Pandora's Casket

Pandora's Casket
Date 2084-03-08 GM Asmodeus Location Redmond, Seattle Status Threat Level: Deadly
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Mr. Herenight	Vatican City	Friedrich Hebenstreit
Babylon Eidolon Heracles Boss Astrid	Raphael Vidius Vigilia Evangelica	The Man Himself
Casualties and losses
Some of the runners' pride.	One of the Vigilia order's pets was stolen.	Several years of unending torment.

Summary

The gang busts out... a nosferatu?

Background

See This Is Halloween, Part 2

The Meet

A Johnson in north Bellevue, a geomancer of some sort, wants to investigate why Infected are spontaneously combusting due to untraceable ritual magic. She offers a highly massive sum to the team since Knight-Errant is willing to subcontract others to catch this serial killing; 370 murders is too much for them to sweep under the rug anymore and they're genuinely concerned whereas small time killings like 20-40 deaths would be something the media could spin as coincidental. The team accepts.

The Plan

Babylon has an idea of what this might be and directs the team to head to Sophocles where they investigate various leads. They stop by the mage's safehouse and are about to start doing Matrix Searches when the elf gets yanked away by a parole officer and a trillion other things, robbing the team of additional magical muscle for a part of the run. No pattern is found in the killings aside from the same modus operandi each time.

The Run

Jennifer Ashton is considered but not approached. Mason Stonehall's Stonehome-built estate is approached by a technospider tells the team to 'piss off' in very rude of a manner. Boss, being the sensible man that he is, starts talking to locals and gets an appointment with The Speaker. She offers the team Raphael's local apartment number and to try and call Mason to stop being such a hermit. Eidolon, Astrid and Babylon work with physical infiltration and concealing magical abilities to break into Raphael's home. They find a very carefully hidden bookmark that has Bible verses scribbled on it. Heracles checks it to figure out that the verses combine to become a set of coordinates. The coordinates lead to Council Island.

The mages investigate by turning into birds and flying to Council Island. They evade detection, drone dogs and laser sensors. Gomorrah, the ally spirit, spots a vent of warmer air coming from a tiny little gap where she discovers a hidden hatch to an underground location. With shapechanging and careful concealment as well as watertight bags dragging gear under the surface of the lake, the team all manage to infiltrate the hideout. It's reinforced and warded, but with a little bit of squeezing through tight spaces and finicking around, the group circumvents a strong reinforced door and opens it from the inside. They find a radioactive chest with orichalcum-astatine amalgams, thorium and some kind of red coagulated sludge, blood clotting prevention agents and a Valkyrie Module covered in astrally active linchpins. The background count is filled with rage and while the team believes this is related to the murders, they can't yet prove it.

Babylon sends an astral message to Mr. Herenight who arrives by astrally projecting and offers the team a deal: they must liberate the captive, who is believed to be a vampire tortured for its blood, and tell it to calm down. He'll ensure it doesn't run rampant and will hide the team's tracks in return. A bloodied monstrosity emerges once eight separate anchored rituals are broken and the module opens. It's constrained with Astrid's thorn magic and Babylon's mana barriers; Boss and Heracles coordinate the team to move more efficiently while Eidolon attempts to hit the blur-like speed of an Infected man in the knee to slow him down. The man screams in an unknown German dialect, something that cannot be comprehended by the team without a Translate spell being cast. Babylon appears to offend the man's sensibilities and he instead looks to Astrid.

He speaks in an archaic German dialect and calls Babylon 'a slave still suffering existence' as well as being bewildered by women bearing arms. He also calls Herenight a 'wayward disciple' for some reason. When asked who he is, he refuses to 'speak his name to the undeserving' but after some coaxing, the egotistical Nosferatu is coaxed to tell his last clear memory being of a large banquet in 1648. Herenight is impressed and stresses what a gold mine this man is for knowing the true history of the world to Babylon in private mindlink messages. He eventually offers a gigantic donation to the Redmond Rejuvenation Project as well as owing a favor to Babylon in exchange for acquiring the Nosferatu. It takes a great deal of convincing to get Astrid to back down, but reluctantly the team lets Friedrich go with the Black Lodge mage, both of them mist forming out of the hideout.

Aftermath

Closer inspection of the radioactive materials reveals that the orichalcum-astatine compound is an experimental alchemical compound with unknown properties. The bloody sludge is highly refined nosferatu blood, a powerful magical reagent. Thorium is used for fuel most often.

Astrid gets in touch with the Catholics and informs them of what happened; they're infuriated at the situation but grateful to Astrid for letting them know and give her an individual to be in contact with in case she finds more information regarding this vile sorcery and backstabbing.

Herenight's donations go through and Hell's Kitchen receives a brand new set of Evo Proletarians, Shiawase Caduceus 'CAD-7's and MCT Kenchiku-Kikais, eight of each, to help in engineering, construction, renovation and medical issues. Raw materials for renovating the dilapidated slums are also shipped in as a charity project. Redmond has several E-rated security zone neighborhoods infused with additional construction as well as ten years of security mage services for the purpose of wards to fend off insect and shadow spirits, vampires and other paracritters from the local populace. The entire neighborhood is also brought a computer terminal and a trid projector containing a pirated version of over 100 knowledge softs. They will go out of date eventually, but the knowledge the package contains will help in education for years to come.

It's a good thing that Babylon did. She doesn't feel that way, however, knowing that possibly a centuries-old supervampire (assuming he told the truth) is now at large.

Rewards

• 44,000 Nuyen (22 RVP)
• May purchase Medium Lifestyles at gear rates; comes with F7 Ward by default.
• 4 CDP (1 RVP)
• +2 Black Lodge Reputation
• -2 Vatican Reputation

For Babylon:

• Herenight owes 1 Chip

For Astrid:

• Innocent Guillermo, 3/4 Vigilia Evangelica Retainer (6 RVP)
• +4 Vatican Reputation (so net +2)

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Eidolon

I am unsure what to make of this job. We found precious few leads and the ones we did find almost felt like a red-herring... until we uncovered something notably more concerning than originally anticipated during the job. I am now somewhat concerned about the connections of this Babylon, and the ripples from this particular job. We were ending a string of limited-discretion murders, but at what cost?

Astrid

Helping a shady group of powerful mage getting their hand back on powerful infected ? The worst feeling of all time... This corruption has been set free and we'll need to find it as soon as we can.