Mister Vampire: Requiescat in Potentia

[Whipstitch]

"So, how do you want to hit James? It sounds like you think we could get in quiet."

[Chamomile]

"Stealth is my specialty," Ellis says, "now granted, I'm kind of a one-trick pony and I don't have a whole lot of firepower to sling around, but I do still have a cache of some decent hardware. Suppressed rifles, that sort of thing. I'll go in first, swipe any walkie-talkies or those fucking phones everyone carries these days, cut the phone line on the way out. Manfield's the only one who'll have a prayer of seeing me, so I'll leave him alone. After I finish, I signal you and your team, and you use those suppressed weapons to start clearing out the guards. I can tell you exactly where they are, so between the two of us we should be able to take them down on the sly, knives in the back, bullets to the spine, nothing tearing through a room and letting the normals know what's up. Once we've got Manfield and any personal guards he's got alone, we can ambush them with full force, hopefully clear the room before they can retaliate. 'Course, even suppressed, people will be able to hear the gunfire, but only barely. Should be easy to convince 'em it was just television. Normally that's when I'd have Becker sweep the building and lay the Authority down on any normals who got suspicious anyway, but half the time she didn't even find anyone whose brain needed scrubbing so hopefully we'll get lucky. If it's a Lestrand ambush, I'll spot it and we can pull back way before we invest the whole team in the building, so the worst case scenario is that Manfield calls for reinforcements clear out from Pack territory. Gives us plenty of time to do the job and get out, maybe even enough time to cover our tracks. I'd prefer if Manfield just sort of," he snaps his fingers, "vanishes, but I'll settle for him dying and no one's exactly sure who did it or how."

[Whipstitch]

Marco nods. "I cannot cloud minds but yes, I am likely stealthy enough if the way is clear. The unknown ally makes me nervous but that can't be helped. Count me in."


(Marco'll commit his men to this project, but until then he'd like a couple of mutants and his dogs to be guarding Slade. That's not enough to stop a full scale assault but Supernatural Senses and a couple of ornery, rat killing dogs should at least make it inconvenient for a nezumi.)

[Chamomile]

Grant's not planning on giving Manfield any time to react. He probably already knows that his people have been hit so he'll be planning on evacuating his base as soon as possible (unless it's an ambush). He calls up a few of his own goons, a few jaluses and particularly sneaky vampires, and passes out the suppressed weapons. His arsenal includes an AR-15, a pair of Uzis, and a dozen-odd light pistols of various sorts, all with suppressors. Grant's splitting the loadout into the AR-15 with six pistols and the two Uzis with six pistols, and leaves it to you to decide which batch you want. Speed is the next best thing if stealth fails, so Grant recommends packing whatever heavier firepower you can to pull out in the event that your cover gets blown, although he'd recommend against giving anything boom-worthy to your mutants, since they might rage with them. Your guys, though, so your call.

The Alexandria was once a posh hotel, but it's past its prime. While it is by no means abandoned, it's become dilapidated, paint peeling in places, a bit of rust on a few of the fixtures, and the place has begun to attract a shady and unkempt crowd which the owners no longer turn away, not having all that much of a reputation left to sacrifice.

Grant and his extra-stealth team head in ahead. Marco gets a call about fifteen minutes after he enters: "Phones are all cleared out, but don't head in just yet. On the fifth floor, you see those two guys watching at the windows? Don't look like they're here for the view to me. My team will get rid of them, when we do, you head in." He informs Marco of the placement of a few more mutants and thralls on the right side of the building (from the entrance), the lefthand side Grant and his team will take care of.

So what's the approach?

[Whipstitch]

Sorry, I got sloppy with the Mark Topics Read button and missed that you had posted.

Marco favors the uzi based load-out. In terms of combat performance it's the weaker choice, but they're more easily concealed on the way into the building and with two weapons instead of one it's plausible he and his men could get a few more shots out of that setup before suppression mechanisms fail. He'll actually have two of his men wield an uzi each, while Marco himself will take two of the pistols and bring a couple machetes to the party--assuming they use the standard sword stat line they're just barely concealable if you're willing to be rather unseasonably dressed. And what use is a white wolf inspired game if nobody is going to wear pleather, outdated hats and sunglasses everywhere?

