Written by Peter Weilnböck
Published on: 2025-10-20
Session 4: The team enters TFS to get the book. But something seems to be not quite right...
Since the target now was a high profile company, in a respectable part of town, the team decided to smart up a bit. Jace bought himself a nice suit and ordered some form fitting body armor as well that could go under it. Discord, on the more budget conscious side thought that just playing the bodyguard should be fine. So his armored jacket should be enough.
Based on the information that Taurus Future Solutions was specialized in consulting about astral security, they also felt that it was prudent to equip themselves to better counter astral threat. Who knows what would be in store for them.
However, without a mage in the group their options were limited, and the only thing they got in the end were a few cans of FAB I spay. Acquired over 2 different connections, since on such short notice, nobody really had enough stock. And since spirits are notorious for being difficult to deal with without a mage, they also bought some ex-ex ammunition. The logic being, that if normal ammo might not be enough, explosive ammo would be better. And extra explosive ammo even more so.
To get access to the book, they thought that it might help to have an arcane tomb themselves to peak TFS’s interest. Jace went to a flea market close to his apartment while Romeo looked into his families library. While Jace acquired a cloth bound book with unreadable script (White Nights by Dostoevsky in the original Russian), Romeo was even more successful. Much to his surprise, they had a small section of grimoires, one of them a printed 1880 edition of The sixth and seventh books of Moses, which, while of course much newer than the book they planned to acquire, definitely should fit the bill. Borrowing it was just a matter of convincing his father that he finally took some interest in literature, and might consider a career in this field. Overjoyed that the wayward son finally had a interest in something that with enough squinting could be seen as a respectable career, this valuable tomb was Romeo’s. For a while. Of course, it should be returned back to the families library, as soon as it was no longer needed.
Calling ahead, Romeo was able to schedule a meeting the next day, via a most helpful agent. First annoyed not getting a real metahuman on the line, it soon proofed to be good luck, since the scheduling could only be described as bumpy at best. Even a slightly higher quality agent program would have become suspicious by the whispering in the background and the rather unprofessional “Yes, yes, of course. A consultiation is what we want, since those are the services you offer, ahem” and so on. But as it were, they got an appointment on Saturday, September 10th at 9 a.m.. To the dismay of Jace, who was of the strong opinion that people ought to be sleeping at that time of day. If they already had returned home, that is.
Arriving at the location, they found a modern 7 story building, all gleaming glass in the gray, rainy weather. Driving past the full employee parking lots to the designated guest parking, right next to executive parking and the entrance. They seemed to be the only visitors, which, to some members of the team was understandable enough, considering the hour of the day and the day of the week.
When they stepped to the corporate double glass doors to enter, they found it locked. Also the 3-4 person reception counter was unmanned, and ringing the doorbell did nothing. Calling again, they reached the same friendly agent program who reconfirmed their appointment, and was happy, that they apparently were right on time. The reception is always manned, so they should be let in as soon as they arrive.
Seeing that something was off, they decided to change their approach. Signore deSantis should wait in the car with Hunt0rKill0r69, Jace changed his suit jacket for his normal armored jacket and Romeo borrowed Discords body armor bag and slipped it over his head. He kept the book though, since by now he found it quite interesting and continued to flick through the pages whenever there was a moment to do so.
Getting to the door again, Romeo quickly hacked it and let them in. Inside it was quiet, with the exception of the soft hum of the electronics and the continuous pitter-patter of the rain against the glass front. The reception was open and airy, and if the sun were out it also would be bright and friendly. With the constant rain and gloomy weather, the inside also seemed rather subdued as well. There were panels with moss on the walls, and lillies planted in pots all around. Discord, reactivating his focus and Adept powers (He had suppressed both while entering in case of a ward), found that the mana level seemed to be lower in here, and that he was not able to access the full range of his powers. And when he swung the silencer to close to one of the moss panels, the moss seemed to faintly glow in response to it.
Exploring the first floor, the did not find a trace of a single soul. Going to the elevators, they checked out the available floors, and found that in addition to the 7 floors above ground, the was a single basement. Not sure if valuable artifacts are more likely to be stored in the top floor with the executive suit, or in the basement in some safe, they decided to go down first.
The basement was less polished than the first floor and seemed to be containing mostly storage and the server rooms. They still made a full sweep, but came up empty. However, Discord did notice, that down here there seemed to be no mana ebb.
