london ♔ this is a bad town for such a pretty face

[wynn]

WHO || Wynn, Val'drin, Helen, Francesca, Eric, Lila,  Tia, Grant Peterson, Audrey Peterson, Peter Jayson, various others [closed]
WHAT || A mission gets personal when a cult takes a member of the Knights hostage
WHERE || London, England
WHEN || April 2nd, 10:30 AM  [backdated]
HOW || Actionspam or prose

This is exactly the kind of mess that the Knights like to avoid, and having two missions become very public spectacles in the course of less than a year is not doing much to keep Wynn's hair from turning... oh, wait.

It's already a media circus when the team flies out there in a helicopter that carries Francesca, Eric, Tia, and Lila. Across the street, Wynn has usurped the top floor of an office building to keep an eye on the situation. He watches the screens broadcasting the video taken by the three going on with a tense eye, along with Val'drin and Helen, who are here to consult. Below, the police have blockades of cars, officers, and police line keeping the civilians and reporters back, under orders of Chief of Police Jared O'Keefe.

The Bell 212 chopper hovers for a minute above the building, enough so that Eric can toss a long rope down to dangle over the top floor balcony in the southeast corner. He looks back over his shoulder at Lila, giving her an encouraging but grim nod, and then pulls his SWAT helmet on and grasps the rope, turning around and then hopping back as he slides down. (climb 12) the dc is 10 to climb down, and you are allowed to "take 10" (assume a roll of 10) if you don't have a negative strength score.

Comments

[bittersweeter]

[ nbd just standing here consumed by guilt. maybe she should have used less trigger happy psychopaths as the hostage takers if it wasn't for real. ]

[telekinect]

It was a cover operation. Grant collects artifacts, some of which he keeps in the penthouse. With the destruction that would be caused by the hostage situation and subsequent counterstrike, it would be easy for someone to assume anything missing been destroyed in the process.

Instead of stolen.

[socialgraces]

Stolen by Audrey, then? [ she turns to grant ] I take it you've never had any suspicions?

[bittersweeter]

Hope you have insurance on that emerald. [ she likes jewelry, sue her, that's the piece from the office she remembered most easily. ]

[antiquaria]

Suspicions of what? My wife looking to rob me? Why? What would she possibly feel the need to do that for?

This can't be what it looks like.

[daredtobelieve]

Grant, I know this is hard to take in. But we have a very small window to try to get back on their trail. Is there any item you've acquired recently that someone might be interested in taking?

[socialgraces]

[ ooo good call helen. francesca nods in agreement, listening closely ]

[antiquaria]

I come by a great number of artifacts - powerful ones. I couldn't tell you which ones would be of interest to her specifically, because I have no idea what she'd have wanted to take any of them for. She's my research assistant - she had access to everything at all hours.

[socialgraces]

It is strange she's make such an open push so suddenly. Like, why now?

[bittersweeter]

Okay, say your wife isn't in the wrong here and is simply an innocent victim. She's also in perfect position to be blackmailed. I doubt using the Children of Chaos or whatever their melodramatic name is was a choice she made personally. [ or maybe it is, regardless lila doesn't care. ] Do you have anything that would appeal to them, specifically, some... relic of a chaos god or whatever?

[antiquaria]

[ he shakes his head, pinching his nose ] No, I-- Nothing I can think of.

If we catalog everything upstairs, I might be able to figure out what's missing. Assuming those thugs didn't destroy other artifacts to make it difficult to tell what she took.

[daredtobelieve]

We had better get started then. [roll out, bitches.]

[socialgraces]

[ francesca's just gonna hang back a moment and look around from some clean clothes to slip into b/c all this blood is gonna get sticky and gross soon, and she did rip apart her shirt for make-shift bandages, so go on without her for a few minutes. ]

[antiquaria]

[ the penthouse is a mess, because just as grant suspected, the flying bullets from the shoot out had destroyed some of the artifacts lining the walls. he's going to need as much help as possible to write down a description of what's there, so he can match it up to what he knows the artifacts are, and compare it to his files. everyone needs to do a search check to try to find pieces of the ruined artifacts that are still recognizable! ] Our life's work...

[bittersweeter]

[ search 19, lila carefully picks her way around. maybe she's trying to keep her boots clean. you don't know her life. naw, she's just delicate like a cat. ]

[daredtobelieve]

[Well- Helen got a nat 20 on her search check bc rng loves her tonight. She's very used to doing this sort of thing, so I guess that makes sense.]

[socialgraces]

[ when francesca arrives, slightly less disheveled, she starts to search, as well (search 27), very meticulously sifting through the mess. ]

[antiquaria]

[ their search through the archives turns up lots of artifacts of note, some of which they glimpsed earlier in the house. grant matches them up to the records to identify themdex:

the collar of the siren,
falcon's spirit,
bivuuku, the macahutil of the ages,
and more.

six artifacts seem to be missing entirely, each either destroyed or stolen:

the nightmare catcher,
the deck of faces,
barrik the glutton's fetish,
the crimson tongue of the wyrm,
the pristine glass,
an idol of ventyr, the emaciated. ]

[bittersweeter]

[ lila picks up a piece of glass between her fingers. ] Do you actually have Die Handgeheimnisse?

[daredtobelieve]

[Helen seems to have a vague idea of where this is going.] The missing items- are any of them connected to that particular text?

[antiquaria]

[ grant shakes his head ] That's part of what's so baffling about all this. The text itself has no significance that I can figure. Certainly no connection to any of this.

[bittersweeter]

[ okay, so fuck the book basically. she mulls over the missing ones, fiddling with her piece of glass, sliding it back and forth across her palm absently. ] What's the "Nightmare Catcher"?

[ obviously she picked that one first, but she's willing to go through them all. ]

[daredtobelieve]

[Helen doesn't really want to go through them each individually, so she'll try to use her resources. Turning to Val'drin, she looks to his weird artifact expertise. Since he's not blinded by the betrayal of his wife, he might have a cooler head about it all.]

Do any of those stand out to you?

[valdrin]

Not as such, no. I can't say I'm very familiar with any of them, although I'm certain a bit of research could clear that up. I know these names - Barrik the Glutton and Ventyr, the Emaciated. The first was mentioned in the diary of a 4th-century Persian merchant - who also happened to be an infamous diablerist and murderer. It was said he would invite rivals to dinner and, invariably, his guests would be dead before they could finish dessert. Clearly the cause of death was not poisoning because dozens of other guests - including himself - ate the very same food. It's said that he somehow used an item, this fetish of Barrik, actually, to complete the murders somehow.

Ventyr's idol was mentioned in a 4th century source as well - that of a Persian sultan. According to the scrolls, a visiting merchant presented the idol to the sultan at a feast celebrating his 50th birthday. The account claims that before the feast was over, the sultan and all his guests (with the exception of the merchant who brought it) had either wasted away to nothing or eaten themselves to death. The document was, of course, unclear about details, and seemed to contradict itself in several places.

[socialgraces]

[ val'drin u so smart. and despite the gravity of the situation, francesca can't help but pause to admire him that for a moment (or several) as she moves to where he's standing. ] Well, those both sound remarkably abhorrent, though I suppose it's not difficult to imagine why some would seek to obtain such artifacts.