Everyone shows up except Nick (Vincent Cray): Tim (Laurence Archer), Dave (Jack Cross), and Bruce (Cyrus Billings). We spend a lot of time hurting Chris with stories about how nifty Unknown Armies is before the game actually starts. We spend even more time hurting Chris with stories after the game starts.
The characters have some downtime to spend in the aftermath of their massive structure hit against Angel's drug operation. They elect to spend this time confidently building towards the future, ignoring the onrushing hurricane of Angel's friends and allies. This confidence is, in part, buoyed by the fact that Angel is well-known to have only one friend, a dissipated heroin addict in Austin.
Laurence Archer spends his time lurking around technical schools, scaring the faculty. He wishes to improve his Computer skill (which seems reasonable) and his Demolitions skill (which does not). He finally hits upon hitting Demolitions websites for new information, which should accomplish both of these goals at once, and provide him with a way to improve Computer Hacking as well. For his efforts, he is granted the privilege of spending experience upon all three of these skills by the time Cyrus' little project consumes all his remaining attention.
Laurence also decides to lay some groundwork for a Sabbat-hunting trip to El Paso sometime in the future. He asks his researcher to investigate patterns of violent crimes and murders in the El Paso region over the last thirty years. His researcher reports that the murder rate is currently lower than it had been throughout the 70's and 80's. The previous high murder rates were due to both heightened drug gang activity and the low wages paid to illegal immigrants. The only anomaly is a spike in the murder rate about four months ago (corresponding to the fall of the city to the Sabbat), explained as a series of disputes over day labor rates that were responsible for several small riots, combined with a rash of tourist assaults.
Laurence then asks his researcher ghoul to look for large (or "reckless") money transfers and trading out of El Paso within the last six months. He is looking for evidence of either Camarilla Kindred and ghouls trying to escape the city, or Sabbat Kindred moving in. He figures that if somebody suddenly sells $1,000,000 of stock at the height of the Sabbat incursion, they're probably a Camarilla elder trying to buy a truckload of bazookas. His researcher warns him that it will take a fairly large amount of time to gather this kind of data. Laurence displays uncommon consideration for the human limitations of his servants by acknowledging that this is okay.
Jack Cross spends some time investigating the local prison system. He quickly discovers that there aren't really any Kindred with substantial influence over the jails in San Antonio, or any of the nearby prisons. Prince David's general opinion is that prisons are simply places to dump mortal criminals so they can rot. Seeing a golden opportunity, Jack works to identify the mortal physician in charge of medical care for the prisoners. His goal is to ghoul this person as a route to obtaining a steady source of blood from prisoners. This is more than a little important to Jack, as he is bound to only feed from criminals and has a flaw that makes his Kiss excruciating to the vessel.
It takes him about a week to identify the San Antonio jail system medical practitioner and ghoul him, a task made slightly easier by his use of Presence. It turns out that the fellow is not actually a licensed doctor: got his medical training in South America, and as such does not have a license to practice medicine in the United States. However, he is able to work as a prison nurse, with substantially more expertise than most. After obtaining his loyalty, Jack arranges to pay him a small stipend to cover any expenses he might incur by packaging and storing blood for Jack.
It takes Jack long enough to get his ghoul on-line that he is forced to feed from a live victim first. He picks a random criminal out of a police lineup and savages the poor bastard, taking care to hide the body afterwards. He is then consumed by guilt for several days, upset because he doomed a man to death for no reason more significant than robbing a house and getting caught for it.
Cyrus petitions Prince David for permission to ghoul the two Hispanic mechanics who had been doing work on his car before, the brothers Raoul and Enrique Hernandez. He explains that he wants to open up a Firestone franchise and settle down a bit. Prince David, doubtless ecstatic to hear that the notoriously-unstable Cyrus is trying to become a good citizen, gives him permission to ghoul the two brothers, and informs him that he has also gained Status 2. Cyrus thanks him with drool-strung gratitude and departs, still confused as to why he has gained in Status.
Cyrus' basic plan is to ghoul the two brothers with dark Mexican beer laced with blood. He sets up meetings with them to talk about forming a partnership with him to establish a Firestone franchise. As a gesture of friendship, he brings along the laced beer as a gift. After the first meeting, he brings along Jack Cross and Laurence Archer, hoping to take advantage of Jack Cross' Finance skill and Presence to help convince them, and of Laurence's money to finance the deal. Raoul is ghouled quite quickly, and becomes a vocal booster of Cyrus' idea. Enrique doesn't drink as much, and as such takes a little more time. At the second meeting, he tells Cyrus that he doesn't trust him enough to go into business with him. Cyrus smiles, thanks him for his time, and leaves him with the last of the laced beer, confident that after a while his opinion will change. Cyrus waits a week before calling back. When he does, he finds it to be much less trouble to convince Enrique to go along with him.