They went to the top floor next. On the way up in the elevator, the mana levels went down the further they went up. Reaching the top floor, Discord was only able to access half of his magical abilities.
Not that it was necessary, because this floor was completely deserted as well. The even more ubiquitous lilies seemed to be planted in all areas that could be reserved for decorations [1]. At first they also could find nothing strange here - other than the eerie silence. But then they notice that one of the secretary desks in front of one of the executive offices was left less orderly. The interface devices had been pulled off the desk and were dangling down on their wired connection, as if someone had tried to keep a hold of something. The chair was slightly turned an pushed back as well. Inspecting it closer, they found a pattern of very fine dark spots on the upper half of the chair. From a thin spray or almost mist of some liquid.
Getting tenser they continue to investigate the floor, everyone keeping their weapons ready. Except for Romeo who still keeps reading into the book whenever he does not need to focus on following the others.
Checking out the toilets, they found that someone had left a shoe behind in a cubicle, and a similar spray of fine dark droplets decorated the inside. Here on the while background the reddish brown colour was easier to identify.
Finally they went to the service corridor including the service elevator - tucked away, so that valued customers and the upper echelon did not have to ride the same elevator as cleaning stuff. Strangely this elevator was locked and required authorization to be called. Spoofing it proofed to be not a big difficulty for Romeo though, and soon the elevator arrived. The inside however did let them pause.
The floor and the walls were covered in smears of blood. Hands seemed to have tried to grasp something, anything to hold on, only resulting in leaving another bloody trace on the slippery surfaces. Nobody wanted to get in the elevator. But the panel with the floor selection included, in addition to B1-F7 as the others, the options for B6 and B7. A hidden basement might be the best place to hide an artifact, even if they really were not keen on finding out what else might be hidden down there.
Riding down directly to B7, the doors open to a sterile, wide, white-ish hallway, two doors with small windows on eye level on either side, and one larger double door on the far end. The cold fluorescent lighting increasing the contrast of the bloody drag-marks down the center of the hallway.
While the mana levels here were at the normal high, the astral space did not feel right. Somehow sticky, and hindering Discord. [2]
Checking through the windows of the doors on the side the found that each of those doors led down another short hallway with four similar doors on each side, keypads visible. Wanting to spend as little time down here as possible, they followed the blood on the floor down the central path.
Carefully moving forward, they assumed a triangle formation with Discord at the point. He carefully opened the door, when Romeo and Jace were hit in the back with short burst of automatic fire.
Behind them two automated turrets with SMGs had popped out of the ceiling and opened fire. They quickly stepped through the door and closed it behind them, leaving the turrets for the way back. Behind the door was another, featureless hallway stretching out for 20 metres, with a similar door on the end.
Reaching the next door, Romeo tried to scan for further automated defenses but found nothing. However, when they opened the door, they did activate some security mechanism again. In the centre of the 10m hallway ahead, and in the centre of the hallway they had just walked throught hidden doors slid up and allowed armored drones to roll in. From behind two lighter Nissan Doberman, in the front two heavy Steel Lynx. All armed with SMGs. Deciding to divide and conquer, they closed the door again and took care of the Dobermans first. One one disabled with 2 controlled short bursts by Jace, the other smashed to pieces with a single blow from Discords silencer.
Now knowing what to look for, Romeo tried to find the Steel Lynx on the other side, and managed to detect them this time. He managed to spoof commands to power both of them down.
Opening the door again and continuing forward, they noticed that the next double door was different. It was made out of heavy, raw steel, etched with arcane symbols on the whole surface. Getting close to it, the quality of the astral space got more sticky and slippery at the same time [3]. This door also had a heavy steel bar, that could be used to bar it from this side.
This time they opened the door only enough to send the fly spy through and checked out what was on the other side. No more automated defenses were triggered by this, but the area behind the door did not match the sterile hallway. Instead of smooth, white, plastic-like surface there were hewn stone blocks, instead of cold, fluorescent light, the flickering of torches.