Marco's willing to use his Shadow Casting, Celerity and Clinging combo to personally hack down a few lone sentries via Batman tactics if convenient but ultimately that's just preliminaries. Sweeping even a sparsely populated hotel for a Nezumi is a hell of a tough job, so a lot depends on Ellis's ability to pinpoint James' location so that it can be hit hard and early. Ideally it'd be nice if the stealth team could do the heavy lifting while the Ulmi act as a reserve that sweeps in from the rear and takes out any goons that insist on rescuing James from Grant. That's probably a noisier plan than Grant would like but frankly I'm rather skeptical that this job was ever going to be particularly easy. If Grant wants Marco to try and rendezvous with his team to hit James while Catherine leads the Ulmi mook squad that's unlikely to be a problem--Marco's power set could feasibly let him zip right up the darkest side of the building, so he just needs someone to crack open a window.

[Chamomile]

Grant surrounds himself in a Cloak of Shadows, then finds the windows directly beneath the two outermost sentries on the ground floor and counts the steps between there and the entrance, then the steps inside, from the elevator, and gets an approximate location for each of them. Just to be safe, he memorizes the room numbers.

From there, he walks into the backroom behind one of the staff, hangs out until they leave, then checks the guest registry and prints himself out cards for the sentry rooms, every room that's been occupied for at least a week, and a vacant one on the dark side of the building, then hides underneath a camera just around the corner from the security office. There, he pulls his assault rifle from his suitcase, reassembles it, and punches a hole in the wall just below the camera and pulls out the wires sending it power. When a security officer comes to investigate, walking straight past the cloaked Grant, he is almost instantly disarmed of first his radio, then his firearm, and then shot up by the rifle, before being dragged into a closet and relieved of his keys. Just outside the security office, he punches another hole in the wall, this time leaving behind a payload of crackers, cheese, and fruit before covering it up with a tarp. Rats thus hopefully distracted, he lets himself into the room and downs both sentries inside with a pair of bursts from his rifle, then unloads a magazine into the recording equipment.

With the cameras taken care of, he dismisses his cloak, meets up with his jaluses and then heads to a room on the dark side of the hotel to rendezvous with Marco. "Cameras are taken care of," he says, emptying his briefcase of its remaining rat bait and passing it out to the team, "there's still those two sentries at the entrance plus who knows how many more throughout the hotel, so move quick, and don't remember to lay the bait down some place nice and safe as soon as you arrive. Rats can't smell it in this bag and they'll probably bolt as soon as you arrive if you don't give them something to distract themselves with."

"Won't the rats just tell Manfield we're here after eating the food? How long does it take for a rat to get through some cheese and crackers?" a jalus asks.

"Dunno," Grant says, "so I dosed it up with a bunch of hallucinogens. Any of them that don't OD will be too whacked out to find Manfield for a week. Oh, yeah, by the way, don't eat any of it."

Grant and his jaluses head towards one sentry, looking like a hobo army in wifebeaters and old jeans led by an assault-rifle toting hobo king in an unseasonal jacket, and yet almost unnoticeable thanks to Veil. Marco is assigned the other.

Both Grant and Marco unlock the door and gun down the sentry inside quickly and easily with suppressed pistols. Grant kneels down next to the incapacitated mutant, covering his mouth with his hand and activating telepathy, and gets lucky enough to rip the location of other guards out of his head in under a minute before double-tapping him. Two more, watching the entrance to James' room, which he also now knows the location of.

"Alright," Grant says, meeting up with Marco again in the hall after ripping the mattress open, shoving the body inside, and then duct-taping it back together, "way is clear, and I got the location of the other guards from that one before he expired. Call your crew into the elevator lobby on the second floor, that's where Manfield is hiding, they can wait to back us up there if we need 'em. Two more guards are covering James' room, they can see the door and each other so we'll have to try and hit them at the same time if we're going to take James by surprise."

Things do not go entirely according to plan. Marco is able to take down the guard on his side, but Grant is unlucky, hardly harming the heavyset mutant even from just a few feet away, and the mutant pulls out a handgun and returns fire. Agile bastard that Grant is, the bullets go wide and the slow-reacting jaluses gun down the lookout in the immediate aftermath, but there's no hope of sneaking up on James now. Grant tears down the corridor, switching from his pistol back to his rifle and muttering obscenities to himself on the way.

