So the cops show up, right in the middle of John's divination ritual. Lefleur, however, answers the door, telling the cops that John can't come to the door, he's in the shower. He's definitely trying to give the impression that the two of them are gay. This really annoys John's player: it's okay that everyone thinks he's crazy (vampires are real, and I'm fighting them!) as long as they think he's straight. Heh, that's funny. Lenny listens in, but makes himself scarce once it's clear the cops are involved.
Lefleur challenges the cops' legal right to be there asking questions and detaining them, but the pair can be held for twenty four hours without officially being charged with anything (I think-LF's player is a law student, I'm sure he'd tell me if I got something wrong). They do need a warrant to search the house, however, which the lead detective Griggs gets surprisingly easily from the judge. Almost suspiciously easy. They search the house, take John's gun, and arrest both Lefleur and Whitfield, dragging them to the police station.
The police interrogate John and Lefleur, asking about their relationship with the domestic terrorist, criminal, and overall 'person of interest' Temperance Smith. Here we have a nice social conflict between Detective Griggs, who thinks that this entire situation is fishy, and the dynamic duo of Lefleur and Whitfield. Griggs has overall Good social skills, and starts off just trying to hammer John (in his mind, the weak link of the pair) with attacks, revealing all these crimes that Temper is suspected of, threatening John, etc. However, Lefleur and Whitfield, through a combination of Rapport and Deceit, change the Detective's tune. Griggs in particular is concerned by the irregularities involved in their arrest, thinking some larger game that reeks of politics is afoot.
He agrees to let them go before the twenty four hours is up, insisting that he's going to keep an eye on them. If only he had time to match the ballistics of John's rifle to some of the bullets found in Jimbo Hill's body. That would make for a much different conversation. Meanwhile, the two wild cards of the group, Lenny and Temper, make a plan to get Lefleur and John out of prison. Temper blowing up the wall with C4 was briefly considered, but the less obvious plan involved Lenny sneaking in with his chameleon cloak and passing out escape potions for the trio to escape police custody. It turns out that the first priority was to recover the tracking spell locator, and rescuing the pair was the secondary objective.
As John and Lefleur were being released, John's personal effects were given back to him. His wallet was missing all of its money, however, and his copper blasting rod was gone! Where could it be? Using his Wizard's Sight, he scanned the station, looking for anything out of the ordinary. No sign of his focus item, but it was clear that one of the police lieutenants was a vamp saliva addict. Rather than confronting him or somehow slipping him some antivenom to clear his mind, John and Lefleur left him to meet up with Temper and Lenny (preferably before they blew up the building or something), leaving his focus item behind. This really surprised me; if I thought he was just going to leave his item behind, I would have thrown him a FP or something. I guess he didn't want to attract any attention in the police station. Weird though. To ditch the detective trying to follow them, John hexes his car and they make their escape, stopping somewhere along the way to load up on there illegal weaponry (although Lenny still prefers the solid bat swing to a real weapon).
The four meet up, now able to use the tracking spell to hopefully find the sinister Rothchild, kick his ass, and find out where the rest of the vampires are. They use the tracking spell to find a small winery and bottling plant, where they bust in ready to kick ass. They find a few workers addicted to vampire saliva there, and one Red Court vampire. In exchange for his life, he agrees to tell them everything he knows. The vamps are set up like terrorists, in separate cells, to reduce the risk of being found out. The vampire only knows where a few others are, but evidently Rothchild knows where they're all at. He's key to the entire thing.
Amazingly Temperance doesn't kill the vampire, so the vampire escapes, as the Magnificent Four move to intercept Rothchild's next appointment in the middle of the night. Just as he's getting out of his car at another small local bottling plant, the kidnap van pulls right alongside him. Rothchild barely has time to call for help before he's grappled; he was trying to reach inside his pocket for some vial, but Temperance stopped him from pulling it out. Then two vampires appear at the windows with submachine guns and open up. Lefleur and John drag Rothchild into the kidnap van, Lenny takes cover, and Temper opens fire
After securing Rothchild with plenty of duct tape, John heads out of the van into cover, activating his air shield. Lenny moved up to the windows where the vampires were firing from, using a few hits from his baseball hit to disarm an attacker. Temper fired off a few bursts of suppressive fire on the other hand while Lefleur drove the van right through the doors of the bottling facility, surprising the hell out of the two vampires and getting himself stuck. John moved up to grab the disarmed vampire's gun, while the disarmed vampire, now very pissed about the whole baseball bat to the wrist thing, drops his flesh mask and grabs Lenny through the window, pissed. Lenny, now certain he was dealing with a nonhuman, responds with some of his trademarked Universal Solvent to the face. Ouch. John manages to finish off the vampire with a close range burst from its own submachine gun. A close ranged gun fight occurs between Lefleur, Temper, and the second vampire, quickly resulting in another dead vampire.
