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Let’s Get Physical
When last we left our intrepid Mages they were off to investigate a gym in China Town. this is not because they had any interest in joining one, much to the disappointment of a certain Adamantine Arrow Sentinel who wishes they would, but because they have the feeling that something strange is afoot at the Celestial Body Qui-Gong. Like a good Scooby Gang they are off to investigate!
They decide to approach the dojo as if they are prospective members. This seems to make sense since they don’t know for sure that anyone at the gym has done anything wrong. Over the course of a day/evening the various members of the cabal file in to observe a class. The woman behind the counter, Busy Bea (because she’s busy like a bee!), is more than happy to let them watch a class. She’s proud of her family’s gym! The dojo belongs to her father, and she and her husband help him with teaching classes and running the business side of things. Those who can read auras decide to do so, and I tell them that everyone at the gym seems calm and happy. When no one bats an eyelash at that emphasis I have my aura readers make an additional WITS+COMP roll, which is promptly failed. Had it not been a rousing failure I would have said that everyone, including your fellow mages, looks calm and happy. Since it was a rousing failure I somehow managed to restrain myself from giving them the additional information.
And the Mages decided to observe, and even try out, some of the classes.
What they didn’t know is that I had pulled this scenario straight from “Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss“. It’s a go-to book for any World of Darkness GM, but it’s best in the hands of a Mage GM. (/plug)
You see, the people running this dojo were also Mages, and skilled enough to disguise several things. One of these things was the fact that they were masking the aura of any living being in the dojo to look “calm and happy”, a combined spell they liked to call “Happy Customer”. This was meant to disguise the fact that the students’ auras actually were sickly, twitchy, and borderline psychotic. They were also disguising the supernal resonance of the moves they were teaching the students. And so, not penetrating this disguise, the Mages not only obsrved the class, but some of them were fool enough to join in!
This is where I wish they had better DEX+ATHLETICS scores! Had they actually been successful at replicating the moves they could have been touched by the abyssal taint! Instead they just looked rather silly and embarrassed themselves in front of the more skilled students. Because they did not manage to replicate the moves, they didn’t feel any different after trying to perform them, and so they didn’t yet realize that anything was amiss.
This was going to call for a subtle investigation, and really… what could possibly be more subtle than knocking out the electricity for an entire city block?
Coincidence… I Think Not
The Mages don’t have much to go on, but they know that the person with the tentacles sprouting from his chest used to be a police officer, and they sorta know what he looked like before he turned into something with tentacles. Whatever happened must have happened recently. It was time to scan the papers and call in some police contacts.
As an FBI Agent, Argus knows a few officers of the law. He’s able to track down some information on people who had gone out on medical leave recently, one in particular who looks like a promising candidate. This particular individual wound up in the hospital after a brutal fight during a “domestic dispute” call left him with a punctured lung. Punctured lung… surgery on his chest… tentacles coming out of his chest… I believe we have a winner!
It is at this point that I must let you all in on a little secret. One of the folks from a long-ago game group of mine is an ambulance driver. One of the folks at this Mage table was part of that group, and is a lung doctor. It was impossible for me to pass up the opportunity of having both of them show up as NPCs at this juncture: getting the man to the hospital and then giving him a lung transplant. The beauty of this was in letting the lung doctor (he plays Argus) explain to himself how the surgery went. It’s a wonderful way to make sure that those annoying player-types don’t question your lack of knowledge on a subject like lung tranplants!
And so, Argus’ player explained to Argus the successful lung transplant, and then Argus tried to convince his player to give up the identity of the person whose lung was inserted when Argus’ player knows full well that he shouldn’t be handing that information out to just anyone.
It only now occurs to me that this may have been when I broke Argus’ player.
While Argus and his player argued with himselves?… each other?… themself?… other members of the cabal tried to find out more about this domestic dispute. As it turned out, the couple in question had been engaged to be married, and things had been going quite swimmingly. Sure, there were some tense moments involved in planning the wedding because of dealing with the families, but nothing all that unusual. The bride-to-be joined a gym in order to lose those last few pounds before her final fitting, and to help herself relax. She was studying Qui-Gong at this new place that opened up recently in China Town, not far from where she worked. Ironically, it was a couple of weeks after starting the classes that the blushing bride started to get… twitchy. “I always thought that kind of thing was supposed to help people relax”, her fiance said, “but this time not so much.” Their final fight got vicious, and a neighbor called the police. When the officer arrived the husband to be let him in. He simply didn’t know what else to do. The woman he loved was having some kind of psychotic break and he couldn’t handle it alone. She needed help. She attacked the officer, and they fell into a glass table. He wound up with a large glass shard sticking out of his chest, she wound up with one slicing her throat open. She was pronounced dead on the scene. The officer was alive, but his lung was collapsing.