Stealth is over, rumble with Manfield is quite literally right around the corner. What's the plan?

[Whipstitch]

Marco will set his cell to speakerphone mode so his men can hear things going south. Then he'll do something mildly crazy: he'll rush down the hall, machetes in hand and bust through Manfield's door (stunting if necessary). If there's 3 people or less in there he'll fire up Attract fronting like Manfield's already lost. He doubts he can avoid a fight entirely that way, but if he can stall and keep Manfield's attention as Grant's team converges that'd be nice. If Manfield surrenders, even better, but I'm not holding my breath--Marco's got a shit hot Intimidate pool but most lycanthropes would probably just completely lose their shit and hulk out rather than cower in terror. If that doesn't work, well, I guess Marco will do his level best to Hotline Miami people. Oh, and he'll have his Supernatural Senses on so hopefully he won't get blindsided.

"Hello James. I heard you have a problem with the Makhzen."

[Chamomile]

James' only response is to begin hulking out while his four mutant grunts attack. Grant bursts through the door hot on Marco's heels and opens fire with full auto on Manfield, who staggers backwards as the bullets tear through an arm, already growing thick and furry into his monstrous rat form. A massive arm swipes towards Marco, an inch from his face he rewinds time and ducks beneath it instead, and then the room turns to chaos. The Ulmians arrive, the jaluses arrive, the Pack mutants find their weapons and open fire, howls of rage and gunfire fill the air as everyone who had silencers abandons them, the room is torn apart by gunfire and bodies hit the ground - most of them Manfield's team. Manfield himself barrels into the hallway to attack the small army firing bullets towards his team, swiping at Grant, who ducks under, only to be hit by on the backswing so hard he slams into the wall, leaving a dent in the plaster.

Thralls with SMGs open fire on Manfield from behind, and he shudders, screams in rage, and charges them. Picking one up by the leg, he swings him around into the hallway, battering him bloody and senseless. Marco attacks with his machetes, but Manfield is surprisingly nimble, ducking out of the way, snarling, and then the snarls begin to catch in his throat as nearly a dozen pistols fire on him, bullets tearing up his chest, his arms, one ripping off his rodent ear.

Overwhelmed by the smell of blood, the thrall who still has his SMG abandons it to drink up the blood of the fallen, and Marco dives for the two of them, grabbing them and firing into Manfield's chest, Grant stepping in behind him to do the same. Manfield charges again, grabs Grant around the chest, and tosses him through the wall and into the alleyway. Grant falls from the fifth floor of the building a solid fifteen meters to the ground, doing his best to roll into the impact and coming out shaken, but not mostly unhurt.

Up above, Manfield swipes at one mutant, who ducks, then at another, who is not so lucky and has his face maimed by the blow, collapsing to the ground, blood spilling out between his fingers. Marco opens fire with his SMGs again, and Manfield staggers backwards and collapses to the ground, breathing heavily, incapacitated at last.

Mechanical recap:

Round 1

-Marco rolls to intimidate. The sweet spot he's looking for here is to roll higher than Strength but lower than his opponents' frenzy checks. With 6 successes, he overshoots by quite a bit and everyone but him Rage frenzies. Marco begins to Hotline Miami, misses twice, gets 3 hits on one attack and one hit on another. That's two misses against even bruisers in close range.
-Grant rips out his silencer, closes distance to the room, and opens fire on Manfield with full auto, hits for ordinary wounds
-Manfield frenzies, transforms, attacks Marco. It's a hit, Marco nopes it with Shifting Sands. Rolled soak anyway just to see what would've happened - would've been a serious wound.
-Ulmians move in at rapid jog, make attacks against mooks at -3. SMGs go in with full-auto, a mutant is incapacitated, two others hit for ordinary wounds, the last for petty wounds.
-Manfield mutants are rolled now, but they act simultaneously with the Ulmians, so their penalties won't kick in until next turn. The mutants dole out petty and ordinary wounds, but one mutant, not yet recovered from the fight earlier tonight, is incapacitated.
-Grant's team removes silencers and moves down the hall at a careful walk, taking no penalties when they arrive to attack. The stealth team is unlucky and hits only one mutant mook, for petty wounds
-Grant is up again, with James transformed and the window for easy wounds gone, he switches focus to the mooks. He scores two Terminal wounds.
-Marco is up again. His poor luck continues for another two-hit roll which misses against the threshold three mooks, but then turns around with a six-hit attack. Even after a frenzied soak, the wound is terminal. James is out of mooks and the Makhzen army is just getting started.
-Manfield is up again. He heals all three of his lethal wounds with Revive the Flesh and attacks Grant, who is hit once and only for petty wounds.

