Most of the normal gang shows up: Charlene (Elizabeth Triem), Jade (Konrad Chase), Tim (Shepherd), Nick (Vincent "Morals of Spinach" Cray), and Bruce (Cyrus Billings).
Those characters around from the last session all gain five experience (this wasn't specificially noted in the last summary).
Both Elizabeth and Shepherd need to spend about a month to catch up to the other characters. Shepherd spends much of this time peforming disconcertingly menial tasks at his hospital. Elizabeth, who is still concerned about folk hunting her, largely remains hidden indoors. The two of them spend their spare time teaching each other Celerity and Firearms. In the process, Shepherd discovers that this process would be much simpler if he knew the Instruction skill. After a few weeks of poor teaching, Shepherd slowly starts to recognize good and bad technique, possibly leading up to the acquisition of this skill at some future point (when Shepherd has a few experience points to blow).
In between hiding out, Elizabeth quietly talks to her various contacts to locate employment. She succeeds in finding a mortal fence interested in having her break into a business, open the safe, and copy everything inside (including disks and computer tapes, but obviously not including money, as everyone knows what that looks like). The business is located in a skyscraper operated by M&R Professional Leasing. The target company is a building contractor, Sampson-Banks Construction. Suspicious of anyone who wants to pay her money to break the law, she does her best to find out who the fence is working for and which vampire controls the building contractor. However, a week's worth of research does not uncover any evidence of vampiric involvement aside from herself.
Finally electing to accept the job, she spends a certain amount of time casing the joint, learning that they employ security guards of the normal type (minimum-wage, that is) and have custodial staff cleaning the place out at night. Satisfied that she has identified a good time to infiltrate the building, she slips into the place, expertly bypassing and disarming locks and alarms as she goes. She reaches the target office to find that she must move a large desk to get access to the floor safe. After a certain amount of heaving and shoving, she moves the desk over and starts work upon the safe. She almost finishes opening the safe when her Auspex danger sense goes off. A long and largely fruitless search for alarms and tripwires ensues, leading her only to a small deadfall triggered by moving the desk, but no immediate threats. She finally wimps out, gives up on the safe, and moves the desk back into place. Her exit from the building is not too adventurous, and her damaged professional reputation stings only a bit.
Tuesday morning, September 4th, Vincent wakes up in a dumpster. He appears to no longer be delusional, though he does smell very bad and is covered in filth. He fishes out his cellphone and calls up Jimmy. He tells Jimmy to come and pick him up, but to first cover over the back seat of the car with shower curtains. Jimmy shows up and helps Vincent into the car, quite studiously ignoring the fact that his boss is covered with filth. Vincent tries to spend the remainder of the evening cleaning up, but abruptly remembers that he's expected at the weekly Tremere meeting in a few minutes. Fortunately, the meeting is typically dull and ritualistic. The one promising bit of information to come out of the meeting is that there was some kind of attack against the Flora M. Dickinson Cancer Research Center a couple of nights ago. This isn't worth that much attention, save that some of the Tremere think that the center is influenced by the Ventrue Travis, another member of Hank Ketchem's coterie.
It also comes out that two of the Chantry members, Lucas and Beezel, are currently working on projects intended to raise lots of money. This is proving to be interesting, as it forces Lucas and Beezel to cooperate. It isn't immediately obvious why they want to gather the cash, though their motives are unlikely to be good for anyone except the Tremere.
Cyrus gets in touch with some of his friends in SAPD Records and arranges for them to pull the incoming call records on his cellphone. He wants to know who has been calling him with all these unusual tips. After about four hours, Mike from Records calls him back and lets him know that he's got the printout. He also comments that he'd like Cyrus' to give him some advice: his lawn is having a lot of trouble, primarily because he can't afford the fertilizer or water to feed it, and he'd like to know if Cyrus could give him some help. Cyrus heads to the precinct house to pick up the list from his box, and to drop off an envelope with a couple of photocopied articles on lawn care, wrapped around a couple of $50 bills.
Cyrus gets another call from his mysterious caller. The caller tells him to be at the truck stop at the intersection of IH35 and Route 410 around 23:00. The caller says that he should pay attention to a semi with red racing stripes. Though his diminishing influence, Cyrus manages to convince everyone to join him in the truck stop coffee shop for an argument around 23:00.
