Session 10: Ghostly Dealings Part 3

 July 13th, 2013 

The motley regrouped the next morning to finally visit Max and see what was up with the guy. They started by picking up some ghost-hunting props to support their claim that they were amateur ghost hungers, then hit up his condo.

At first Max didn't believe their cover story. Tia eventually convinced him (barely), and he let them in for “five minutes” to poke around a bit and take readings. Everything in his condo was neatly arranged, in perfect order with nary a paperclip out of place, a sure sign of OCD. While the ghost-hunting gear was just props, the group used their Kenning to determine that there were at least three supernatural presences there—not counting themselves, of course. One was clearly Rose, who'd tagged along, and who Max had briefly glanced at. Another was a Hedge gate in the living room closet. The third was masked, so the group couldn't easily identify what or where it was.

About this time, Eric grew tired of playing by the universe's rules apparently, and decided to announce that Max had a “gateway to Hell” in his closet. He threw it open—activating the Hedge gate—but Max seemed unfazed. So Eric tried to shove Max through the door.

Max ducked Eric's attempt and grabbed his arm, swinging the younger Changeling around to connect with the door-frame face-first. Then Max pulled out a cell phone and threatened to call the cops. Eric lit up with electricity and tried to fry the phone, succeeding on the second attempt, at which point Max went for the kitchen where he kept a shotgun in the broom closet. Chiara went to open the Hedge gate again to scope things out, and Eric and Francois got into a brief stand off with Max that quickly devolved into a fight. Max got one shot off on Francois, but then was floored by tripping over Simon when Max made a break for the closet door, and Eric and Francois promptly beat him into unconsciousness and beyond. Francois then staunched the bleeding at Eric's insistence while Eric and the girls searched the apartment. They found only a notebook with numbers in it, then fled through the Hedge gate with Max in Francois' pot when they heard approaching sirens. Eric then destroyed the gate on the other side.

The gate itself led to a Hedge path that bordered the same lighthouse they'd seen before, but as before there was no path leading toward it. The group stood there, arguing, until Eric noticed that the Hedge had fallen unnaturally quiet around them. They immediately beat it out of there, returning to the park where it all started.

Once there, Eric puzzled out the numbers—they were a sequence of coordinates, but polar coordinates rather than GPS coordinates, and with no center point listed—and then he and the girls eventually plotted them out and tried to discern where the center point was. They eventually guessed it to be in a Lowe's parking lot west of town, and used the Hedge to head over that way. They found the gate and opened it, but this time instead of seeing the Hedge, they saw only a dark room beyond. With the help of a road flare, Eric lit up the place, unveiling an underground room that was awfully neat and organized for being a basement with a dirt floor. They found they were in the basement of the lighthouse itself, and after some searching located a medical exam table with knives and other implements laid out in precise rows, crates with clothing items inside, and most disturbingly, the remains of one changeling and five humans buried in the corner. Chiara then stepped back out to the mortal world to call up the Summer Court for backup.

Red showed up with one of the High Marshals and took custody of the find at the motley's request, allowing the group to gather up some of Rose's remains and the crate with her clothing in it. The motley took the remains back to the park to meet up with Rose, and eventually decided to cremate her remains and send them to Jake, her boyfriend at the time of her death. With some difficulty, Rose managed to possess Chiara's body to write a note to Jake, and Eric used his elemental affinity to do the cremation. They then packaged things up and FedExed them to the Dive, meeting up with Rose outside the bar to watch it arrive. Jake excused himself to the back room, and Rose faded from sight.

NPCs Met
None

Enemies
Maxwell Stevens - Changeling turned serial killer.

Other Stuff
Eric's version

Session 9: Ghostly Dealings (Part 2)

Session 11: Scavenger Hunt