Round 2
-Previously Grant had held back to let James try and intimidate first, but now he's taking his action at the top of the order. He starts by healing his wound with Revive the Flesh and makes two full auto attacks on James. One hit soaked to nothing, one miss.
-Marco is up. 10 dice isn't much of a pool against a war form - he misses twice.
-Manfield is up. Not liking his odds against Grant, he decides to thin the room a little by targeting the Ulmians with SMGs. One is hit for serious wounds, the other for terminal.
-The Ulmians move simultaneously with Manfield so they get to move before having two of their number taken out. One, unfortunately, takes himself out - spending his last power point to heal his petty wounds from the previous round, he frenzies and begins drinking from the incapacitated mutant. This will end poorly for that mutant. The other fires on full auto on James, one hit for ordinary wounds, one soaked to nothing. The remaining three fire from just outside Adjacent range in the hopes of scoring a lucky hit. Manfield hit by shower of ordinary and petty wounds that badly taxes his ability to heal himself.
-The jaluses follow a similar strategy, and almost universally get soaked to nothing, but their petty wounds begin to stack up.
-Grant manages to score petty wounds on Manfield with his rifle. The wounds are becoming a serious problem.
-Since his minions aren't using them anymore, Marco ditches his machetes for a pair of SMGs and opens up on Manfield, dealing ordinary wounds.
-Manfield is on his last legs, and burns his edge to get another initiative pass. Because he is frenzied, he decides that he will use them to murder everyone rather than taking the opportunity to run the Hell away. He targets Grant with a new strategy, an abduction attempt, and succeeds.
-Manfield then uses a simple action to chuck Grant as hard as he can through the wall and hopefully out into the alleyway. He deals "terminal" damage to the wall, getting him through it, which sends Grant falling 15 meters into the alleyway below. He takes a serious wound from the fall. With the extra initiative pass bought by his spent Edge, Manfield will try to rip apart remaining Ulmian mooks before they nickle and dime him to death, hoping to intimidate the weaker jaluses into fleeing. One mutant is incapacitated and one thrall dodges.

Round 3

-Grant is on the ground and not doing much. He goes ahead and spends the power points needed to heal himself from the fall, though.
-Marco finishes Manfield with a serious wound.

[Whipstitch]

"All this fuss when we could have just sat down for a drink."

Marco will plant a $5000 boot firmly on Manfield's chest and pour out some of his tequila flask onto his wounds.

[Chamomile]

Manfield snarls and starts forward towards Marco, propping himself up with one bestial hand and managing to get about eighteen inches off the ground before he collapses again, breathing heavily. Grant climbs back up the edge of the building, muttering to himself. A hotel guest rounds the corner and stops, stares, stunned at the sight. "Jesus Christ!" he shouts.

"Say hi to him for me," Grant responds, and fires off a burst of his assault rifle through the guest's chest. "Drag this asshole back into the room before anyone else comes looking, and someone get Slade down here to clean things up," he says, then to Marco, "if any of your guys need looking at, Slade's our patch man. He should be able to fix 'em up. Maybe not that guy," he gestures to the mutant who's currently having his heart sucked out through his neck.

The jaluses have finished dragging Manfield back into the ruined room, stuffing from the mattresses popping out where bullets have torn through them, the desk shot to Hell, the windows almost completely gone. Once they finish dragging the most obvious Masquerade violation out of the way, they start cleaning up the other corpses and warning off any other normals who come knocking - "bunch of wannabes had a bad trip while packing heat. If I were you, I'd scram before the cops show up."