The characters' argument is in full swing when Konrad happens to notice the truck heading out of the truck stop at 23:10. The characters pile out of the coffee shop and into vehicles to follow it, with Elizabeth on her motorcycle and everyone else in Cyrus' car. The truck drives north on IH35. The characters follow it as far as Waco to the north, where it continues on. The characters give up at that point and drive back to San Antonio. Cyrus copies down the truck's license plate number so he can run it later.
Before turning in for the evening, Cyrus takes a look at the phone records he got from the SAPD. He quickly figures out that the mysterious caller shows up as Y. Our Svengali, along with a phone number.
The next evening, Cyrus calls up Mike, his reliable friend in Records, to run the truck's license plates. In exchange, he offers Mike some advice on his hedges, fortified with a few $20 bills. Mike tells him that the truck is registered to and owned by John Yertz of San Antonio. He's owned it for about four years, and has recently applied for a personalized license plate.
Cyrus' Svengali calls him once again, urging him to go to the babbling brook in the back of Old Settlers' Park in Round Rock, between 24:00 and 02:00. The caller urges "Don't bring lanterns, or you'll be seen."
The characters generally decide to go on one more wild-goose chase, and head out to Old Settlers' Park, arriving around 23:45. They park their vehicles at a nearby auto body shop, then sneak into the park under Obfuscate cover (generally Konrad's Obfuscate). Within 45 minutes, they reach the babbling brook.
Along the way, Cyrus notes that someone has recently driven an ATV along the path. At the brook, the characters spot a Suzuki Samurai, a tent suspended from a couple of trees, and a table beneath it. The area is lit by a Coleman lantern. Two people stand near the table, talking. The characters swiftly determine that one of them is dressed in classic Great White Hunter style, with khaki clothes, a pith helmet and a large-caliber hunting rifle. The other is Hispanic, dressed in hunting camouflage and carrying a rather more modern hunting rifle equipped with a scope. Both of them are speaking intently and looking at a map upon the table. Vincent, Shepherd and Elizabeth crank up their Auspex Heightened Senses to listen in on the conversation. This is made difficult by the strange volume of animal noises coming from the surrounding bushes They manage to figure out that the two are planning on going off to hunt werewolves in the Hill Country, around Lost Maples. The Hispanic is worried by the fact that there may be more then ten of them, while the Great White Hunter is unconcerned. He is only concerned that if they shoot all ten of them, that will spoil the hunting next season. Their plan is to ambush these "dumb animals" as they pass across an open area, then take their skins and return to Austin in triumph.
As the characters draw closer, Cyrus realizes that the animals have been deliberately told to make noise. Several of the other characters sneak closer to the camp while Cyrus slips around to the side, preparing to tell several animals to go to the other side of the clearing and start making alarm noises. Shepherd sneaks close and looks at the two figures' auras. He determines that the Great White Hunter has the aura of a vampire, but isn't otherwise too unusual. After a spectacular botch, he determines that the hispanic is actually Beezel (Cyrus later recognizes him as Philip, one of the local Gangrels). Meanwhile, Cyrus manipulates some squirrels to head around and start spreading an alarm. Two squirrels rush into the clearing slightly before Cyrus' squirrels start to chitter. The two squirrels have a brief conversation with the Hispanic, who sighs. Both he and the Great White Hunter abruptly vanish.
Konrad, tired of all these tips, slips into the clearing and arranges a parley with the two others by dropping notes onto the table. Eventually, the Great White Hunter reappears and Shepherd joins the two of them. Konrad introduces himself, then asks if the hunter has any enemies. The hunter, who introduces himself as Nigel, notes that while he has a number of enemies, none of them are really likely to offer anonymous tips to other coteries. Konrad suddenly realizes that he's talking to the Nosferatu Primogen of San Antonio. Nigel asks that the characters keep his hobby a secret, and to let him know if they find the mysterious caller. In return, he offers them a small favor in the future. Everyone leaves the area.
