12.19.2019
Patient 0's house was of course trapped, some kind of life and spirit spell in place. Ohm and I tried to remove them but if a mage has time he can make wards that will take days to take down. We opt for kicking in the cellar window and I entangle everybody's particles with those in the basement and we "poof" on in. The ward goes off and we hear the barking of a dog and it's heading our way, it could be worse. I tell the others I'll handle the dog, go get the mage who was still somewhere in this basement. When the dog finally showed I tried to convince it to go catch me a deer but it had other ideas and latched onto Ohm's elbow. I tried again with some added growl and a snarl and this time it thought that the deer hunt was a good idea and ran back up the stairs and outside. Apparently it was a good thing it took a few tries as the others find the mage in the meantime and he unleashed this nasty draining field, everybody but me had a large portion of their stamina drained and it look like it hurt. Patient 0 fought well and as we thought he wasn't easy to take down. A few well placed blows later and Danno controlling himself by not using his claws the mage finally succumbs and drops unconscious. I tell the others to bring our patient back to the containment center and I'll stay here and see what I can find. It proves useless as he doesn't appear to have any kind of lab hidden here but I do find his credentials for some biological institute here in the city, at least it's something. Before I head back I ask Red if he could run over to the site of the last murder and see what the status of that verge this guy created was. Wasn't much we could do to close it right now but it's been a little over a day so hopefully it was gone, if not we would have to take care of it later. Luckily it was gone and Red didn't find any trail of anything nasty that may have come through so he returned to join us at the Guardian's sanctum, aka the containment area.
Priest has bad news, this Master of Life isn't patient 0. He was the first murderer so we still assume he had contact with patient 0. We look up the information on the third known missing mage and he also works at this biological institute and that sounds like a good place to go check out. We leave the Padre to watch over the patients and Priest tags along with us, if this institute is ground zero for the disease it will be good to have him with us.
We arrive at the institute and at this hour the parking lot is mostly empty. We head right on through the main entrance and I present my Interpol "credentials". We inform the security guard we are working on a missing person case and time is of the essence and we need to investigate a lab. It doesn't take much convincing and he leads us upstairs. The lab itself didn't reveal anything suspicious. Looks just like a regular old sleeper lab. We did find some audio recordings of the mage and those did reveal that the head of the institute. who was a sleeper, had been making some big strides in his research and the mage didn't think Dr Sarnian was smart enough to do it on his own. It was starting to sound like he had help, help of the pestilence variety, We search the 3rd missing mage's lab and find nothing of note so we head up the Dr Sarnian's office. A through investigation reveals nothing. The Dr had left on an unplanned vacation 13 days ago and his secretary also took the time off. As we were leaving the office Danno's old gumshoe senses went off and he found another audio tape lying on the ground out of sight. This one just mentioned the Dr needed to talk to Carlos about getting another keycard. We didn't think much of it at the time. Records showed that Carlos was the head of security. We go and pay him a visit anyways to see if he knows where the Dr had gone on vacation. He said he didn't know where the Dr went but his aura just didn't seem right, he wasn't lying but he was apprehensive about something else. We needed to find where this Dr went so we headed for his house to find some clues. On the way I got every bit of information I could on this guy. I traced all his credit cards, his cell phone, his passport, even the GPS on his car. Nothing. They all pointed to him last using them 13 days ago and then no trace afterwards. I started to figure that if he did have the mote it was causing some kind of interference to these things. I tried scrying and other magical detection on Danno and sure enough I was getting that same kind of static. We were going to have to find this Dr the hard way.
We pull up to this Dr's house. Nice neighborhood. We thoroughly investigate every inch of the house and garage and find nothing. His cell phone is still here, everything is still in it's place, where ever he went on this so called vacation, he didn't take shit with him. Still not sure what to do we did the same thing with the secretary's apartment and we found the same thing, nothing. Phone records show her last outgoing call was to the Dr and her last incoming was from the Dr, same pattern with the Dr's records. At least now with times and locations I was able to peer back in the past and listen to the phone conversation. That didn't turn up anything either, he called her to bring him his passport and some cash, and she did. And now both of them and their cars were missing and not a damn trace. It didn't add up yet. We took a moment to step back and take another look at things, didn't want to go grabbing at straws just yet. We decide to try another avenue and I scry on the 3rd reported missing mage. He is sitting near a broken monitor and there is a slight buzz in the air, I was also picking up some static. We deduced that he was most likely somewhere back in the institute, electrical room maybe. We haul ass back and let ourselves in. We do run into one of the guards eventually and he is ready to shoot us but we convince him the door was broke and we were in a hurry. He takes us to the electrical room, nothing. We try the server room, nothing. Again we are missing the key or perhaps the keycard. We remember the Dr's last audio tape about needing a new keycard. I rifle through the security logs and find the Dr last used his keycard in an elevator. We run over to that elevator and try the Master of Life's keycard but that doesn't do anything special. There doesn't appear to be an extra hidden floor so maybe there is a basement. I extend my senses into the twilight and move through the floor of the elevator and sure enough the shaft heads down, far down. I return to my body and Ohm convinces the motor to turn on and go down. We travel down for several stories. The elevator opens to a destroyed hallway, there are corpses visible from here and we can feel the presence of living creatures. A quick reconnoiter reveals several infected mages and we decide we should leave and come up with a proper plan for this. We take the elevator back up to the ground floor and Ohm fries the control circuits. This appears to be the only exit so we have them trapped for now which is good. We need to know more about what was going on down there, right now the only person we can think of who would know is Carlos. And that explains his oddness when we questioned him earlier, he knows this place exists. Time to go pay him a visit.
