Natchez By Night, Game 2.0: It's A Crime And A Shame
I know I promised not to do it, but here it is: a synopsis of the game.--Maer
Game 2.0
Play Date: 13 Aug 2011
Present: Cindy, Kim, Maer, Terri, Andy, Ken, and Jim
Thursday, 04 Aug 2011, evening – Friday, 05 Aug 2011, 0430hrs:
Caroline visits the Second Third National Bank of Natchez to take care of some things for her mother involving signing off on some rental property agreements stored with the bank manager. The bank manager happens to be Joe Sampson, one of the ghouls on our list. She's shown into his office and he looks nervous. He excuses himself and says he’ll have someone come in and take care of things with her. When he leaves, Caroline takes a look at his computer monitor and finds out the names of his fellow ghouls: Abigail Beauregard, Edgar Summers, Eli Pitney, and the late Martha and Cedric Walsh. She also sees that Joe is booking online tickets for a Delta Airlines flight to NYC out of St. Charles, LA. Departure is set for 08 Aug. She texts the information via her phone to Irina DiSanti and sits back down in the visitor's chair before Sampson gets back.
After leaving the bank, she texts Irina to meet her at the coffee shop around the corner of the bank and Irina texts back she’ll be there in five. Natchez isn’t that big a town and Irina’s nearby at the Agency. They gather over coffee and discuss what the heck they’re going to do with the names. Irina writes them down and arranges to have the names left for Sheriff Midnight. During their meeting, Caroline is texted a message from Beauchamp Corp. Eliza wishes to see Caroline and her friends for a job interview at 9PM on 07 August. Caroline texts back she will be there. Almost before Caroline can close her phone, Irina’s phone buzzes her and on the line is a representative of Beeauchamp Corp telling her the same thing. Irina asks if there’s a dress code and she’s told it’s formal. Irina confirms her attendance and hangs up. The two women look at each other and wonder aloud what the heck kind of job interview they’ll be undergoing? They table the matter for the more immediate task of hunting down the ghouls. Coffee consumed, they part company to get ready for the coming night’s activities.
Irina digs into the names Caroline discovered and gets more information on them.
- Joe Sampson is married and is the manager of Second Third National Bank.
- Abigail Beauregard is a realtor, is married with three kids.
- Edgar Summers is a masseuse, gay, and living over the Toolbox Nightclub with his lover.
- Eli Pitney runs a temporary hire agency specializing in domestic help, predominantly fulfilled by Eastern European immigrants.
She shares this information when she goes that evening at Caroline’s brownstone. Zadie has also been invited to come over and when she shows up, she tells everyone that she’s been called by Beauchamps Corp to attend the same interview on the 7th.
Renny is called by Eliza to her home and he pulls in right behind a 70s muscle car. He’s introduced to the driver of the car once everyone’s settled in her upstairs office. Charlie Cord is a gangrel from Vidalia across the river and he is a fixer, someone who cleans up other people’s messy problems. Renny is to take him along tonight during our ghoul hunt. Having been given their marching orders, Renny and Charlie Cord drive over to Caroline’s. Once there, Renny tells people about the weird aura he’s seen at Midnight’s place. There’s something there that eats wraiths. Irina speaks up and corroborates Renny’s findings with what she’s learned from Midnight’s midnight visit with her on the morning of the 3rd. There’s definitely something in the vampire’s basement.
Midnight’s Deputy arrives during this conversation and after catching her up on developments, we split up to take care of the task assigned to us. Renny, Charlie Cord and Zadie drive off to investigate the basement on Zadie’s insistence. Caroline, Francine, and Irina go to Joe Sampson’s place.
Thinking ahead, Irina pulls latex gloves and paper booties from the kit stowed in the trunk of her rental car, and has everyone in her party don them. She’s not going to let anyone leave evidence behind for Sheriff Mayfield to find. Midnight appears out of thin air and he sets up the obfuscate spell around the house to aid our break-in. Joe Sampson is sleeping in his bed when the women enter his house. When confronted with his involvement with Doctor Murphrey, Sampson admits it.
Caroline quickly scans the rest of the rooms upstairs, knowing the man is married. No wife is found but one of the rooms is a nursery and she gets a sick feeling in her stomach. There is a crib but no baby is in it. She goes downstairs and finds Sampson’s laptop. On it she sees an email from his wife. She’s in a fertility clinic in New York, is doing well, and is looking forward to seeing him there in a few days. Well, that explains the airline ticket he was booking at the bank. Relieved that there are no innocent spouses or children she has to kill, Caroline takes the laptop with her upstairs.
