The Spice Must Flow
| The Spice Must Flow | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven Anastasia Martella | Hungry Vampire | ||||||||
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Neijing Chersky |
Hungry Vampire Goth GF | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Both knocked unconscious and shipped to CalFree | |||||||||
Summary
A murder mystery at a remote spice oneiro plantation. After extensive legwork and much pulling of hair, a security adept was fedaykin'd and knocked unconscious, it was determined she was dating the vampiric culprit, then she was used as a hostage to negotiate a peaceful-ish resolution.
Background
Among Ms. Martella's business ventures is an Oneiro plantation in the Mohave, growing the desert-requiring 'dreamsage'. Recently, it had been having disappearances every day or two for several weeks, with security unable to discover the cause, and so outside specialists were hired.
The Meet
Ms. Martella hired the upstairs floor of a fancy club for the meet, a cyber'd up bodyguard letting the runners through at the door. She was fond of Neijing's fine clothing and... nonverbally disdainful of Chersky's rumpled attire. She outlined the disappearances and offered to provide transport with any illegal gear the runners wished. Neijing attempted to negotiate for higher pay and was mildly successful, and also earned herself a hot lady in a suit's commcode.
The Plan
The runners were given a flight out to the installation, reviewing the security footage on the way, finding no visible trace save for some sand disturbed by someone invisible. After arriving, they interviewed various witnesses, one who was near to a disappeared individual reporting that all sound cut out before their companion was snatched without a trace.
Calling Ms. Martella for employee records, they determined that no trolls had disappeared, so evidently something was dragging them off. Using the Search spirit power on a dead employee's picture, they found a corpse buried in a sand dune. An autopsy determined it to be exsanguinated, and Neijing easily recognised the marks of a vampire's teeth, with Chersky rather discombobulated at the, ah, source of this knowledge. Putting this together with the cutting out of sound, Neijing determined that a banshee was the culprit, and a powerful one to have developed that power.
The Run
Returning to the compound, the runners used the fact that a banshee could not conceal their awakened nature for long to narrow the suspect pool down to Awakened elves. Of the roughly hundred staff, eight alive and two missing were elves, two awakened among those remaining (a cottagecore parabotanist and a goth security adept) and one awakened among the first to go missing (a security mysad who was dating the goth security adept).