Carlos is at home and we actually knock and not take his door down. We are going to continue with our interpol disguise. Once he does open the door we kinda force our way in and Danno puts on his thug face and starts scaring the crap out of him. Danno and I intimidate him quite easily, we are getting quite skilled at this without actually resorting to violence. Carlos doesn't know what is going on down in the secret lab, he knows it exists but thats about it, he figures it's safer for him to not know what is going on and well he is right. Can't really fault him there. He is useless to us so we leave. The only way we are going to find out what is going on down in that lab is to go there ourselves, but first we have to figure out how to take out several diseased mages without killing them. Danno's first thought is to use the very nasty chloroform in the ventilation system, but Ohm does the math and alerts us that a dose of that level will be lethal. We need a safer gas. A happy gas. We need to find a dentist.
Luckily nitrous oxide is also used to gas lab mice and we are in a lab. Ohm and the Padre go searching for some tanks while I project my mind into twilight and try to map out the first floor of the underground complex to get a general idea of it's volume. Towards the end of the first floor it becomes quite difficult to move through twilight, like I was moving through molasses. This feels like the same kind of supernal interference I was getting when scrying on third mage. This sounds like our target area. Ohm finds 2 tanks and we figure that should be enough in it's undiluted form to gas the first floor. Just in case things go bad we leave the elevator up here and a portal is air tight, great delivery mechanism. We wait 30-40 minutes after we release the gas through the portal. I monitor the end of the portal through a scrying window and hear a few bodies hitting the floor. Sounds like our plan started working so we head on through.
We make our way around the horseshoe shaped level. Most of the mages are taking a nap. We still aren't sure exactly what we are looking for so we take our time and check each room. Ohm sense that there are a couple lifeforms moving around in a room near us. Red goes in to flush them out. They put up a fight but it doesn't take much for us to knock them out and restrain them and move on. Most of this place is really broke and there are some odd looking large holes in some of the walls. We finally come up to a door that is still intact. Ohm senses their is a force spell in place, looks like some kind of containment field. I project myself into twilight to go through the door and see that it is a storage room and full of vials and tubes of what I can only imagine is nastiness and thats why even the crazy mages stayed away from it. In the center on a table is what looks like another voice recorder. Unfortunately I can not interact with it from twilight so I return to my body and unlock the door, Danno will go get it. The containment only seems to be there to prevent anything from leaking out and Danno is able to go and get out without any issues. The recorder mentions a new creepy assistant showing up a few weeks ago. I know this creepy assistant is one of Donovan's goons. The only one we haven't seen yet was Sojiro. Well if he is here I'm sure we will bump into him eventually. We continue around towards the center of the horseshoe. Ohm detects a life form in room next to us and it seems to be shadowing us, like it knows we are on the other side of the wall. The map shows this is the cafeteria. Danno and Red make their way in but that life form seems to be hiding. There is a crash in the kitchen and we catch a glimpse of something leaping up towards the ceiling. Soon we hear it in the ceiling above us. Danno tries to force his way through the ceiling with his head but it isn't pointy enough and he bounces off. All of sudden the ceiling explodes above us and this thing falls down through it. It is like 7 ft long, has armor looking plates and several tentacles. It's eyes glow blue and I get that feeling that it just cast a spell. At first I thought it was perhaps a Life mage who got stuck in a form but thing was not a mage. It was apparently created by mages and it was casting spells. This will be interesting. Every time someone got near it one of tentacles who lash out on it's own accord. It eyes Ohm hungrily and went after him first. It stuck him with one of the other tentacles and there was a blue glow and transfer of energy and then some of it's wounds healed. This thing was sucking mana and using it to heal. Ohm was already low on mana and now drained. The creature sensed that and looked around and saw I still had plenty and started to come after me. Danno and Red tried to stop it but it was fast. I willed myself to the other side of the room hoping to buy some time. As it ran after me it lashed out at Ohm again and he started looking a little sleepy. Ohm continued to try to stay awake as the creature came after me and got me with the mana draining tentacle. Danno and Red continue to beat on this thing but it doesn't show any signs of stopping. Ohm finally succumbs to the sleep and takes a nap. The creature gets Red with the sleeping tentacle and he goes down real quick. At this point half the party is sleeping, I'm hurt and Danno isn't looking so good. Sounds like time to sound the horn of strategic withdrawal. I will the whole group out to the corridor and let the emergency portal go. I drag Ohm through and Danno grabs Red.
It was getting kinda late when we were in Finland, in Chicago the sun is already out there and Danno takes a nap. After we make Ohm and Red up we spend the morning healing. Ohm and I have some tass latte which is quite good and replenishing. We will have to go back and tackle this creature later on tonight. In the meantime we can continue resting and come up with some defenses against this thing.
Cygin