This Is October

This Is October
Part of Hail to the Pumpking
Date 2083-10-10 GM Asmodeus Location Seattle, Sophocles Status Threat Level: High
Factions Involved
ShadowHaven Lord Emberrage Delphi	Sprits
Nu11st@ck Swerve Shy Heart of the Tempest	Character1 Character2
Casualties and losses
None

Background

Find some missing teens, and investigate a haunted school.

The Meet

Team receives somewhat mysterous details, meet at a Redmond, Sophocles apartment block, 5th floor. Nu11St@ck found a deck on the roof and dispatched a flyspy to investigate while the rest of the team entered the building and began walking up. The "decker" is an emerged cat, hanging up on the roof, a Bastet. It ran away once we approached. We returned to the 5th floor then hacked open a fire escape door to enter the building. Inside the hallway were a number of doors, one boarded up with something knocking on it. Ghouls were within the room. Checking another room resulted in a Gun to Nu11St@ck's face. The "J" is a bit paranoid, 6 locks on the door multiple doors. Unwilling to have the meet in his apartment, he took us to a basement bunker. The Job, clear out a haunted school, lots of spirits, many lower level, several over F6. The pay access to a "talented" street dock, 8kY per runner and all the Psyche we can carry. Double the reward if they can be compleatly cleared out.

The Plan

Nu11St@ck performed a matrix search, learning that the school infestation is related to the great ghost dance. The school has a high background count as a result and might be disruptive to magics. Swerve ritual cast extended detect life to examine the area. Shy reached out to some corporate contacts to try and get aid in clensing the area. The deal with them was to plant some faked ownership papers transfering the facilitiy to the corporation in exchange they would clense the area. Shy requested some help from a contact, she sent a f9 nuclear spirit. The team got some rest and planned to attack the next day. Nuclear spirit will run point, rest of the team on assist and mopup.

The Run

We moved in and started investiging the vocational building. Tempest Shy and Nu11's drone got trapped, the building closed us off inside after telling us to get out. Continuing to investigate the spirits tried to absorb Tempest into the floor. Shy pulled Tempest free. Shortly after the nuclear spirit rushed through the wall melting a hole in it and shattering glass. It began to be attacked by swarms of small sprits. During the distraction the three escaped the building. While this occured Swerve began talknig with an old man spirit watching spirit javelaneers. This spirit mentioned that some of the local spirits were taken by an abduction spirt. This spirit also took the 2 metahumans our J sent in before us. After thinking about it some, the possible theats could be a Preta, Wild hunt, or Blackjack possibly. Nu11St@ck discussed things with Lord Emberrage who mentioned that uptick of fey lately. yarls, seelie fey, trickers. Swerve reached out to "Delphi" a psycometry specalists in order to investigate some more for us. This resulted in the following Psychometry Simsense:

The vision gets the impression of a terrified couple of 17-year old elves running down the halls of a distorted school, the hallway itself beginning to twist around itself like the bore of a rifle. As the teens desperately try to push two doors open leading to a staircase, dozens of spectral hands grab onto the door handles and pull them shut again. Behind them, a variety of angry, eyeless Sioux markings wearing ghosts march down the hallway, javelins in their hands and grim looks on their faces. As they finally manage to time their pushes right, they manage to charge down the stairs into a lower level which shouldn't even exist since there are no basement floors and they started from the ground floor. When they're in the pitch black darkness of a lower floor's hallway, electric lights flickering on and off, they see a hooded, lanky figure with gray skinned arms and bare feet in the distance, slowly lumbering closer with a hunched posture and a brown sack slung over one shoulder. It sings a phlegmatic, gurgling song:

"Come, little children, hide with me. The storm season is coming for thee. Let your parents and cousins die. Bleeding and burning in delight. Sacrifices for the dark. But you will live and leave your mark. We'll keep you safe, little children, see. Aren't you happy to get to know me?"

The voice sounds safer than the things chasing them, so the teens look to each other and between this thing and the violent ghosts they dared disturb, they get behind the creature which turns around and guides them into one of the empty classrooms. It opens the bag, revealing a bottomless void with a starry nebula inside and beckons them to get in as black, pit-eyed children wearing white gowns scream from the front of the class, alerting the ghosts to their presence. Left with little choice, the teens climb into the creature's bag and the vision ends.

Aftermath

The team returned to the J, providing the sim recording. The creature has been seens around the area trying to lure children into his bag. When confronted he just vanished, didn't enter the astral just vanished. The J paid out and is planning a more specialized team for tracking this new threat.

Rewards

--- Run Rewards (High, 16 RVP) 8,000 Nuyen (4 RVP)

10 Karma (10 RVP)

6 CDP (2 RVP)

Optional Rewards: Dr. Henry Wallace, Cybersingularity Seeker Doc at 6/3 (8 RVP) Fairlight Caliban w/ R4 Stealth Dongle (14 RVP) As much Psyche as you want at Gear Rates

Game Quotes

Amusing quote from game.

Player After Action Reports (AARs)

Nu11st@ck: "Yet some more spirits... This is getting out of hand, how many spirts am I going to have to deal with. Beyond that, we have fucking technomancer cats. I guess if we managed to keep more kids out of that village and out of that things sack this is a win, pity the money wasn't better though."