In the kind of quirk of fate that can only happen in the World of Darkness the woman and the officer had the same blood type. She was gone either way, and she was listed as an organ donor, so the fiance told them to transplant her lung into the officer. It was the fight with her that caused his injury, and in saner times she would have wanted to put that right.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I think I do have a flyer from the dojo sitting around here somewhere… yes… on the computer desk. Sure you can have it. I certainly don’t want it.”
I Don’t Feel Tardy
Class was indeed about to begin, but who was about to get schooled? A ranting madman holds Aenaiyah and several others as a captive audience to his lecture on the dangers of city life. Argus stands behind him, invisible for the moment, and a quick switch to Prime Sight shows him that Aenaiyah’s fellow students are Sleepers. Someone will have to get them out of there before anything inexplicable happens.
Enter our second Acanthus Mage and friends. With a quick twisting of Fate she chooses a path that leads to Aenaiyah and Argus. That she has a sympathetic connection to both of them doesn’t hurt any, simply follow the Fate line!
Eventually the others arrive. Argus holds his action, waiting for a good moment to strike (he was smart like that once upon a time!), and eventually it arrives. He steps out of of sight range of the Sleepers present to drop invisibility, as the newly arrived Neils erects a Forces Wall between the lunatic and his victims. Argus steps out with gun drawn, and badge prominently displayed.
“Stop right there, FBI. Get your hands up where I can see them, now!”
(Or something to that effect)
At which point all hell breaks loose.
The madman whirls on Argus, who is standing directly behind him to draw his attention away from the kidnappees, a clever move. His plan works, and more than that it screens the tentacle that lashes out of the man’s chest at Argus’ throat.
Fortunately the Sleeper witnesses blew their WITS+COMPOSURE rolls. Apparently they were distracted by the young girl who wandered over to untie them. They hadn’t been well tied (apparently I roll a lot of rocks) and she managed to get them loose. She then used her Direction Sense merit to lead them back to the platform and away from the fight.
And what a fight it was!
Argus stuck to his service pistol for his first attack so as not to reveal Magic to Sleepers. The Flesh Intruder (though they did not have that name for it yet) lashed out with more tentacles (it has several attacks per round) and did a lovely job of poking holes through our favorite Guardian. Sadly, not lovely enough.
Nokoni was able to patch Argus up, while Neils “I Don’t Need No Stinkin Veil” of the Free Council hurled some Celestial Fire at the creature. Molly the Mastigos punched it in what was left of its brain, while Rex showed off his skill with a nail-gun-walking-cane.
The creature, not one to go quietly, got some more lashes in before finally being subdued by fire. The Mages quickly conferred and decided that burning the body utterly would be best. Before they did that though, they looked for any information they could find as to who this man had once been. There wasn’t much to go on. Rex was able to make brief contact with his ghost, but only enough to know that the man had in fact been a police officer. He was just far too gone to find out more than that.
This will bear further investigation, as soon as Aenaiyah stops screaming at Argus for waiting so long to untie her.
Mass Transit Abomination
With the club issues settled the Mages had a few days of peace before the next bit of news arrived via their favorite conspiracy paper “Sick Sad World”.
It seems that women in the city were being kidnapped, but only for a few hours before being let go. It was exactly the sort of odd situation that surely no good could come of. Sounds like a job for… the Mage PCs Who Had Not Yet Come Up With a Cabal Name! (Not very catchy, is it?)