Aided by Jack's analysis, Cyrus determines that the entire project will cost about $1 million. Of that, Cyrus and his various backers will need to be able to come up with 20% to be relatively assured of obtaining bank financing for the rest. Cyrus personally has only about $50 in his pockets, and no surviving savings. The brothers' garage provides for them and their families, but doesn't give them a lot of extra money to sock away. The breakthrough comes when Cyrus is able to persuade Laurence to sink $200,000 of his own money (about 40% of his total net worth) into the project. Jack Cross puts together the business case and asks the Brujah politician Laura Jones to make sure the permits to go through easily. Noting that the two brothers are eager but unpolished, the characters also hire a lawyer to help the brothers arrange for the loan and present Laurence's business case, both to the bank and to the Firestone corporation.
All the paperwork and permits take a month and a half to finish. By the end, the permits are in, the funding is solid, the franchise is agreed upon, and the building plans are formalized. Everyone holds a little party the day ground is broken for the new building. The Firestone rules require that both of the brothers be sent off for two months of training on how to operate a franchise properly. The characters arrange for the brothers to be sent off one at a time, to ensure that someone is always around to oversee both the brothers' existing shop and the construction process. To help them out, Laurence sends his mechanic ghoul off to work at the brothers' existing shop. He wants the ghoul to get to know the Hernandez brothers and their large extended family, as they will be working together in the future. Cyrus also spends a lot of time working at the Hernandez brothers' shop, obtaining a second dot of Repair (2 experience points) in the process.
Cyrus worries about finding enough workers for the franchise for almost ten minutes, until Raoul and Enrique express their eagerness to hire a veritable army of their relatives as workers. From their Blood Bond-addled view, this whole project is a wonderful opportunity to be able to provide a better life for their entire family. The shop will be fully operational six months from now (the end of August).
The Prince is amazed that he's gotten relative peace and quiet in the city for almost two months by merely agreeing to giving Cyrus a couple of ghouls. His pleasure is only faintly diminished by an article in Ventrue Business Weekly entitled, "Bloodsuckers in the Automotive Repair Industry." The article notes that the vampires' competitors are complaining, "They're sucking us dry!" It also notes that the vampires' habit of using ghouls for mechanics is often unsettling to mortal customers, who aren't used to having the help speak in near-biblical tones of "The Master."
Cyrus is lying in the cold, dead earth one evening when he recognizes that once again, he must stand trial for murder. He finds himself standing in a courtroom wearing prison orange scrubs, admitting to having committed many horrific crimes he doesn't necessarily remember having committed. He is inevitably convicted, and sentenced to 99 years imprisoned. Time passes slowly in prison. He has little trouble terrorizing the other inmates. Several years pass, until once again he is brought forth to stand trial. This time, he is questioned upon the death of a young, virtuous man named Shepherd, who the lead prosecutor describes as a hero in life, slain while visiting a friend's house.
The prosecutor then asks Cyrus about the invidious Vincent Cray. Under repeated questions, Cyrus admits that while Vincent is foolish, short-sighted, envy-ridden weasel, he did not take any specific action to harm Shepherd. The prosecutor repeatedly attempts to paint Vincent as the Child of Evil, but Cyrus sticks to his story. Unfortunately, Cyrus eventually recognizes that stupidity and envy are punishable offenses in this courtroom. At the end of the dream, the judge focuses his baleful glowing red eyes upon Cyrus and intones: "You are free to go. Return with Vincent's body. Dead or Alive."
When Cyrus wakes on Monday night and rises from the earth of his abandoned lot, he has an overwhelming desire to go out and stake Vincent. He calls up Laurence and tells him, "Laurence. We need to meet and plan. I'm in a very nice vacant lot here. Why don't you meet me." Laurence agrees to meet with him (in the vacant lot), and asks if he should bring anything. Cyrus responds: "A stake. And Vincent." Laurence agrees to show up, then calls Vincent to invite him along.
Jack has a quick meeting with Laura Jones, the Brujah politico. She assures him that the permits for his Firestone outlet will go through with no problems, not that it looked like there would be any to start with.
