The Slippery Bastard
| The Slippery Bastard | |||||||||
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| Part of The Crow of Seattle | |||||||||
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| Factions Involved | |||||||||
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ShadowHaven Mr. Herenight Wychking | Shedim | ||||||||
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Babylon Mojo Joe Broken-Hand | Hopper | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Mojo's body was almost snatched. | Hopper lost a lot of spare bodies | ||||||||
| Mojo's and Hallvall's lifestyle was changed. | |||||||||
Summary
The weird terrifying spirit that's haunted Mojo gets its comeuppance.
The Discovery
Mojo's been tracked and haunted by a peculiar spirit. He has tried to look for more intel about it. He recently gained temporary access to PRiSM's libraries regarding spirit knowledge and found out several details. Judging by the fact that the thing has a palpable physical presence, it can't be a demon. Demons often need to Inhabit specific bodies, and this one obviously has several. Demons are ruled out. It can't be a common Materialization spirit. The power Mojo felt personally when Assensing the creature's aura during his astral scouting has signs that hint towards Deathly Aura. Only a handful of spirits are known to have it and you narrow it down to three possibilities: Necro Spirits, Shedim and Great Form Blood Spirits. When the options are corpse-possessing spirits that started the New Islamic Jihad, spirits that come from the realm of the dead and literal blood magic, you know things aren't fun.
Great Form Blood Spirits do not have Realistic Form however and often just straight up Materialize. As a result, you can rule them out; this thing has managed to fool people into thinking it's a physical presence through and through. Necro Spirits last a period of days after which they tend to fall apart unless they're bound spirits. Free Necro Spirits are rare and tend to become somewhat solitary or wander graveyards and mass graves. If they leave a body, that body melts into shapeless, unusable broken down molecular biomatter. Shedim on the other hand can keep corpses intact for as long as they want. Shedim are the things that despise all life, are omnicidal, possess exclusively corpses or the bodies of people whose aura has left their body (like if a mage is projecting, their body is empty and a shedim can take it). In addition, it's hard for them to just come here. Master Shedim generally need to summon them from the deep and distant metaplane they originate from. The most well known one was in DC, but that portal was closed decades ago.
The two leave Saskatoon, AMC after the Norse Cowboy gives Mojo a spell formula for Sunbeam. They return to Seattle and get a knock on their door from a bleeding, snivelling Taco Temple employee. He appears to have explosives strapped to his chest and demands the team opens the door. After he gives his delivery, cutter nanites execute the courier which takes time to clean up. The two go on a ride to open the item and find it to be a spell formula containing a ward and obfuscating ward as well as a letter offering Mojo condolences with his spirit troubles. He suspects the sender is Charon, judging by the brand of a crow on the package. Wychking and Babylon are requested for aid but Wychking is too busy in Morocco, killing a Beetle Hive. Babylon projects over and checks the formula for safety - it appears to be dark mage material; Babylon confirms it's probably Charon who sent the ward, but her motives remain unclear. She also offers to help with the peculiar shedim.
The Trap
The team sets up a warehouse with a ward, Wychking sends a corps cadavre over to help and Babylon helps set up an ambush. With Guts imbibed, the team manages to lure the Hopper Shedim nearby but Mojo, who acts as bait, is immune to fear. He is not immune to the Compulsion power, forced to advance further outside. The fight outside is messy, containing swerving jeep trucks and Steyr TMPs. The spirit forces Mojo to project and hops into the magician's body, but gets cornered by the black mage's mana barriers. Once it realizes it's about to get overpowered, it abandons the puppets working alongside him and bounces; Babylon continues tracking it but it moves too fast to be tracked. Nevertheless, it's repelled for the first time.
Aftermath
Mojo's dejected by the shedim escaping again, but has good idea of what the creature is now and has ideas of how to prepare for it trying anything in the future. Babylon contacts Herenight, who agrees to look into the shedim outbreak in Seattle. He appears aware that Charon is a Master Shedim, but also has taken plans to counteract it with mental training like Memory Palace and laying groundwork for future jobs: metaplanar quests in Yellowstone and stealing Asahiro Kunitoshi's spirit-slaying sword, Sohayamaru. Since shedim live in the deep metaplanes, destroying their spirit formulae is almost impossible. A blade that can permanently destroy spirits is invaluable for spirits from deep planes, something the Black Lodge certainly wants. Babylon agrees, having a grudge on Kunitoshi already.
Rewards
- 18 Karma (18 RVP)
- 8,000 Nuyen for magical gear like Possession Homunculi, Reagents, Spell Formulae (2 RVP)
- 2 CDP
Babylon may acquire Spirit Hunter 1 for 20 RVP
Player After Action Reports (AARs)
Broken-Hand: "First off, my throat hurts like a bitch. Second off. fuck body snatchers. Third off, WHEN we find him. I'm going to make sure to give him the pummling of a lifetime."
Mojo Joe: "So much to say... so little time. But... despite all that I feel... it was an honor to meet one of my heroes in the flesh. And maybe even consider her a friend. Heh... younger me would be flipping his shit right now. But I am not giving up. I will find that thing, and I will be ready for when I do. One day I will make him proud... one day. But first, I gotta pay rent then ask out a girl. Please do wish me luck.
Babylon
It would seem that I have a fan. A young voodoo mage who has heard of my reputation in the spirit community and the shadows. How endearing. He requested my aid in dealing with a spirit that had been giving him trouble, which as it turns out is a shedim variant I hadn't encountered before - a "hopper", specialized in hopping between vessels as its name implies. The slippery bastard was impossible to pin down, even after I trapped it in a mana barrier and exorcised it from its vessel it managed to get away. Turns out it had another vessel nearby, probably a whole chain of them as an escape route. Still, it was defeated, and hopefully won't be bothering the lad for a while. My research shows that elemental gold is the key to disabling its powers, so he should at least be more prepared next time.