[MH] Caribbean by Night

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Varyon

If there are any further monetary concerns, considering (some of) the cultists have ties to the meth trade, it's possible they may be able to get into contact with the sort of criminal (pimps, high-ranking drug dealers, etc) who tends to have large sums of cash available and accepts Bitcoin for goods and services. While such probably don't usually make a habit of trading their illicit cash for Bitcoins, sufficient incentive - a markedly better-than-market exchange rate, a discount on product purchased in the near future, etc - may make them inclined to do just that. If the criminals are worried such a too-good-to-be-true deal is, well, just that, they might arrange for a dead drop or similar to give the cultists the funds (put the money in a storage locker and hide the key somewhere; once the cultists have provided the Bitcoins, tell them the location of the key and locker). This has the advantage to the cultists that their out-of-country assets can set it all up over the internet while they're still en route. This has the disadvantage that the criminals may be inclined to provide a key to an empty locker and abscond with the funds, although I'd imagine the cult has ways of... discouraging such behavior.

Indeed.

The cult has plenty of connections with drug trade organizations in South America, even though they themselves are not involved in drug production or the retail of drugs. They sell methamphetamine precursors to numerous DTOs in Andean countries and collect tribute from several local criminal organizations.

Those connections are where they got access to all the cash and offshore accounts they are using, after all. They are also how the Consortium hired numerous shooters who came to the US to attempt to salvage the failure of the advance team, only to make things worse.

However, neither the Consortium nor the Keepers of the Last Hearth are engaged in smuggling drugs into the US and, in fact, their more overtly criminal connections there are limited to some groups in California. That means that the five cultists connected to the 'Red Dragon' in South America can use smuggling routes used by these California criminal groups through cargo terminals in San Diego or Los Angeles to import oodles of cash, esoteric paraphernalia, weapons and other stuff they don't want going through customs, but it doesn't help the cultists who land directly in Dallas or Houston.

In Texas, the Consortium has connections with several more or less legitimate businesses that are engaged in money laundering and profiting from illegally mined precious metals, but that means white collar criminals, not pimps or gangsters. In any case, the cult are treating that entire network as compromised, so no one they know in that milieu will be approached for the new logistics and transport.

Even for the Mexico-Texas border crossing, the seven pishtaco and the sorcerer traveling with them made a point not to approach any cartels or DTOs on either side of the border, but travel among regular Central American migrants for much of the way and then deal with an independent coyote for the crossing itself.

In this setting, the ongoing drug war in Mexico is even more violent and chaotic than in our world, with dark spirits feeding on the fear and rage, influencing people to murder, torture and rape, as well as adepts of the occult rising to power among cartels and gangs, fighting for Places of Power and relics as well as profits and territory.

Quite simply, the cultists are as much foreigners to Mexico as Americans are and they don't know enough about the underworld there to feel safe dealing with any faction. The independent coyote is Chinese-Mexican and the 'friend-of-a-friend' to a strategic partner of the 'Red Dragon' element among the cultists.

As for the Texas underworld, especially if they cannot make use of what white-collar connections they have through the Consortium, the South American cultists legitimately have no more information than I do.

And I expect the native Californian cultists aren't much help when it comes to criminal contacts in Texas, as the nine traveling down to help with the ritual are part of a genuine New Age cult from Los Angeles. I suppose the best the cultists could hope for in the way of Texan criminal contacts outside their (now-compromised) Consortium alies would be if a 1% Motorcycle Club in California their other associates there deal with had a connection with some bikers in Texas, but that would probably take too much time to set up.

Hmmm... once it becomes clear that the sacrifices are lost to the cultists (rescued by PCs, a few dead, the rest in the hands of police), I wonder if I should have cult representatives in California offer concessions and a substantial sum, with a promise of more once the job is done, to the chapter of the Peckerwoods MC and/or the Nazi Lowriders they have a relationship with in exchange for a group of bikers and/or white supremacists driving to Texas. They'd tell them some lies about a business partner that required intimidation, just holding him and his family for a while until a deal was negotiated, no risk of him going to the cops afterwards because he's a criminal, etc.