She then asks him about what happened to Angel after the police raids. Jack explains that Angel disappeared after the raids, and is no longer responding to Summons. Nobody has seen any sign of him, and all of his old ghouls have been "cleaned up" by Mr. Nassif. Laura comments that she's heard of him, though not by that name. She doesn't know who he really works for, though Frank James is a possible candidates. Jack asks if she's heard the infamous Angel Tapes. She says that she has, as they're "making the rounds." According to her, popular opinion is that they're fakes, though there are several conflicting theories as to who made them. One side thinks that they were made by a Tremere interested in creating trouble. Another feels that they were created by the Prince as a way to dispose of Angel. Jack smiles weakly.
She also asks if Jack has seen any activity out of Logan in Austin. She claims that he was Angel's partner in the drug trade, and might have elected to off him for some reason. In response, Jack offers the boilerplate wisdom that Logan is a worthless heroin junkie who can barely find a pair of matching socks, let alone organize a convincing effort at reprisals. Laura is unconvinced by this theory, pointing out that Prince Pilar keeps the Kindred in Austin on a very short chain. Kindred who are granted permission to live in Austin are all somehow useful to Prince Pilar. Those who are not either leave or disappear.
Jack asks why she wants to know all this information. She points out that she had some investments with Angel (though not in the drug trade), which gives her a certain interest. Beyond that, some of the more brutish members of her Clan are interested in popping a cap in someone's ass over Angel's disappearance, and she wants to know if they have a legitimate reason. Because Jack had a fairly visible involvement in the events leading up to his disappearance, he is an obvious target (even with Jack's assurances that he didn't kill Angel). She advises that he take some security precautions, and warns that the Brujah most likely to actually attack out of hand are the Hansen Brothers.
Cyrus gets a call from Laura shortly after she talks to Jack. She invites him to visit her at the Witte Museum (she declines his initial offer to meet in the "nice abandoned alley" he happens to be in at the moment). He accepts, finishes feeding from the derelict who is the other resident of the alley, and flaps off towards the museum. Just as he arrives, he gets a call from Jack, who cautions him about possible retribution from the Hansen brothers.
He finds Laura leafing through a recent issue of Cosmopolitan and puffing away at a cigarette in the lobby. She tells him that she's trying to figure out exactly what happened in the whole Angel disappearance incident, and needs to ask some questions. Cyrus pretty much gives her the party line: Angel tried to blow him up three times, so he brought the cops down on him.
Laura then goes onto a slightly different topic. She claims that a couple of weeks prior to Angel's misfortunes, he had called her several times asking about a series of threatening phone calls he'd gotten. His claim was that someone was trying to either persuade or threaten him into giving up some kind of weird crucifix thing that he supposedly had. Angel told Laura that he had no idea what the caller actually wanted, but that he was getting the cold slimies over the whole business. Laura speculates that Angel's disappearance may have something to do with these phone calls: whoever the caller was may have used the police raids as cover to put the hammer on Angel.
Laura then does her level best to introduce Cyrus to the political aspects of his vendetta against Angel. She asks him why exactly Angel hated him, to which Cyrus offers a long and uselessly complicated explanation revolving around Shepherd taking photographs of Angel's men while the rest of the characters hung around trying to flush out Sabbat infiltrators. Laura looks at Cyrus rather quizzically through this whole description, clearly not buying it.
Once Cyrus finishes convincing her that he's not going to drop any useful information, she gives him a couple of pointers on portraying the "Angel incident" to outsiders who might be curious. Most important, she tells him to emphasize that his car was damaged by Angel's bombing attempts, as it looks bad to say that you suffered a series of nuisance attacks, then decided to off the responsible party in cold blood.
Laurence gets a phone call from a local Kindred who names himself as Doug McClugan. He claims that he's another member of "our little closed community", and requests a meeting with Laurence. They negotiate a bit about the venue, finally settling upon the Tower of the Americas. Doug tells him to show up around 21:00.
Laurence shows up clad in his nicely cut duster coat to find that Doug has already reserved a private room. Doug McClugan looks about nineteen years old, dressed in a nice suit that doesn't quite fit him. His hair is slicked back in a style that was current as recently as the 1950's. He has the sort of wiry demeanor normally associated with the Little Rascals.
Doug starts off with a winningly arrogant manner, telling Laurence that, "You're new in town, so you better answer my questions." Laurence responds in kind: "Who the hell are you?" Doug explains that he's one of the local Brujah. His Clan-mates are pretty rough and tough, but they've found something that even they think is bad, so they called him in. He's investigating all the bad things the characters did to Angel, and hasn't gotten a good feeling about them.
