S072_A_Very_Eventful_Day Wednesday November 14, 2018 Recap: Blast Furnace was the only member of the villain team that was knocked out. The victory was short lived as the unconscious Blast Furnace sparkled and disappeared as Gear Heads Car sped away. Resume: 0730 Mind Warper and his Fatal Five withdraw from the field of battle a storm of freezing rain rushes in. The After the battle, Rudolf Thomas is gratefule he is a Assistant District Attorney and having a friend in the DA's office is always a good thing. However with MW&FF gone he wants to know how do we keep them from coming back or keeping him safe. Revenant agrees that it is a good question but no one has a good answer for him. Revenant braves the worsening storm to take Rudolf home. Kismet is at a loss for how she will be able to ride her broom through the storm to her appointment. The temperature won't be an issue for her as her 3WA bikini will protect her from the cold but the broom handle will ice up making holding on to it a serious issue. Ultimately she decides to take the subway but she will carry the broom with her in case of emergency. Paladin contacts Director Canfield. He implores her to use all the resources at her disposal to track Gear Head's car so they can be arrested. Director Canfield also contacts Canadian agencies (such as CCG and Department H) to help close the net and keep the villains from escaping. Before Kismet leaves she starts working trying to correlate purchases of parts and equipment that MWFF would need to keep Gear Head's car functional. She gathers up some of the bits of Gear Head's robot troopers and examines them for serial numbers or other markings that would identify where they were purchased (or manufactured). By coming up with that paper trail it might be possible to locate MWFF's hiden base. This is a very good idea and might be worthy of bonus EXP. Revenant is monitoring the emergency channels and hears that a freighter docked nearby is in peril. Cargo slipped free from a boom and crashed down on some of the dock workers. The accident also starts a fire that rapidly starts to spread. Revenant and Big Tuna leave the base to go render aid. At 10:00AM Kismet is supposed to see Dr. Greer st his private practice. She is meeting with the family of one of the people who went mad just before the Exodus (June of 2017). They got put on this path when visiting Miskatonic University. 8:30AM Having waited for over an hour for an update from PRIMUS (or anyone) about the location of Gear Head's car Paladin decides to explore other options. He decides to drive up to the hangar where their spaceship is housed but none of the cars in their motor pool are rugged enough to safely make the trip in the ice storm. He pays a kings ransom to get a car rental service to deliver an appropriate 4-wheel drive to the base. It is nearly 9AM when he hits the road. He drives with as much caution as he can as he exits the city. 10:00AM Kismet arrives at Dr. Greer's personal practice. It is located in a strip mall between a massage parlor and a vape shop. Upon entering she meets Christina, Dr Greer's receptionist. Christina leads Kismet back to Examination Room 1 where Dr. Greer is talking to Gloria Weeks, the wife of one of the people who went insane just before the Exodus (June of 2017). Gloria's 10 year old daughter is sitting on a couch playing with a hand held electronic game while her mother and Dr. Greer talk. Gloria wants some hope that giving Kismet the records on her husband's case and visitation rights to see him might help cure him. Kismet then starts to explaining Demon's involvement, while she tries to use as neutral of terms as possible it still becomes very dark, very quickly. Gloria asks Dr. Greer (whom she calls Cedric) to take Jesse out of the room. Greer take the child by the hand and leads her out. Kismet gives Gloria as much encouragement as she can without lying to her. In gratitude Gloria gives her permission for Kismet to have Eliot's medical records and visitation rights. She gives Kismet a hug before going to bundle up Jesse for the mad dash to the subway. Gloria's Prius is left in the parking lot to be collected when the weather gets better. Dr. Greer gives her the medical records on a computer disk and wishes her well. While Greer is preparing the documents Kismet has a couple follow up questions for Gloria Weeks. She asks if her husband (Eliot) was behaving oddly before he lost his mind (Gloria's words, not Kismet's). No, he spent a lot of extra time at work but that wasn't unusual. Kismet also wanted to know what Eliot did as a job. He was a supervisor at the publishing company Twisted Thinking Publishing. Kismet sees a possible connection between his going mad and a company that prints copies of books. Kismet thanks Gloria and then starts heading back to the base. 11:00 Paladin reaches the hangar. He has Hal and Dewey power up. He wants them to take the ship up to their space station and determine what would be needed to repair it. Hal tells him that the system integrity and full structure check could take between 24 and 48 hours but with luck it could take less. After giving the robots their orders he begins his drive back to the base. Kismet gets back to the base and resumes her analysis of possible locations for MWFF's base. She has Network help her. She discovers that there is a virus that seeks out information pertaining to MW and company and deletes it. She starts working on a cork board so the data is beyond the reach of Gear Head's computer virus. Meanwhile Network starts digging into any data he can find on Twisted Thinking Publishing. At first he expects it is a shell company for a larger conglomerate but discovers that it is a sole proprietorship company. It is owned by a George Nathan Whitlock. He has operated it for 30 years and it is just barely staying above water. Whitlock has never been married and has no heirs. Twisted Thinking publishes small runs of fringe books. Some science fiction, fantasy, and so forth. They also publish books for companies like Mongoose books, rule books for games. Such as Chronomancer, a Mongooses games source book compatable with 2 nd editon D&D. It is a small company employing 20 people at a time. With the exception of Eliot Weeks none of the staff placed a claim against the medical insurance policy the company provides. It is a requirement under Worker's Compensation Insurance policies. 