"So who you working for, James?" Grant asks, "and why is it my day you decided to ruin?"

"Go to Hell," Manfield manages to wheeze out.

"Race you there," Grant says, leveling his rifle with Manfield's head. "Anything you want to ask this guy before I pull the trigger?" he asks Marco, "'cause my patience with him was pretty much through by the time I hit the ground."

[Whipstitch]

"He doesn't need to be alive to tell me what I need to know," says Marco with a shrug, "Just leave me his head; I don't care if there's a hole in it."

(Dunno if that's enough to count for an Interrogation roll, but I'm genuinely inclined to give Grant his satisfaction in this instance anyway--I'm not really fond of dallying at the crime scene or trying to detain a lycanthrope longterm anyway. Also, Psychometry can be used to read people and not just places, so while it's power point intensive I figure with time and effort I can divine some of what I need to know.)

[Chamomile]

"Don't have to ask twice," Grant says, and fires a bullet through Manfield's head. Slade was on call for clean-up duty, waiting down the block. He had been hoping to have more time to do his dirty work, but already two minutes past the start of the unsuppressed gunfire when he arrived at the scene, and without Becker to buy time from the police, he settles for passing out butcher knives to the team and telling everyone to hack off a finger of the deceased and get the wounded to his mobile lab, an RV cleared out of its usual trappings and replaced with a medical/sorcerous laboratory. With one mutant quite a bit past the point of saving thanks to the feeding of the frenzied thrall and the injured thrall capable of healing himself up out of terminal danger, only one is in need of his immediate attention, although he'd be happy to tend to the wounded for so long as they require care in exchange for the protection generously offered during the crisis (which may or may not yet be over).

Everyone who can't Hide From Notice is clearing out now, while those who can will stick around to dispose of Manfield's blatantly supernatural corpse and try as much as possible to hack up the bodies, stuff them into garbage bags, and smuggle them out to Slade or at least ditch them in a few dumpsters. If there's anything else Marco wants to do here, now'd be the time. Additionally/otherwise, what's the next move?

[Whipstitch]

Marco's fine with having everyone without stealth powers clear out--he's been asking a lot of his men lately, so it's only sensible. He'll personally do a quick search of Manfield's room for promising leads like cellphones, ledgers, laptops and magical artifacts. He's again willing to linger a bit longer than his men--it's a big building and he's rather good at hide 'n' seek.

Presuming he gets home fine and has some body parts to play with he'd like to use his next few days of power point expenditure using Psychometry on Mansfield. He's interested in viewing the following three events:

1. The last time Mansfield saw the stolen case.

2. The last time Mansfield saw the stolen cup.

3. The time Mansfield conspired to murder Slade.

[Chamomile]

Cell phones are in abundance, and many of them are still functioning. Other than that, nothing helpful. The cell phones show a lot of calls back and forth between various numbers, but have no stored texts. There's also a black candle in the desk drawer and a beat-up old leatherbound journal, presumably some of the missing loot from Becker's safe, including the candle that was the most significant piece of it. The journal is on Infernal magic, redundant to Marco but potentially valuable as a bartering chit of some kind.

Dan Slade is able to patch up the wounded in his mobile infirmary before driving back to San Bernardino for longterm care. There's no saving the one who was sucked dry, but the rest pull through. Slade continues to patch them up for the next few days while Marco uses his psychometric mojo.

The last time Manfield saw the stolen case, he was meeting with a tall, pale man in a dark suit, arguing about Slade, so that's two for one. The pale man, presumably Manfield's mysterious partner, insists on attacking Slade. "This is almost done. We give them time to breathe and we will have trouble. We should press our advantage."

Manfield, of course, disagrees. "I've already lost half my crew in one attack, I'm not budging until I've got a buffer back." Ultimately, Manfield and the stranger agree to split what they've got so far and reconvene later on. The stranger is unhappy with the decision, but doesn't protest and apparently did not subvert the deal.

The cup I assume supposed to be the candle, since I don't recall any important cups being stolen. Last time Manfield saw that, it was rolling around in the drawer where Marco snagged it.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, I was going off memory so I think I just naturally conflated the candle with a cup since that's obviously something you could put blood into. Oh well.


