This Is Halloween H20
| This Is Halloween H20 | ||||||||||
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| Part of Hail to the Pumpking | ||||||||||
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| Factions Involved | ||||||||||
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ShadowHaven Pumpking Jack Asahiro Kunitoshi Finnigans Jennifer Ashton | Horizon | Spirits of Man | ||||||||
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Triage Fennec Spriggan Eidolon | Dawkins Group | Tsernoz, Whirlwind of the Apocalypse | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | ||||||||||
| Seven of Eidolon's organs were destroyed. Triage had to accept a lifetime bargain with Grand Duke Zaleos. | Horizon's noospheric brainwashing operation was destroyed. Four Dawkins Group adepts are dead. | The spirit lost the duel to Spriggan. | ||||||||
| Ascension/Initiation/Submersion Ordeal | ||||||||||
Summary
The team saves Halloween. Again.
Background
There's been all kinds of odd happenings in Sophocles (what else is new?) but this time it's people calling for Emperor Yasuhito's glory and buying Horizon products en masse like rabid animals.
The Meet
Bone Daddy, the Tailored Greyware FBR of Sophocles and handyman, meets the team at Sophocles' plaza where the festival's due to be arranged and informs them that locals have become increasingly violent and rabid in their love for the JIS emperor. He's concerned about potential riots and wants the team to stop a bloodbath from occurring. There's also a request from a Shiawase subsidiary to talk about the festival, but he doesn't trust the Community Council to go there in case they get brainwashed just like they did with Horizon. The team needs allies, desperately, so they have to set out and find ways to minimize casualties.
The Plan
Go talk to Grand Duke Zaleos, Ezekyle Burton, the Sophocles Community Council and the Shiawase representative, then try to piece together what they might be able to do.
The Run
At first, the gang pays a visit to Ezekyle Burton and ask for his aid in the matter. The child therapist very openly admits that his knees are functional but not very strong, he's an Aware ghoul and has no combat ability, but he knows a bit about the region and can provide his knowledge in exchange for a favor: go to a shedim in the area and kill it. The team agrees!
Next, they pay a visit to Asahiro Kunitoshi, the representative of Shiawase. He wants Shiawase to sponsor this year's Halloween festival but needs the council to approve of it since he has no intentions of strongarming his presence there unless the locals approve of it. The team is highly suspicious of corporate influence and promise to take his offer to the council, but don't directly agree to work for him.
Finally, the council. The meeting is tense, since Eunie, Raphael and Eustace are strongly anti-corporate for various reasons. Jennifer agrees to vote for Shiawase once Eidolon promises to pay it back to her (uh oh) later and Mason is indifferent. Triage manages to convince the council to vote no and remain as independent as possible, even if it's the harder path.
From here, it's time to kill a shedim. With Pumpking Jack's Search power and Fennec's ability to Matrix search traffic feeds, they find one Saul Amundi in Hollywood. Meticulously planning their breach, they do find Saul but he's far less combative than the team expected. Despite astral perception confirming the being to be an abandoned vessel possessed by a Horror Show, the spirit claims to not remember taking the body and avoids violence whenever possible, having already tangled with runners before. Unfortunately, Eidolon called Asahiro about the shedim's location because he doesn't trust these evil monsters as far as he can throw them. The adept shows up astrally projected and crashes into Saul and the team's limited astral presence barely slows the vice-president down. Desperate to run away, Saul gets exorcised from his body and uses Compulsion in a last ditch effort to make Asahiro retreat. Surprisingly, he manages to just barely succeed in controlling Asahiro's mind and makes him project back to his body. This gives Saul enough time to gather his things, get back in his body and escape -- something half of the team is happy about and the other half very distrustful of. Looks like they won't be getting Ezekyle's aid after all.
With no Shiawase support and no Burton, the line of allies is nearly zero. Spriggan calls on her direct subordinates from the Finnigans to aid and Eidolon knows of a very