With the Stars (in alphabetical order):
- Aenaiyah: Mysterium/Acanthus
- Argus: Guardian of the Veil/Obrimos
- Marissa: Apostate/Acanthus
- Molly: Apostate/Mastigos
- Neils: Free Council/Obrimos
- Nokoni: Adamantine Arrow/Thyrsus
- Rex: Free Council/Moros
Through a combination of obtaining police reports (Argus) and twisting fate to stumble upon newspaper articles (Marissa) the group manages to track down a few of the kidnapping victims’ names and addresses. They decide to split the list while interviewing the formerly kidnapped women. Aenaiyah and Molly pose as a journalist (Aenaiyah actually was one before her Awakening) and journalism intern looking for some additional information for a newspaper article that they are writing on the mysterious kidnappings. Argus flashes his FBI badge to talk to some of the others in a more official capacity with Rex as his partner. Neils and Nokoni argue about who will be keeping an eye on Marissa (she is only a child after all), meaning that neither one of them was actually paying any attention when she wandered off to get ice cream. Ultimately they found her and bought her a Wii to keep her busy while the others brought back the information they had obtained from the victims. It seems that each woman was grabbed in the area of a particular train station in the city. This station is conveniently located next to a bar, which is probably where the women were targeted. Oddly enough, each of the women tell a similar story – the kidnapping was a weird sort of “Scared Straight” scenario in which they were kidnapped, brought to a disused subway tunnel, and ranted at regarding how unsafe it is for young women to be alone in the city at night.
If only the Mages knew a woman with shocking purple hair and a slutty wardrobe who might be kidnapped at a bar…
Oh! Hello Aenaiyah!
And so the plan is set. Aenaiyah will go to the bar, where she will hopefully be approached by the kidnapper. Sounds like a great plan to me! Oh, and Argus will turn invisible and follow her when she gets dragged off. :::yawn::: When “last call” is made and still no kidnapper approaches Aenaiyah (she can tell that the random drunks trying to get lucky just don’t have the necessary Fate aura to be the kidnapper), they think the evening might be a loss…unless… the kidnapper might not actually approach the women at the bar, he might just follow them down to the train platform. And so Aenaiyah, with invisible Argus in tow, heads down to the platform where she is promptly kidnapped and dragged away.
She is dragged through the maze of tunnels to a disused area where a couple of other women are tied up waiting for the arrival of the evening’s final student.
Class is now ready to begin!
No Mage a l’Orange?
So now, with the Mages and Werewolves having suddenly become BFFs, it was time for them to come up with a plan. This was somewhat irksome, as the Werewolf GM and I had never anticipated this happenstance. After all, in the weeks following the announcement that there would be a campaign starting, and in the sessions leading up to this one, the Werewolves were throwin’ down! They were all over the message board wondering whether Mages tasted best with ketchup, mustard, or barbecue sauce. Perhaps they should be marinated? Broiled? Baked? Fried? What side dishes go best with Mage? Fortunately there is a large group of Mages so we can experiment with recipes! Nom nom nom.
That the Mages, after all of this, were honestly trying to warn these people of potential danger was beyond ludicrous. That after all of this talk about how they better skewer those Mages while they’re still young and squishy the Werewolves instead asked for treats and belly scratches made me want to cry.
It still does.
Despite my fondest wishes the two groups decided to work together. Argus managed to track down the NBC employee and discovered that there was to be another club night that very evening! The NBC employee had an invitation but didn’t want it. He also had a location (the club moves every night), and gave that information up. The Werewolves were also able to come up with invitations and a location, and the locations matched up. So far, so good. The groups scouted out the place, a construction site in Midtown Manhattan, and saw that there were temporary walls and such being put up inside. It all made sense for what they would expect from a temporary nightclub that moved around the city. They needed only to wait until later that evening to get some answers.
And so they waited.
As the time drew near they noticed that someone was standing near the entrance to the temporary structure. Clearly he was some sort of bouncer. Aenaiyah cast “Perfect Moment” to improve her chances of a clean entry. Argus went invisible, again (bastard!), and Werewolf Matteus laid in wait as Aenaiyah made her approach.
And a slut-tastic approach it was! She was all batting eyelashes and “Oh my, what big strong biceps you have!”
Naturally the bouncer let her in, which was really not supposed to happen. That hadn’t been part of the plan at all, which really shouldn’t have surprised me but in my defense it was only my third session. I was only just starting to see this accursed pattern.
And then Werewolf Matteus made the bouncer his bitch.
That wasn’t supposed to happen either.
Why is it that what I plan and what takes place ain’t ever exactly similar?
Mage Mistress 