Marco will take a pin and make a series of scratches in the candle that are all but undetectable to a mortal eye before squirreling it away somewhere safe in his home. He'll also look into having a decoy made or purchased--hell, perhaps he'll even google candle making and try his hand at it himself a couple times. A man has to have hobbies, after all.

Next, he'll try something harder: now that he has a clearer description of the mystery man he'll try divining the first time they introduced themselves to Mansfield.

[Chamomile]

Manfield walks into an apartment and shrugs off a backpack with sigh. He digs through the pack, which is full of very minor magical artifacts: A lot of magnetite, some silver knives, a binder which presumably has supernatural stuff of some sort written in it, an amulet that probably does something nifty. Manfield paws through it for a while and finally grabs a knife, turns around and throws it at a wall, and then his eyes widen as the knife is caught mid-air by the mysterious stranger. Manfield pulls his sidearm and tries to bring it to bear, but the stranger grabs him by the wrist with one hand and with the other casually tears the gun from his grip and tosses it aside. "A birdie tells me you could use a favor," the stranger says.

Manfield glares at him, his hair already beginning to grow a bit and his teeth beginning to sharpen, and hisses back "what're you offering?"

"A small fortune in valuable magical artifacts," the stranger says, releasing Manfield's wrist, "a candle that kills with blood, a ring that summons hellhounds, assorted magical knick-knacks with some suppressed weaponry on the side and a mystery prize."

"A mystery prize?" Manfield asks.

"There's a big metal case and I don't know what's inside, but whatever it is it's worth putting inside a big metal case and never telling anyone," the stranger says.

"So it isn't yours. So what're you offering me really, a chance to steal it? And if you're giving me all this shit, what's in it for you?" The beginnings of Manfield's transformation have already reverted, he rubs his wrist a bit.

"I don't need the magic, I just need to borrow the men to cause some chaos. That the chaos leaves valuables undefended is a happy side effect," the stranger says.

"So what, you think you're the Joker?" Manfield asks.

"Tonight, a bit of chaos is to my advantage. You don't really need to know why, all you need to know is how you stand to benefit and my intended target: that Makhzen prince in San Bernardino. He and his minions have everything you need to pay your debts and then some," the stranger says.

"How do you know about my debts?" Manfield asks.

"You just have that look about you," the stranger says, "what's important is that the Makhzen have what you want and they have a bad history with our syndicate in the recent past. You lend me the support of your men, I clear out the tough ones, you leave your fingerprints all over the crime scene, you repay your debts, get to take credit for getting rid of an old enemy without leaving the Communes vulnerable to this Lestrand joker, and I get a chaotic landgrab by every wannabe vanguard in this city."

"How do I know those vanguards aren't your real target?" Manfield asks.

The stranger shrugs. "You'll have to take my word for it."

Manfield agrees in the end, of course - the rest is history.

[Whipstitch]

Marco is going to boil and bleach Manfield's skull and hang it in his closet, because Manfield was a dumb, greedy asshole and I hate him. I mean, sure, the Stranger probably dropped some subtle mind-affecting mojo on poor Manfield, but still, fuck that guy for being a greedy asshole. Marco will be sure to mention what an asshole Manfield was in his "journal." I put that word in scare quotes because Marco's journal is intentionally written in the style of a trashy pulp novel so that any Extras who acquire it would likely assume it's fictional even before you get to the part where it turns into The Raid: Redemption but with vampires and rat monsters. He's got 6 dice for Intuition + Expression tests and it's safe to assume he used most of that expertise on creating really mean pseudonyms for most of the supernaturals he knows just so they'll feel properly insulted if they ever snoop through his private stuff. If it actually helps jog his memory in the future then, hey, bonus.

On a more serious note, once enough days have passed that Manfield's ghost has likely coalesced somewhere Marco will Summon it and hit him with Attract and Curse of Failure so he doesn't just slink off right away. He'll be palming a wooden shiv just in case shit gets weird. He probably won't get much out of Manfield--his big bargaining chip is simply that he'll leave Manfield more or less alone in the future--but all things considered he's willing to settle for annoying him. He's obviously shooting for the name of the Stranger and more info regarding the missing swag.

"Hello, James. I did say you didn't need to be alive for us to have a little chat, didn't I?"