Laurence starts off describing how Angel had been making substantial trouble for Cyrus, "a local Gangrel." Specifically, Angel hurt Cyrus' feelings by blowing up his car three times and burning his house down.
Laurence then describes how he, Cyrus, and Jack Cross tried to meet with Angel at the Alamo to clear the waters. He notes rather dryly that the meeting started out poorly, and went downhill from there. Angel started out with recriminations, and got less civil as the conversation progressed. The low point happened after Angel left and one of his goons opened fire on the group. At this point, Doug makes a point to note, "Is Cross really black? And the Prince's Childe? Weird."
Laurence's final conclusion is that considering all that Angel did against Cyrus, the fact that the characters continued through on their plan to have a police raid on Angel's gang is less than surprising. Laurence admits to a certain amount of surprise that the raid had the devastating effects that it did. He figured that Angel's organization would be better protected. His only thought is that someone else might have taken advantage of the characters' actions to hit right to the quick of Angel's gang.
Doug, seeing a chink he can exploit for irritation value, snipes out, "So, you really did something to him, then?" Laurence shoots back, "Yes! Someone blew the Gangrel's car up! You do something when that happens to you." Doug: "But all he did was blow up the Gangrel's car!" Laurence: "The Gangrel was in it at the time! Someone tried to set the Gangrel on fire! This makes it a tense situation!"
Doug follows up with a brilliant monologue that leaves Laurence convinced that he personally believes that the characters' actions were actually unreasonable, and that Angel was really pretty much totally blameless in the whole incident. Doug also claims to be personally hurt by the fact that a longtime friend of his has disappeared, and might have been killed by a bunch of stupid bastards with nothing better to do but off innocent Brujah. Laurence is a little troubled by Doug's strident belief, but recognizes that he's powerless to change it. He makes a couple of debate points by trying to make the Brujah look like unthinking aggressors who can't take it when normal tit-for-tat doesn't work out on their side.
Doug offers a certain amount of conciliation to Laurence. He tells him that he doesn't consider him to be responsible, mostly because he's a new guy in town and too fuckin' stupid to know who to hang around with. He also gives him a self-help tape entitled, "Stuart Smalley's Self-Confidence Now! (tape 1 of 4)." Laurence makes a pathetic attempt to claim that he doesn't see any bad blood between himself and Doug, and that he'd be willing to invest money for Doug in the future.
Doug leaves first. As he walks away, Laurence calls out, "Sorry 'bout your gas tank! Haha, old joke." Laurence departs on Doug's heels. He starts his car with no fear, but decides to wear a bulletproof vest and a machine pistol at all times from now on.
Laurence is troubled by his meeting with Mr. McClugan, so he calls Laura Jones and arranges a meeting with her tomorrow evening, at the Kangaroo Court, a small restaurant on the Riverwalk.
He also sets his researcher to work on finding dirt on Doug McClugan. He warns his researcher that the name might be an alias, which immediately convinces the researcher that this whole effort is going to be yet another painful wild goose chase.
The following evening, Laurence shows up at the Kangaroo Court to find Laura already there, reading a copy of Texas Monthly and smoking. He tells her that he recently had a wild conversation with a Brujah named Doug McClugan. During the conversation, McClugan said some things that made him wonder exactly what the atmosphere was like in the Brujah Clan, and whether or not it was going to be possible to work this thing out without a lot of unnecessary violent. He emphasizes that while she has always been a very reasonable person, Doug doesn't seem to match that. Laura asks if Doug appeared to be particularly brutal and stupid. Laurence agrees that he was. Laura points out that Doug has been Kindred for about 70 years, and has a college education. She tells Laurence that he was probably simply fooling with him, trying to provoke some kind of reaction. Laura reassures him that he's unlikely to be running into what he so prosaically describes as, "hostile Brujah armed with sticks." Instead, Laura suggests that the Brujah are currently trying to decide what to do, but if it turns out that they are going to take action it will be well-thought-out and final. Laurence gives her his thanks, in that he prefers to be killed by people who have put some work into the project.
Each character gains 3 experience points. Laurence spends experience to purchase one dot each in Computer, Demolitions and Electronics. Cyrus gains Status 2 and Retainers 2, and spends 2 experience points to purchase Repair 2 . Jack Cross gains an additional dot in Retainers.