Lenny and Temper decide to exercise their core competency of Smashing Stuff to start breaking all of the bottles in the plant, to disrupt the vampire saliva distribution network. Lefleur and Whitfield, meanwhile, interrogate Rothchild, forcing antivenom down his throat. Rothchild starts telling them how horrible it was, being a slave of the vampires, but Lefleur sees through the BS and quickly elicits the real story from the vampire saliva addict. He was afflicted with a terminal illness and worked with the vampires as an expert, in exchange for a second shot at a life. Despite being addicted to their feelgood saliva, he entered into that partnership willingly. The plan was to addict most of the people in New Orleans with venom, allowing the Red Court to essentially run the entire thing. Pretty scary.
And then Rothchild tells them that one of the best ways to insure the spread of an infectious disease is to neutralize those who would treat it. John, always the self-centered one, figured this meant him, but Rothchild clarified: it was the convent affiliated with the Fellowship of St. Giles that treated the saliva addicts. Temper, now joining the conversation, pipes up that she meant to investigate them. Sure you were, Temper.
And that's where it was likely you could find Maya Stevenson and her vampiric scourge of baddies. Surprisingly, John and Lefleur agree to let Rothchild go, especially since that without becoming a vampire he was dead soon anyway. They don't bother to mention to Temper and Lenny Rothchild's full complicity with the vampire plan, his involvement in the likely death of a dozen nuns, or his other sins, so they let him go as well. Where's the justice here?
The now-damaged kidnap van drives off to the convent, where they meet with a Sister outside the place, as is typical. John uses his Sight to determine that she's addicted to Saliva; Temper grabs her while the others force antivenom down her throat. Maybe they should just get a tranquilizer gun instead loaded with antivenom. She starts weeping, telling them how horrible it was, and how evil Maya is. True dat: She wrote my universe's equivalent of the Twilight books.
She tells the story how the vampires used threats and lies to breach the threshold, then overcame the sisters, turned some of them and addicted the rest. A few managed to retain their humanity as just Infected, but it would only be a matter of time.
A plan was quickly devised, sticking to their strengths: BLOW SOMETHING UP! Temper and Lenny were going to climb onto the convent's roof, lace it with explosives, and at sunrise, expose all of the vampires to sunlight (and explosions, and shrapnel/falling rubble, whatever), then hit them with everything they had in one brutal assault. It was a good plan. Unfortunately, the Sister pointed out how the vampires would quickly suspect trouble if she didn't return quickly. She was clearly scared, but was willing to go back and pretend to be addicted; she did ask for a poison from Lenny (one WITH an antidote), which she took. If the plan worked, then Lenny could give her the antidote; if not, then at least she wouldn't be tortured, and any vampire who fed on her would also die. So they sent the poor sister back in, where she tried to fool the vampires. I actually tried to compel Lenny's aspect Works In Theory for some weird potion side effect to come up, but he paid me off. Jackass, ruining my fun. I guess Lenny draws the line at experimentation when poisoning nuns.
Into the nunnery she went, and I rolled her Deceit. It came up at -1. A quote from the table: "Everyone knows how good nuns are at lying." Yeah, not very.
The game was up. Lenny and Temper were up on the roof, planting explosives, when Temper saw Tim the Sniper come up onto the roof, laying down and being very sneaky. Temper turned on her flashlight, clearly illuminating the sneaky vampire for all to see. Other vampires had approached the stained glass windows while Tim went to the roof. Tim's snipery ambush ruined, battle quickly opened.
It was chaos. Raven came out of the convent with his katana, ready to fight John. He used some maneuvers, including a successful untrained Intimidation to put a maneuver on him, then attacked, dealing lots of stress to poor John. Which is kind of sad, since Raven is an embarrassment to vampires everywhere. Other vampires unleashed streams of automatic fire on the two guys on the ground, mainly Lefleur, who was busy trying to line up a shot on Raven. Raven managed to throw his trenchcoat over John's face, really pissing him off, before John fried Raven with lightning. Raven was rolling exceptionally well, however, and managed to survive. As he maneuvered for another katana assault, Lefleur shot him in the back. Raven's last words were of disbelief; he couldn't believe he was killed by LEFLEUR instead of someone badass. Then more automatic weapon fire came pouring out of the convent (you know, this might be the first time in the history of the english language that the prior sentence has been written
.