In actual fact, the cultists would just be buying strong, armed bodies that could be sacrificed in order to reanimate them under the control of a minor Cold One spirit. And they wouldn't even foresee having to pay more than the first installment, so this would be relatively cheap for them. And the reanimated bikers and/or white supremacist gang members could be used as muscle to seize more sacrifices.

Granted, it's a 23 hour drive, so the earliest the bikers would get near Indianola is the evening of the 30th, more likely morning to noon on the 31st, assuming they slept at least once and made several rest stops during the trip. But if they could be induced to hurry enough to reach the cultists on the night of the 30th, there would be plenty of time for them to be sacrificed, reanimated and then sent out to collect some new and better sacrifices. Sure, the spirits would flee their bodies at dawn, but still, they could be useful for those few hours.

However, this only works if the news coverage of a massive terrorism investigation in the Houston area wouldn't scare them away from accepting a criminal job about 150 miles away from there. It would probably discourage me, but maybe the Peckerwoods and Nazi Low Riders are less careful...

[Varyon]

Without accessible connections in Texas, they'd be reliant on their overseas allies finding someone over the dark web to set things up, and that's highly likely to end with the rogue absconding with the Bitcoins, leaving the cultists with nothing to show for it, so I'd say my option there is a no-go. Sounds like they've probably managed to get together enough funds to make it work anyway.

Bringing in bikers could be an interesting option, particularly if the players are going to be involved in a confrontation with the cultists. Killing Nazis - Zombie, Neo-, Antarctic Space, or otherwise - is always a good time.

Incidentally, all this discussion revolving around supernatural happenings put a kernel of a character in my brain, and I opted to list the supernatural bits about her here. I'm somewhat curious if a character with such traits would be appropriate in your setting (and if you like my take on an in-betweener, feel free to poach). I think I may have gone a bit excessively low-tech for her weaponry (they're made as roughly early TL5 tech, but very high-quality TL5 tech).

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Without accessible connections in Texas, they'd be reliant on their overseas allies finding someone over the dark web to set things up, and that's highly likely to end with the rogue absconding with the Bitcoins, leaving the cultists with nothing to show for it, so I'd say my option there is a no-go. Sounds like they've probably managed to get together enough funds to make it work anyway.

Yes, they've enough cash to make do with. Also, there are trails for law enforcement and/or PCs to follow if they check the right things, which, however, requires that they know what they are looking for.

Once all the cultists rendezvous somewhere outside of Indianola, they'll have the cash reserves brought from California, which should prove enough for any eventuality that might come up at that point. A suitcase of $20, $50 and $100 bills totaling $200,000 should take care of any incidentals they might encounter between the night of the 29th and the night of the 31st of December, especially as there is nothing they are planning to buy beyond paying their drivers and maybe luring some people to Indianola that they can make disappear for a day without bringing in police attention.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Bringing in bikers could be an interesting option, particularly if the players are going to be involved in a confrontation with the cultists. Killing Nazis - Zombie, Neo-, Antarctic Space, or otherwise - is always a good time.

I note that when the pishtaco faction lost their Consortium drivers (when those were asked to leave, as they were probably going to be wanted as soon as law enforcement finished some forensic accounting), they would need new drivers. And there are Nazi Lowriders in Texas.

So I guess it would make sense for the California Nazi Lowriders to contact their compatriots in Texas and arrange for at least four drivers. That's a pretty benign request, especially if there is good pay for a day's work. Of course, the cultists don't trust these men, but as they don't plan to let them leave alive, that is an acceptable risk, especially compared to the risk of letting the pishtaco drive and navigate themselves. Sure, all of them were TL8 humans before being altered by a dark ritual, but only three out of the seven had driven with any regularity and then only in their home countries. And none of them has driven for at all for several years, only one of them has been to the US before and they certainly aren't going to be using GPS navigation systems.

Also, I can't stress enough how much the cultists should avoid having the pishtaco interact with people. They're weird and creepy, totally insane by most metrics and in any case, they like to spend their days dozing and resting.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Incidentally, all this discussion revolving around supernatural happenings put a kernel of a character in my brain, and I opted to list the supernatural bits about her here. I'm somewhat curious if a character with such traits would be appropriate in your setting (and if you like my take on an in-betweener, feel free to poach). I think I may have gone a bit excessively low-tech for her weaponry (they're made as roughly early TL5 tech, but very high-quality TL5 tech).