Meanwhile, Joe Sampson is singing like a canary, telling us how he was contacted and then ghouled by Doc Murphrey to set up his accounts and his assets. Murphrey had planned to bribe the other vampires in Natchez with some of the accounts, though Sampson didn’t know why or for what. When Caroline arrives with his laptop, we get him to give up Doc’s account numbers and the passwords to those records. Francine snaps his neck and Irina discourages Midnight from setting the house on fire. Sampson’s neighborhood is more affluent and a fire would be thoroughly investigated by the mortal police, which would be dangerous for the Masquerade. Instead, Midnight and Francine stage a fatal fall down the stairs for Sampson, complete with an impact smear on the wall to explain the broken neck. Job done, Francine and the other women go to Edgar Summers’s place next.
Renny, Charlie Cord, and Zadie arrive at Midnight’s house in poor town after the Sheriff leaves. They find a trapdoor in the kitchen that leads to the earthwalled basement. In preparation for the night's activities, Zadie cast a spell on herself to drop her gen, making her more powerful. It's also made her rather hungry. Down below, they find a small, shaggy, skinny man chained to the walls in silver chains. Renny breaks its chains and the instant it’s free, it Dominates Cord and Zadie. It’s a vampire. Renny koshes the vamp unconscious and freed from its control, the now-ravenous Zadie sucks the vampire dry. Her aura takes on creepy colors when she’s done. They get out of the basement in a hurry and go on to Eli Pitney’s house.
Edgar Summers’s apartment is over The Toolbox, a popular gay night club and tonight the club is jumping and thumping. The ruckus will be more than enough to cover any noise of our activities. Caroline goes up the outside stairs to the residential floor and knocks on Edgar’s door. A man wearing just a towel answers the door and seeing the two women, he hollers a query back to Edgar if he’d ordered any fish. Thankfully, Caroline didn’t catch the entirety and Irina refuses to be baited. We go in on the pretext of an emergency need for a massage. The man, named Tab, quotes 100 bucks to arrange an appointment. Irina opens her wallet and forks the cash over, glad the Agency had given her enough to cover expenses. Transaction concluded, Tab sets up the massage table in the living room and goes back to the bedroom to wash off the massage oil on him. It’s obvious we’ve interrupted him with Edgar. The shower starts running and Edgar comes out.
Francine slips invisibly into the bedroom and kills Tab in the shower, sucking him dry. Meanwhile, Caroline tells Edgar that she knows he is Murphrey’s ghoul and confronts him with the crime of killing vampires. Edgar is actually relieved to have been found out and mistakes Caroline for a vampire herself. He abases himself before her and begs her to take him as her ghoul, swearing he’ll do anything for her. Caroline is appalled and remorseful when she realizes there is no way she can save him—the Masquerade requires his death. Francine steps forward and snaps the man’s neck and as they’re trying to decide what to do with the bodies, Madame DePumpmemore arrives at Edgars’ door on his break from DJ-ing downstairs. Irina recognizes him from Court and lets him in and Madame suggests putting the two dead lovers in Edgar’s car, driving it to the poor section of town and then setting fire to it with the bodies inside. That would conceal the exsanguination of one body and the broken necks on both. The women get the bodies into the car and once it’s driven to the requisite spot, they set the car on fire. Irina sends a text over Caroline’s phone that the target has been BBQ’d outside of town. Irina realizes too late that she’d been indiscreet in her word choice in the text message and Caroline realizes she’s going to need to have her phone records edited to remove the incriminating evidence. She and Irina make plans to find a hacker who can do the job. But that’s for later. Caroline, Irina, and Francine regroup at Caroline’s brownstone to wait for the others to come back. Caroline is agonized over the fact that she was more remorseful over Sampson’s death than Summers’s or Tab’s. Irina comforts her as best she can—which isn’t very much or well, since Irina is not unaffected by the deaths either. As a former cop, she very much dislikes how she’s been breaking laws right and left and has been an accessory to multiple murders.
Renny is called away by Midnight for a private meeting and cannot accompany Charlie Cord and Zadie to Eli Pitney’s. He borrows Irina’s rental car and Cord and Zadie go on without him in Cord’s muscle car. They discover Eli Pitney lives in a gated community and they will have to get past the guard at the entrance if they’re to see Pitney. Zadie approaches the guard on foot and spins him a story that she’s there to see Pitney but doesn’t remember his phone number to call him to let her in. When the guard reaches for the phone to call Pitney, Zadie—now ravenous because she’s dropped several more gen thanks to her sucking the basement vampire dry—attacks the guard and drinks him dry.
