of fireman. He gets much better impressions on the second man, a former solider named Kim Anson who is also something of a daredevil, and who was not feeling nearly as upset as he might have over having just slain an innocent man.
Cyrus makes a brief attempt to find fingerprints, and quickly determines that the attackers wore gloves.
A background check upon Kim Anson (performed by Cyrus' police friend) reveals miserable amounts of information. There is no indication that the man was ever in the US Army. There is a record that he applied for a Social Security number about three years ago, but doesn't appear to have a driver's license or any other official existence. The address listed on his Social Security application turns out to be a bakery downtown that's been there for about 18 years and has never been a private residence.
Cyrus burns his garage, keeping only a few pieces of equipment to carry. He notes that the electricity, phone and water no longer work at the garage when he shows up to torch the place. His cellphone also ceases to function. He leaves with his dogs and spends his days buried in the earth.
Vincent sells off his car and other surviving large pieces of gear. He also ignores his herd. He checks with his secretary, who tells him that his insurance settlement is being tied up because the investigator needs to talk directly to him and have him sign some papers. She also tells him that a private investigator named Jim Griffin has been calling at the office regularly, attempting to serve him papers on a paternity suit. Finally, to add to his troubles, an IRS auditor named Ken Barber has been trying to find him to investigate some irregularities in his income tax returns.
Vincent, interested in getting the insurance money for his house, arranges an appointment with the insurance adjuster. He has Cyrus tag along in the background, in case a ready supply of violence proves to be necessary.
The meeting with the adjuster takes about an hour. Halfway through, Vincent uses Auspex to read the man's aura. He learns that the fellow is quite nervous. He then Dominates the man mercilessly to find out why. The adjuster explains that he's been told to delay the paperwork, and to deny the settlement money altogether if possible. In the process, he's supposed to meet with Vincent several times, including when he hands over the check. Vincent presses him to determine why, and finds that the adjuster is doing all this as a favor to a lawyer friend of his who helped get his kid off a drunk driving charge. The lawyer's name is Joseph Cooper.
Vincent ends the meeting by Dominating the adjuster into running the paperwork run through quickly, ensuring that he gets his money in about ten days.
With one small fish out of the way, the characters turn to entrapping another one. Vincent hires a room at the EZ-Sleep Motel under his own name. Cyrus looks up Jim Griffin in the phone book, then calls him from the motel lobby while Vincent suppresses with the clerk. Cyrus claims that he works at the EZ-Sleep and was in the Bexar County courthouse a couple days ago, getting busted for drunk driving. He noticed that Vincent's name was on the bulletin board of outstanding processes to be served, and that the guy checked into the motel last night. He asks Griffin if it'd be worth $100 if he led him to Vincent. Griffin agrees, and shows up at the motel within an hour.
Cyrus leads Griffin to the motel room, where Vincent takes over with his Dominate. Griffin spills the whole story: he was hired by a lawyer named Joseph Cooper to serve legal papers to Vincent on behalf of the parents of Betty Heath. Betty is the innocent 16-year-old upon whom Vincent allegedly worked his evil charms. Vincent, disgusted by the depths to which Joseph Cooper's owner was busily sinking, Dominates Griffin into giving up the search.
Everyone gets 4 experience points, as Vincent and Cyrus prepare to venture into the seamy world of the IRS. Shepherd probably also gets 4 experience points, though it is far less clear that he will have any use for them.