In the highly likely event that Manfield just tells him to get bent Marco will move on to chatting with Slade about local powerful supernaturals who fit the description of the Stranger--"tall and pale" sounds like it would cover 2/3rds of the vampires in the city, but given his Intuition 3 + Expression 3 dice pool I'm hoping Marco can give a better description than that even if you don't want to bother deciding how this dude parts his hair and whether he has any pockmarks.

[Chamomile]

Manfield's ghost mostly just shouts and screams in rage. Ghosts are generally pretty unstable, and it can't help that he's talking to his killer and was a lycanthrope in the first place. In his more coherent moments, though, he informs Marco that he doesn't know the stranger's name, all he knows is that he's very powerful, that he'll hopefully kill Marco for interfering with his plans, and heartily recommends that Marco suck a dick. Manfield really doesn't seem to know much about this stranger, other than what he looks like and his sloppy approach to shadow warfare.

Marco can indeed describe the stranger in a fair amount of detail - in addition to being tall and pale, he has a sleek dark suit that looks fairly recently purchased but a ponytail hairstyle that looks like he hasn't really changed how he does his hair since the 18th century, and a number of other distinguishing features. Slade, however, has never heard of anyone fitting that description, and if this guy is as powerful as he appears, Slade should definitely have heard of him were he local. Whoever this guy is, he must be from far out of town.

EDIT:

Ah, and one thing I forgot: Grant would like to meet with Marco, though it's not urgent. And a related question, am I correct in assuming that Marco's keeping Grant up to date on the ongoing investigation?

[Whipstitch]

Marco will go meet him, sure. The only thing Marco's been keeping to himself is specifics about magical swag, particularly the briefcase. Basically, if he can claim the hellhound ring, the amulet Manfield had in the vision or the mystery briefcase without mentioning his finds--or even confirming that such things exist--to Grant, he's very likely to do so. It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission and I'm willing to bet that Makhzen laws feature support for both the rights of Princes and people who are finders and keepers but not losers or weepers. He's on shakier ground with the candle given that Becker's ghost talked to Marco about it right in front of Grant, but Marco won't bring it up if Grant doesn't.

[Chamomile]

Grant meets Marco at the same motel as always, though he seems a lot less dissheveled now. His appearance, rather than diseased and repugnant, seems more striking and fearsome. The last few days have been good for him. "Romero, glad you could make it," he says as Marco enters, "and first of all, thanks for your help. Without Becker or Lyons we weren't really able to do much but look over our shoulders and hope the third attack wasn't as fast and hard as the first two. Without a sheriff we're pretty much blind, which is the main reason I wanted to meet you. I've got a vacancy.

"I doubt you would've left Houston if you wanted a quiet job, and that's not what I'm offering you. I tried keeping my head down, and in the end it got about as many of my friends killed as taking chances, so I'm not playing nice anymore. Which is not to say that I'm stupid enough to try the same thing twice, a straightforward assault didn't work when I had four times the forces, city got spooked, people made unlikely alliances, I got fucked. This time, I'm going in more subtle. 'Course, just because I'm not stupid doesn't mean this is actually going to work, I lost once and I'm hoping for a comeback tour, you're all up-and-coming and shit, I truly wouldn't blame you if you turned me down. But hey, I scared Lestrand enough to make him work with the Pack the first time around, so don't think what I'm offering you is some kind of suicide pact, either. I thought about heading back to Houston and starting over completely, I'm staying because I've got a real shot at making this work, because I should've been getting back in the game like eight years ago."

Grant laughs a little. "Fuck, I'm starting to ramble. Look, I'm not a salesman. I'm offering you sheriff of San Bernardino today, tomorrow, sheriff of Los Angeles, prob'ly mehtar too. Job is high risk, high reward. You want it or not?"

[Whipstitch]

"Only if I get a tin star. I have a motif to maintain."

Marco will Friendly Banter with Grant for a while since he appears to be in a good mood before steering the conversation back to business again. As they chat he'll produce a sketch of the man he saw in his vision and ask of Grant if it seems familiar.