Meanwhile, on the roof, Temper turned herself into a monster scorpion and went after Tim the Sniper, who started using the patented Lefleur shuffle to move zones every round to give his slower attackers a -1 penalty on their attackers. He would aim at Temper, then fire, then aim, then fire...he inflicted quite a bit of stress. Lenny tried to stick him to the roof with really sticky glue, but it didn't quite work, since Tim is just too dodgy. Any time any vampire not named Tim climbs up to the roof, Lenny blows them to pieces with explosive flasks. At one point, two vampires come out onto the roof gingerly carrying holy water, which they then chuck at Temper. The burns! And Temper's Armor 2 and extra stress boxes, it does nothing! Take that, incredibly cheap Catch on your defensive powers! Temper, of course, doesn't know it's holy water; she thinks it's flesh-eating acid. Then Lenny blows up those vampires too.
Both Temper and Tim are inflicting some major damage on each other, with Tim inflicting a Grazed consequence on Temper. It's not often I get to put consequences on Temper. Then Temper finally catches up to Tim, getting a solid hit and causing the cry of "Use the clamps" to spring forth from the table. Really, that should be one of her aspects: the Clamps. Temper cuts off Tim's leg, causing him to stumble backward and fall off the roof. Goodbye Tim the Sniper.
Lefleur and John are returning fire; John, having already used his air shield ring this session, keeps throwing up powerful blocks and then spending more magical power to keep it running. It takes several of his actions, but on the other hand, he is mostly invincible for most of this fight. Evocation needs errata kind of badly, especially since that anyone with half a brain will just use one Element for just about everything, just buying up Control/Power in that one thing. Spirit works pretty well in that area, but John uses Air. His lack of a focus item is hurting him though, offensively, and he's not sure whether or not he wants to start blasting the inside of a convent with massive lightning attacks. Then four vampires jump out of the church, grab Lefleur, and pin him to the ground then smash his head against the pavement. Ouch. Lenny, ever vigilant during his own battle atop the roof, throws down some bottled sunlight, causing the vamps to escape and run shrieking back into the church. Go Lenny.
Finally, John has had enough, and throws down some Fate Points to launch a two zone evocation attack, making every vampire inside extra crispy. Seizing the advantage, Lefleur runs inside to finish off more vampires, where he gets attacked by two other vampires from another zone. They finish him off, Taking Him Out, and then drag him inside further inside the convent. Poor bastard. By now, Lenny and Temper are done on the roof, and they climb down to continue the ground assault and recover Lefleur. John follows, his evocation air shield now out of juice.
As they head deeper inside, Maya strikes from ambush, hiding in a corner and waiting for John to walk by. She's sneaky, and she's damn good with that shotgun of hers. Maya hits John for 9+ stress from ambush at close range, now giving him a minor and a moderate condition from the shotgun blast. More vampires run out into the hallway from the cells, some dressed in habits. Temper fends off the vampires with claws and tail while Lenny whips out more bottled sunlight. John responds with an absolutely devastating evocation attack against Maya, but she dodges some of the blast, ending up only horribly injured. Just like John. She fires a second shotgun blast point blank into John; many other players would simply accept being taken out at this point, but not John's. Instead. John takes the severe consequence of Punctured Lung and loses even more stress. Although he really shouldn't be able to talk, he quips "I've thought of an ending for your next book. All the vampires die, forever." Then takes a second minor mental consequence and roasts poor evil Maya (John's taunt made her roll like shit, not that it would have mattered). The other vampires flee from the sunlight and aren't seen from again. They'd like to go after them, but let's face it, the group isn't in much condition to. Except Lenny; he cheerfully points out that he's fine. Untouched, even.
Thanks Lenny.
And with that we ended the session and the adventure, with a massive, massive fight against Maya and her cronies. Maya spent most of the fight finishing off and turning any nuns that she could, just to make it a completely hollow victory. The Sister they sent in: she died (but took two vampires with her b/c of the poison). I'm not going to tell if she died because of the vampires, or because of that massive two zone evocation John threw out.
So the group finds Lefleur in another room (they didn't kill him b/c of professional courtesy: he is a vampire, after all) and evacuate, right before one of Maya's customary firebombs burns the convent to ruins. I know I considered having Maya run away, but she had a long invested in the plan, and she had stripped away most of the group's stress and item uses. She wasn't going to have a better chance than this, so she took it and failed.
Everyone got a skill point and a point of refresh from reaching this milestone. Lefleur increased his Intimidation to Superb, grabbed more Incite Emotion powers (now including fear, so he can attack dudes/ugly women as well as hot chicks with his mental attacks
Lenny just banked the refresh, and Temper increased her Fists to Superb and got even more strength for her scorpion form.