It's Jarlin' Time

It's Jarlin' Time
Part of Temple in the Shadows Part of The Crow of Seattle
Date 2083-09-30 GM Asmodeus Location Various Seattle Districts Status Threat Level: Deadly
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Woedica Kryptman	Sphinx	Order of the Temple
Swerve La Rapide	Water Spirits	Ritual Magicians
Casualties and losses
Cerberus Hound known as Doge Vandire	None	None
Initiation Ordeal for both runners.

Summary

Mistakes are made. Also the Catholics are using ritual bombing to soften things up before hitting stronger Infected safehouses.

Rude Awakening

Swerve is woken up in the middle of the day by scratching on her door. She's cautious but manages to securely open the door in case it's an ambush and is indeed ambushed -- by Doge Vandire, the cerberus hound Charon used to own. It's suffering from a stab wound that refuses to heal. Meanwhile, La Rapide wakes up later in the evening and notices one of her boltholes' security systems has gone dark. When she checks it out, she finds it to be covered in unassensable magical fire. Touching it causes unimaginable pain that doesn't cause genuine harm but takes almost an hour to vanish.

Research

Swerve calls Sphinx to ask for advice regarding the dog since it's weird how this hound has a wound that doesn't close. Sphinx is happy to hear she's found the dog and admits that he's been trying to locate it since it went missing. He will get it back to Charon, but becomes far less cooperative and outright threatens Swerve with a heavy hand to deliver the hound when she wants to get more involved. La Rapide tries contacting a couple of people but fails to make direct contact with most save for Woedica Kryptman who answers quickly and offers to check the fire out. La Rapide's Matrix searches find little aside from some biblical stories as well as potential comparison to the ever-erupting Yellowstone Volcano. Previously fires like these had been found in the former DA's estate, burning any Invae that came in contact with it. She manages to find out that this isn't the only place that has been hit. A bolthole for a ghoul ork in Puyallup was also lit on fire as was a small store in Downtown, Westwood, an A Security Rating area.

Woedica requests the two go check it out before KE ruins it, since she's not on good terms with them (Aztechnology and Ares bickering). The two do so and find that the place has a crashed car inside of a store, a dead elderly Asian woman and more weird magic fire. La Rapide uses a Fly-Spy drone to fly through the fire and can't find any immediate markings from the car since the license plate was ripped off. Swerve can tell that individual serial numbers could easiest be found under the hood in the battery. Taxi Sandra is called to drop by quickly, walk through the fire and check for the serial number; the fire targets only some individuals. Sandra walks through the fire without issue and Swerve remarks from the drone footage that a nearby dead ghoul and the woman both have broad stab wounds in their bodies, neither of which look healed. The shape matches that inflicted on the cerberus hound which was very sadly and heart-wrenchingly captured by Sphinx's forces earlier, breaking Swerve's heart.

The woman turns out to still be alive and an Essence-starved vampire, biting into Sandra's leg. Swerve's bound spirit friend bashes the vampire's head clean off while Swerve is in the middle of pure agony, having touched the super fire. Sandra storms off, screaming La Rapide to never ask her for anything again. She did manage to open the car hood, however. Matrix Searches manage to track the car's movements to some degree and Woedica's research also yields results.

Tying It All Together

Queen Elizabeth XXIII helps La Rapide with her information network in return for karma. She notes that these kinds of attacks have been made all over, including the former DA's estate and that even further information about the Asian woman killed by the car could be attained by speaking to Downtown's Green Man. She provides the instructions to the ritual and leaves. Swerve does the ritual near Downtown's beachline and speaks to a VERY creepy commercialized Grudge-looking horror. Deciphering her speech takes time, but the Green Man speaks of various Infected getting very lucrative deals from a foreign influence. These deals were honey traps and were like bright beacons in darkness for Infected-hating elements to target. That's where the fire and death came in; those who accepted these deals were then marked by it and easily hit without any possible reproach. Woedica confirms that the fire is part of a Flux-using ritual spellcaster and that the fire is also linked to a cursed Agony spell targeting specific kinds of auras. She offers some of her company benefits and has traces of a weird substance from the shop victims' stab wounds analyzed to reveal it to be Baobhan's Tears. Queen Liz is certain that fae do not really have that much influence around and Downtown's Green Man doesn't want them in her city because of their meddlesome nature.

Swerve recalls Troy Limburger and the Jarl he's associated with from a run she was on previously; a quick search determines that it's very likely Troy Limburger and his Jarl are in Seattle. The magical nature of these attacks, the purifying background counts found in the sites affected by these strikes and catholic aspects all hint towards Troy Limburger and the Jarl joining forces with the Order of the Temple in order to strike against the Infected population in Seattle without having to endanger their troops. Remote ritual spellcasting with Flux-shfiting magicians makes tracing the assailant almost impossible, but staying on the move negates any risk of being hit by it due to the attack requiring a routine for the Order to hit. It remains a mystery how the Order managed to get a working relationship with someone as slimy as Limburger, however. There are some ties to a chapel in Redmond as well; the car that was crashed into the Westwood shop was previously spotted by the chapel's parking lot; searching Shadow Community records spotted it to be something runners had dealt with years ago.