1200 Noon Big Tuna and Revenant get back from the freighter. The sailors and dockworkers gave them hot coffee and a place to warm up after saving their co-workers. Kismet is suspicious about the timing of the ice storm. She suggests that Gear Head might have released drones that seeded the clouds and create the ice storm for the villains advantage. 1330 Network, having found nothing incriminating with Twisted Thinking Publishing so far starts seeing if the company every published any portion of the Livre d' Eibon His search turns up nothing. Paladin safely arrives back at the base. As he drives up his Danger Sense starts to spark. Babs (Barbra Satin) the team mechanic rushes to meet him as he drives in. She comforts the 4-wheel drive vehicle and promises to make sure 'he' is ship shape after enduring the ice storm. Paladin notes that Babs does not set off his danger sense but as he goes to the secure base lever of the headquarters everyone else does! Kismet, Big Tuna, Network, Revenant, Preston, and Rocko. Paladin muses if they have been replaced with Pod-People. He keeps his distance as the threat seems to become more pronounced as he gets closer to people. Revenant asks if he is okay but nothing more comes from his standoffishness. 1800 Preston prepares a wonderful meal of tuna and bass. After dinner Paladin reviews the security tapes of the day to see if he can spot how the danger began. Nothing seems out of place. He calls the group together and tells them about the unease he feels pertaining to each of them. He requests that each take a shower and have another member of the team search through their clothes to see if they cn find what is triggering him. It is suggested that Paladin's Danger Sense might be somehow affected so he agrees to the same treatment that he wants everyone else to undergo. When Paladin gets within three feet of one of his afflicted teammates he joins them as a potential danger. After the cleansing each person is put through the Autodoc to be checked for illness, injury, poison, and so on. The treatment does not help. Paladin has Barbra come to the base level so they can find out why she isn't triggering him. When she gets close to the afflicted she becomes on. When she is told that she is a danger to the team, just like everyone else, she starts to cry because she swears she doesn't want to hurt anyone. Preston makes her a hot dog to sooth her while the rest of the team continues to discuss the source of the risk. Preston tells Barbra about how everyone was examined and encourages her to undress and be examined too. The team does not notice him stripping her and helping with her shower, etc. The ice storm continues to rage outside. 2100 It is decided that Paladin should retrace the steps everyone who left the base took today. Maybe with his Danger Sense he can find the source. He starts with the low hanging fruit of the freighter Big Tuna and Revenant helped. As far as Paladin can tell the ship is clean. Paladin then retraces Kismet's path to Doctor Greer's office, in so doing he afflicts everyone on the subway. With the ice storm in full fury there are not too many people in the tube but everyone he afflicts goes on to afflict everyone they encounter. Arriving at Greer's office it is closed and empty but he feels a slight twing of residual danger from his office. They think they have located the source and Kismet is patient zero! Paladin comes back to the base and the group discuss what to do next. Paladin contacts Brian Eldritch, PRIMUS warlock, since they have had dealing before. After being told about the situation Eldritch tells them to stay put and he will be there as soon as he can. 2300 Eldritch arrives and spend 15 minutes casting an identify spell. Eldritch has been told about Dr. Greer's clinic, the subway, and how the effect is spreading like an uncontained wildfire. When the spell is complete Eldritch tells them it seems to be similar to the Exodus spell. He tells them that the spell seems to be very targetable and has a non-specific triggering condition. He tells the group popular one are Midnight, Sunrise, and Sunset. He wishes them well in case they vanish at midnight, 40 minutes away. Eldritch spends some time explaining what he, and the other PRIMUS Wizards, think they know about the Exodus spell. He says that it is power and ancient magic and it can (probably) be undone by a very powerful sorcerer (like none that he is aware of) to overpower the spell or if they could get the spell itself a much lesser mage would (likely) be able to undo it. It is the difference of using a huge dose of a general antibiotics against an infection or a single injection targeted to against Polio. If he had the spell and cast it he could target the effect to only affect virgins, or red heads, or whatever he wanted to send to a dimension of madness. He could also set a specific trigger, like a comet appearing in the sky, dawn, sunset, midnight, or Abraham Lincoln's birthday. Until the spell is triggered it will continue to spread through casual contact. It this spell is hitting everyone that it contacts it might have been cast by a less experienced mage, or as the Brigade suggested, by someone who simply does not care who it hits.  Kismet asks Eldritch how the spell might have been placed on 'patient zero'. Eldritch says it could have been a passing touch, shaking a hand, or maybe a hug. Kismet recalls that Gloria had Dr. Cedric Greer take Jesse out of the examination room before she hugged her. The discussion concerning how deliberate the spell being activated remains unresolved.  Despite the spell being passed to everyone that it encounters that does not mean everyone who is exposed to it will be vanquished. If the spell was targeted to red headed women named Amy the spell would still stick to everyone who encounters it but when the effect is triggered only red head Amys would disappear. Also the spreading effect would cease at the same instant. This is a very powerful spell and it needs to be found and eliminated! The chances of it being abused are too great. Yes, it might be nice to cast it to get rid of Viper agents, or Demon members, but it could be targeted against homosexuals, Jews, republicans, just about anyone.