Since crashing through the gate is also bad form, Charlie Cord transforms himself into a bat and flies to Pitney’s house. Cord slips inside and tells Pitney to be quiet and they go downstairs where Zadie is waiting outside to question him. Pitney rats Martha Walsh out, not realizing the woman is already dead, and when he realizes Cord and Zadie are here to kill him, he tries to bribe them with 80 thousand and arrange for a Czech waitress a week for them to drain. Zadie is still hunger-driven by the lowering of her gen and she simply kills Pitney and sucks him dry. Cord is pissed off at her for hogging all the blood. Bad form! Cord dumps Pitney’s body in the trunk of his car and they drive for the last ghoul’s house.
(to be logged as is revealed)
Meanwhile, Midnight is grilling Renny as to what happened to his captive vampire in the basement. Renny has to do an elaborate song and dance. He cannot let on that he knows what happened to the vampire in the basement, otherwise he’s as good as dead. The Sheriff orders Renny to séance the dead spirit of the basement vampire to verify what happened. The Sheriff asks the obvious question: Who killed you? Renny is able to lie by establishing his veracity by using information that he could have only have gotten from the dead spirit, then flat out lying about the circumstances surrounding the death. He claims: “I was killed by a couple of redneck vampires I didn’t recognize.” Midnight jumps to the obvious conclusion that the rednecks must be Gangrel vampires and Tremere vampires must be involved because who else would want what’s in the basement? After all, Gangrel would have no use for magic, but Tremere would. Midnight then uses what Renny suspects is magic to eat the vampire’s spirit.
Cord and Zadie arrive at Abigail Beauregard’s house. It’s a little out in the countryside and it’s a half mile to the nearest neighbor. Cord insists on handling this one and goes right up to the door. He knocks with his best cop knock and bellows open up, it’s the police. So far so good. The door opens and Abigail’s 12 year old son is standing there, blinking up at the scary Gangrel. Cord orders the boy to go back to bed and bellows for Abigail to come down. The woman shuffles to the door and in a flash, Cord breaks the chain and drags the woman out. The children—all of whom are awake at the top of the stairs—start screaming. Cord pulls his most scary expression and orders them back to bed. Zadie shuffles them into one of the bedrooms and tells them they only want to talk to their momma. Shhh. She closes them in and rejoins Cord downstairs. He and Zadie question Abigail and they learn that Doc owns property in Natchez and in Oxford as well as stocks and bonds. Cord pulls Abigail to him and drains her. Zadie goes back upstairs to check on the kids and finds the two youngest shoving a chair under the doorknob—no impediment to the stronger vampire—and sees the oldest climbing down from the window on the trellis. Zadie gives chase and catches the boy before he can get far, then takes him back into the bedroom. She drains him just enough to make him woozy, then tries to do the same to the two youngest. Her hunger overrides her compassion and she ends up draining the two dry. Knowing that she cannot remedy the situation, she turns to the oldest child and drains him to death, too. She and Cord decide to set the house afire to hide the bodies and Cord throws Pitney’s body in with the others to dispose of it. Timely and efficient, just as the Gangrel likes it. He and Zadie drive to Caroline’s to join the others and plan what to do next.
Renny calls Irina and asks where she wants him to drop off her car. She tells him Caroline’s. He shows up at Caroline’s and takes Zadie aside to tell her that her aura betrays that she’s sucked the basement vampire dry. Anyone with a high enough Auspex will be able to see everything. She’s got to find a way to hide her aura. If she doesn’t know how, does she know anyone who can? She immediately thinks of the Professor in Oxford. She calls him and he basically hands her butt back to her.
Renny hears the television in the next brownstone over and asks Caroline to turn on her TV. She does so to the channel he tells her. It’s the late evening news. A fire is raging in Poor Town, eight houses are going up in flames—and one of them is Midnight’s three-room shack.
Well, damn.
Does this mean the Sheriff’s dead? Yeah, pretty much. Caroline looks over at Francine and asks her bluntly where her loyalties lie. Francine gives her the perfect Nosferatu answer: she’s loyal to Cotton. Well, congratulations on your promotion, darlin’, you’re the new Sheriff. And thanks to this new development, our interview with Beauchamp Corp has been moved up to the very next evening, the 5th.
Worn out by the night’s activities, everyone agrees to break up for the night. We have Eliza Beauchamp to face tomorrow and we need to get ready for her.
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