Session 9 - 2026-04-12T00:00:00.000-04:00

Player Characters

Recap

With the door open the group moved inside leaving Paul to keep watch upstairs on the street. They took an employee’s only door to the basement. Within appeared to be a fairly normal basement, but beyond the boxes and shelves was a dusty curtain drawn across one side of the basement. Gus decided it was best to not leave Paul alone and returned upstairs. They moved forward and pulled the curtains aside revealing a pair of cells and an operating area.

The cells contained 3 occupants each. They were obviously Lunatics due to the growths breaking through their skin, but they also had had their jaws sown shut with wire, seemingly to minimize the noise they could make, and had their finger nails removed, likely to keep them from hurting themselves or others. Meanwhile, the operating area had a corpse, and a table for tools and drawers along with some extracted New Moon.

Purrcival and Pete set to looking around for useful information, eventually finding a manifest of all the “product” moving through the place and a journal which seemed to be notes on studying the Lunatics that were being dissected and harvested.

Up above, a police car was approaching and Paul decided to give a loud whistle and pack up his busking, while Gus pretended to be a wild animal. The car approached Paul and assessed him, but after a quick back and forth the officer decided he didn’t want to deal with the paperwork of questioning further or arresting Paul and told him to head over to the Entertainment District. Paul acted like he would comply.

The others heard the whistle and chose to quickly surface, but on the way out one of the occupants grabbed Pete’s arm and made muffled pleading noises at him. He reassured them that he was working to save them and would return and so they released him.

Up on the surface the crew realized the threat was gone and decided it was time to leave, but not before doing what they could to expose the vile place by dragging the body from the basement out onto the street and leaving an obvious trail. Rhys used his bright servant to do this, while the crew left with plans to head to Minced Minks'.

Meanwhile, while chilling at her room at the Celestial Sips a call came in for Velvet. Despite the odd hour, she answered it and a hasty Naomi explained that some thugs were coming to the Sips disguised as Usonian military. She could explain more later, but for now they were coming to torch the place. Her, Perry, and security were on their way now. Velvet sprung into action, warning Jimmie who was working in his office, convincing the few clients in the cafe to leave, informing the staff on hand, Pearl and Quince, and making sure the speakeasy was locked down and concealed. She then set herself outside to wait for the arrival of the threat.

The rest of the crew arrived at Luther’s and used a payphone to call and let him know they were here, he let them into the back of the butcher’s shop and they spoke about what they had seen and found. After some discussion it was decided that Pete would stay and help decode the manifest, which was written in a simple, underworld cypher, while Luther worked his way through the journal to learn what they could. The rest of the crew decided it was high time to head back to the Sips to check in and maybe get some rest while they waited to hear from Luther and Pete.

While tensions built as those who planned to defend the Sips waited for their assailants, the rest of the Crew who had left Luther’s arrived just before the chaos, taking some time to set traps, position themselves, and get ready to defend their home and livelihood.

A short while after they were all in position, a pair of army trucks started loudly rolling down the block. Velvet took cover behind a parked vehicle and as soon as the trucks stopped launched an assault with her blood magic. As panic ensued and soldiers in slightly off Usonian army kit poured out the fight began. It was a nearly one sided slaughter, as the soldiers attempted to get to the Sips and were quickly whittled down due to the Crew’s efforts and traps.

In the fray a couple of noteworthy things occurred. One of the officers who had remained in the truck unleashed a blast of shadow-stuff that was very reminiscent of one of the members of Project Eclipse, Kent Allard, which damaged a chunk of the Sips. Naomi and the back up arrived after the initial attack and crashed into one of the trucks disabling it. Paul took advantage of a fleeing soldier losing his footing and pinned him and convinced him to give up.

While the battle had been raging Pete and Luther had learned some things from the manifest and journal. The manifest indicated that they seemed to be nabbing strays and addicts off the street to fuel the small operation and all told had grabbed about 60 since they started some months ago. It also revealed that while most of the New Moon was being shipped out for processing at another location, about 10% of it was going straight to Lilia Duran, head of the family. The journal revealed that they were studying the Lunatics as much as harvesting from them, and that it seemed that information was being passed back to BH who had been funding this. Additionally, with some handwriting from some paperwork Luther had on hand, he was able to show that the hand writing in the journal was none other than Hal L. Apeeno’s, implying he was directly involved. This info in tow Luther offered to give Pete a ride back to Sips and they could figure out a plan in the morning with the others.

Meanwhile the remaining soldiers attacking the Sips began to flee as quickly as possible on foot, but not before the Crew could dispatch the few who didn’t, including the two leading officers who had called the retreat. Just as the last shot was fired and the dust settled Minks and Pete showed up with what they had learned to find the devastated street, but otherwise mostly intact Sips and her Crew. And strangely despite gun shots and other things going on, no police sirens were heard in the now quiet streets.

The group set to clean up, with Minks offering to help, he left to fetch his apprentice and truck since he’d come in street clothes and a personal car. The Crew moved the bodies into the pair of merc trucks and with surprising ease despite their damage moved the merc trucks from the street to their garage. They also took their prisoner inside. When Minks returned with his apprentice, a Faerie resembling a tick who was named Wilson, they set to cleaning up the front of the building and the street while the crew began speaking with their captive and the two bodies of the officers.

The soldier didn’t know much, but as long as they were willing to let him live and make a quick phone call to his family he would cooperate willingly. They learned a few things from him. Firstly, he wasn’t magically marked, only the officers had been. Secondly, they were a band of Raskan ex-pats who operated as mercs for hire. Third, the mission was to burn down the Sips, nothing more. They could try to steal the Moon Dust and Moonshine, but that was secondary. Fourth, the uniforms were provided by the contractor as both a cover and a frame. And finally, in his personal opinion the contractor wanted this as some kind of retaliation because you don’t hire mercs to torch a civilian operation unless you really mean business.

Pete was also able to use his magic to ask a couple of questions of the dead officers. The first one was asked who hired them, and while the answer of BH was both obvious and not very useful, it did prompt the captive to reveal that the merc group had been hired by the same to guard a pair of facilities where Lunatic research had been going on. He let them know the addresses and that each facility had about a dozen on site security along with a handful of scientists, though he’d only been at each a few days each.

The other question, Naomi used, asking who the leak in the Usonian military was. The corpse replied simply with “Townsend”. Naomi knew who that was, and Velvet had very briefly met him during the party. He was a Major and a war hero and if he was the leak it was both possible he was BH and that he might have some other assets or allies in the military. Naomi would have to work with trusted sources to try to root out the corruption and that would take some time. In the meantime she instructed the Crew to not go overboard, but to defend themselves and she’d help how she could for now. She also explicitly told them not to go after or tip their hand towards Townsend, who was part of a base in the Docks District.

She also took some time to explain that Velvet had been passing reports to her to feed up the chain and while bureaucracy was preventing things from happening immediately, those conversations had tipped her off to some purchases and activity that looked a little off and indicated a leak, combining that with that she had been half monitoring the very merc group which struck had let her put some pieces together to warn the Sips about what was happening.

It was late and the Crew had had an eventful last few days. It was time to rest and regroup before they made their next move. Would they approach the King of the Jungle Club, investigate either of the Lunatic Research facilities supposedly run by BH, hit the books at the library again, or all three? Meanwhile, what would happen with Hal L. Apeeno and the Duran Crime Family situation? Were they part of this, or just in bed with the wrong people? And how could the Crew find out if Townsend was BH, or just another piece in the game?