Watching the feed, they felt their skin creep. After a very short tunnel, the area opened up into a cavernous hall, in the center a large alter-like stone of one and a half by 3 metres. On the far side of the altar a book was propped open. Someone was sitting on the floor on the far side of the altar and leaning on it with his back. 5 trenches led away from the central, slightly elevated platform on which the altar was placed, running into small, sewer like tunnels. They were spaced in regular angles, if you would see the approach from the door as an imaginary 6th trench. And those trenches were filled with a slowly sloshing viscous dark red liquid. All around the walls of the hall mangled bodies were piled up. They were casually strewn about as if they had been disliked ragdolls. Taking a closer look at the altar, they saw that the man leaning there seemed to be just unconscious, and they also identified him as one of those who got the book from Marley’s hut.
Observing this they decided to make use of the disabled Steel Lynx drones. After briefly considering if it was possible to rewire them into their own service (to risky with the available skills), they left them disabled to use one as a door stop and the other as mobile cover.
Creeping in slowly, meter by meter, Jace quickly lost his patience and decided to just make a dash for the book and be out of this place as quickly as possible. When he was about half way to the altar he got the attention of… something. Above the altar a whirling circlone of blood, flesh and pieces of bone manifested. Feeding its grotesque vaguely humanoid form from the blood trenches around, strings of blood were running into it, dripping, like pieces of a giant cobweb in the morning mist.
With a careless flick of the blood spirits finger, one of the mangled corpses came flying and smashed Jace to the ground. Even with his synaptic booster he had not been quick enough to doge this gruesome projectile.
It then fixed its gaze on Discord who experienced extreme pain and started to bleed out of his nose, ears and eyes, as various blood vessels in his body started bursting.
Jace got up and released a long burst at that thing, but it simply made room for most of the bullets to pass through its body, and the one that hit and exploded did not seem to faze it at all.
Discord rushed in and swung at it with his silencer. This seemed to do some actual damage, although not a terrible amount.
Romeo, high on Cram, decided to use Jace’s and Discord’s struggle as a distraction and get the book, running around the perimeter and jumping over the first of the blood trenches in an attempt to get behind the blood spirit, which continued to half float over the altar in all its 3m tall dripping gruesomeness.
The blood spirit now also focused on Discord, since he seemed to be the biggest threat and swatted him with a backhand, hard enough to topple him over and almost send him into unconsiousness and close to deaths door. [4]
Jace now aimed more carfully and released another burst. This time the bullets hit and the explosions sent chunks of meat flying in a mist of blood. He seemed to have managed to get its attention away from Discord.
Discord, barely upright tries to hit it again, and after missing, started to run back, while Romeo was grabbing the book and trying to get back the same way as he came.
With the gaze of sprit fixed on him, Jace also now experienced the agonizing pain of blood vessels bursting all throughout his body. His bleeding was less severe than that of Discord though.
Jace tried to revenge himself, but this time the bullets did not find their mark.
As more blood vessels were bursting in Jace’s body all of them were heading out the door, with a last burst at the spirit as a goodbye. While running they notice that the whole bloody mass seemed to be vanishing into thin air.
Reaching the sterile white hallway, they however qickly found out where it had gone. It re-materialized at the end of the hallway, blocking their escape. While slightly smaller then in the chamber, it still was menacing enough for Jace to immediately open fire again, wounding it further. Discord, risking his life, rushed closed and managed to hit it with a desperate swing of the silencer. Having a bit more access to his power back helped to give the strike enough force to effectively explode the spirit and shower him and the hallway in blood.
Remembering the man in the center of the hall, they sent the fly-spy back in, but noticed that he had vanished. Slightly worried that this might not have been the last of the horror, they got the drone back and barred the steel door behind them.
Taking one of the Steel Lynx with them, they got back to the car, to the worried faces of Andrea deSantis and Hunt0rKill0r69.
deSantis was quite happy to pay them the agreed upon hazard pay and the original book price as well.
The conclusion of the halloween run was fun to, well, run. I am not so experienced with horror, but my players seemed to like it. The tone remained mostly serious and creepy, which, as many game masters know, can be a challenge.
It was also nice seeing them actually fearing for their life. I mean their characters life. But, I am a gentle GM, and therefore I did not play the blood spirit as smart as I could have. However, sending a force 5 spirit in a domain 2 zone (making it effectively force 7, and costing Discord 1/3 of his adept powers) against them had been a challenge anyways.
The next sessions should be a bit more lighthearted again.
Once again, my wife made a brilliant write up from the point of view of Jace, which can be found here.