[Chamomile]

Marco and Grant talk for a while, mostly discussing Makhzen politics. The bigwigs back in Houston and their losing (pretty much lost, at this point) battles in New Orleans, Atlanta, and Phoenix, the situation with the Crime League in Africa and the Middle-East, the "orphan mehtar" of Los Angeles - a collection of mehtar who answered to short-lived Makhzen kingdoms in LA, unrecognized by basically every Makhzen kingdom for only ever being a part of stillborn councils. They're trivial and essentially powerless now, but the disparate would-be demagogues of the Cauchemar Communes were much the same before Logan united them. Grant has similar plans for these orphaned mehtar - though he really isn't sure he wants very many of them on his actual mehtar council.

As sheriff, Marco inherits just about everything Becker had. The twenty acres of land and the remnants of the manor built on it (for whatever that's worth), influence over the local police chief that easily extends to having the ability to tell them to investigate or not investigate anything that lies within their jurisdiction, though Grant warns against pushing things by asking for backup in a fight, and the candle and other contents of that safe, "not that you bothered giving them back in the first place, but whatever, you earned it."

[Whipstitch]

I'm assuming Grant doesn't recognize the mystery man picture then?

"Speaking of the candle, when the new batch of inmates for the asylum get here I'd like it if the person in charge would secure me blood samples from their new guests. That way if they turn out be moles I won't even have to get properly dressed to kill them."

[Chamomile]

Grant indeed does not recognize the man in the picture. He's also taken over administering the mental hospital for now, so he'll get the blood samples to Marco within the next couple of days. He's also, incidentally, currently shopping the hospital position around to the Makhzen who live in LA proper. He's reasonably certain he'll get a bite eventually. Sure, the supernaturals who live in LA likely live there because they like being in a power center and do not want to move out into a satellite city, but odds are he'll run into one who's at least moderately competent and would rather be a big fish in a small pond. Big cities are always full of supernaturals who thought they had what it took to be someone and then didn't, and the city of angels is famously not an exception to that rule.

In any case: Blood samples, check.

We're also now officially in downtime, so feel free to intermix questions/comments to Grant, Slade, or others with downtime actions or whatever. This is all basically a montage of what you plan to do until another opportunity presents itself (or you make an opportunity happen on its own).

[Whipstitch]

Marco has a few pet long term projects he'd like to have simmering in the background. The first two I don't expect to pay off any time soon, but they'll give you an idea of the way Marco thinks and operates.

He'd love to get in tight with some of the less savory local union leaders. He already has Backgrounds invested in the Teamsters and he'd love to parlay that into friendly contacts with the other unions in the Change To Win Federation, particularly Service Employees International. While Marco enjoys being involved with petty corruption and no-show jobs as much as the next mafioso, his primary motivation is the simple fact that security guards, healthcare workers and maintenance crews can often get access to the damndest things and that you can accomplish much in this world simply by ensuring that such people are happy to look the other way from time to time. As far as he's concerned there can't be enough entralled doormen in the world.

Slightly related to the above, Marco wants to emulate the NYC Makhzen setup of securing the 13th floors of various important tall buildings in Los Angeles. That's a big project despite LA's relative lack of skyscrapers--earthquakes are rather a pain--so for now Marco'll concentrate on mere access rather than ownership and his first target will be the LA Live Ritz-Carlton building. Basically, his dream is that someday Mehtar will be able to treat just about anywhere big enough to require a mechanical floor or service elevators as a potential safe house/cache/drop off point thanks to supernatural infiltration of the maintenance crews. For now, he'd settle for having a storage locker nobody messes with that contains a bug-out bag and a few weapons. Baby steps.

Now, as far as more immediate concerns go...

Marco wants to keep an ear to the ground regarding any retribution MS-13 may be planning against him or the Calaveras. The Skulls stuck their necks out for him against MS-13 and Marco's willing to take action to mitigate any blowback from that decision. To that end, he'll use his newfound influence with the police to discourage coordinated action against the Calaveras. He doesn't expect them to turn a blind eye to everything or to be pushed around by gang bangers but stings, raids and other existential threats to the Calaveras leadership structure are to be quietly shelved. Other than that he's just going to make himself generally available to Makhzen members while bracing himself for more bullshit from the Cauchemar.


Also, what level of Resources should I bump him up to? He's acquired a healthy chunk of loot, after all.