Everyone has gotten thoroughly tired of Svengali's phone calls, so Cyrus calls in the heavy artillery. He uses his Influence shamelessly to obtain a set of police tracing equipment and Detective Wallace Gallo to operate it for him. To thank the detective, Cyrus buys him dinner. Afterwards, Cyrus, Vincent and Detective Gallo sit in a police van, waiting for someone to call Cyrus.
Around 20:00, Cyrus gets a call from Douglas Floyd ("Slim"), a local Gangrel. Slim owns a local construction firm that recently suffered a breakin, and he knows that Cyrus has been hanging around with Elizabeth Triem, who is reputed to be good at that sort of thing. He asks if Cyrus knows if she had anything to do with the break-in, and wants to have a talk with her if she did. Cyrus claims that he doesn't know anything, but will have a chat with Elizabeth to see if he can learn more. Slim also mentions that a friend of his, the Ventrue Travis, recently suffered a problem. He runs the Dickinson Cancer Research Center, and had three ghouls killed in an assault there a few days ago. Slim reports that Travis is devastated by the loss, as he was quite close to several of his ghouls. Slim's opinion (which Cyrus does nothing to contradict) is that the Sabbat must have had something to do with this. He asks Cyrus if any of the (surviving) Sabbat he had previously tangled with resembled the single known attacker: a man in a dark "ninja" suit with some skill at Obfuscate. Shepherd points out that those Sabbat he has good descriptions for didn't survive their meeting with the characters. However, he does once again promise to look around, and let Slim know whatever he finds out.
Cyrus' mystery caller strikes again at 20:30. He starts out, "You're a cop, you like crime. Go to 3120 Lungfish Avenue. You'll like it too: it's a real dive. Be there at 01:00, and bring some cops along. You'll see something very interesting." In an effort to keep the caller on the line longer, Cyrus inquires as to what type of cops, to which the caller responds "DEA-type cops."
By the time the mystery caller hangs up, Detective Gallo has managed to determine that the call came from a cellphone, operated through Southwestern Bell. He also manages to determine the billing address for the phone, but when Cyrus and vincent look the address up on a map of San Antonio they discover that it is a mall. Detective Gallo suggests that it might be possible to learn more through the company servicing his phone.
Unwilling to "tip off" the mystery caller by not showing up to one of his "interesting events", the characters pile into Cyrus' car and do a quick drive-by of 3120 Lungfish. They discover that the place is a warehouse turned into a kicker nightclub called the Palomino. Elizabeth and Shepherd go in, while everyone else clears out. Shepherd uses Obfuscate to disguise himself as an urban cowboy with full, pouting lips. They find a bunch of folks dancing and drinking inside. Elizabeth ends up spending her evening being hit on by hordes of drunken cowboys, completely convinced that inebriation adds immeasurably to their charisma. Meanwhile, Shepherd conceals himself from view with Obfuscate and makes his way into a back room that turns out to contain a large number of heavily armed mortals. Quickly examining their auras with Auspex, Shepherd manages a less-than-inspired roll and concludes that every man jack of them is totally insane.
Shepherd spends a few moments trying to decide what to do, when he suddenly realizes that the hour of 01:00 has come upon him. Rather abruptly, another vampire shows up in the room, dressed like a ninja James Bond, pulls out a variety of guns and shoots everyone in the room (except for Shepherd). Shepherd tries Auspex upon him also, and again concludes that he is looking at an entity deep in the grips of insanity. This time, he sees less reason to doubt his diagnosis. While Shepherd watches, the James Bond vampire steps up to the armored door on the other side of the room, shoots the man at the viewport, then fires wildly into the room beyond after he discovers that the door is still locked. When the attacker pulls out a sizable block of plastique, Shepherd clears out.
Through the aftermath, Sheperd and Elizabeth conclude that the attacking vampire sets off the fire alarms, then uses his block of plastique to both blow through the armored door and set the building on fire. The two of them don't stick around to observe any additional carnage, choosing instead to escape with the other patrons. As they drive off, the see the Palomino going up in flames in their rear-view mirrors.
The game ends on Thursday night, September 6th, near the middle of the evening. The characters are scattered all across the city in a haphazard effort to simultaneously take advantage of and track down Cyrus' mystery caller. Each of the characters gains five experience points.