I commented on that thread, but note that almost all true supernatural beings (briefly visiting Earth in temporary vortices of comparatively very high Mana, i.e. only -5 to -7 instead of -8 to -10 or flat-out No Mana, like most of the world) use TL0 to TL3 weaponry, except those that are really humans with a few extra gifts.

[Icelander]

Sister María Teresa, her friend Salome Teodoro and the two young people in their charge land in Houston 09:44. They've left a message at Houston Party Bus Rental Services to inquire about a couple of black classic Cadillacs, Town Cars or Lincoln Continentals for a memorial service for an old man who liked classic American cars.

They are able to find one 1970 Cadillac Professional Chassis combination coach in hearse configuration, but it is only available for the Saturday. They can't rent it overnight. Sister María Teresa decides that this is unacceptable and sets out to explain to the clerk who is working Saturday why she needs to be able to take the car out to show the old man's widow for her to approve before the memorial service on Sunday.

Politely, the well-bred young man tells the sister that the hearse is already booked for a funeral that Sunday. He is willing to do everything he can to help find an alternate solution and sits down with this funny, foreign nun to see if there isn't some other vehicle she could accept. He offers her coffee, she accepts, but insists on pouring for them both. They both drink coffee while poring over a computer screen with available vehicles. Suddenly, the screen flickers, then shorts out, as the nice young man starts drooling. Sister María Teresa is counting jet-black rosary beads and talking to the drooling clerk in a calming, incomprehensible voice.

Without a word spoken, the young man and the very pretty teenage girl sitting in the waiting area start to make preparations. They lock the door, turn around the 'Open' sign to 'Closed' and close the curtains. Then the young man grabs a letter opener and makes a careful sweep of the office for anyone else.

In her oddly accented, but grammatically perfect English, Sister María Teresa commands the drooling clerk to substitute a 1995 Lincoln Town Car for the other funeral and mark the 1970 Cadillac in the computer as unavailable. Asking careful questions, she determines that marking it unhelpfully and imprecisely as 'In the shop' is unlikely to be disproven until Monday and even then the odds are good no one would be certain that it wasn't a mistake of some sort until after New Year's. Especially if they have something else to think about.

The young man finishes his sweep and reports no other staff there, one outside camera and one inside. He has also found keys for the 1970 Caddy. The other middle-aged woman takes some black candles from her purse and lights one under the inside camera, instructing the girl to light another outside. Removing a bracelet from her wrist and a small vial from the purse, the other woman scatters the crystaline stones of the bracelet around the candle as she mutters in Latin. The two young people join hands with her, chanting with her.

Meanwhile, Sister María Teresa is gently whispering to the docile clerk. She pats him on the hand, takes the two cups of coffee to the kitchen cubby where she washes them in the sink. Then she brings back an empty glass and hands it to the clerk. She tells him to cup it in his hands and repeat the words after her. He does, but the words are not Latin. She chants, he chants, the lights flicker and the three others who arrived with Sister María Teresa have reached a point in their ceremony where they sprinkle drops from the vial on the inside camera.

Sister María Teresa gently asks the clerk to break the glass, carefully at an angle. He does, cutting his hand. She grimaces and asks him to take the largest piece and grasp it firmly. He does. And then she thanks him, asks for his forgiveness, steps backwards and ask him to cut his carotid artery. He does.

Quietly, the two middle-aged women, the nun and the nurse, and the two young people, leave the office. On the way, the young girl sprinkles some drops from the vial on the outside camera and throws some dried flowers at it. Salome Teodoro, the middle-aged nurse, recites a short Latin chant that the others echo.

Inside, bright arterial blood sprays the desk and computer, but the clerk does not move or make any sound but the hoarse gurgle of his straining breath as he gets weaker and weaker. No one looks back at him.

The four cross the parking lot, guided by the young man to avoid the field of view of other cameras. Sister María Teresa proposes that the young man and the girl take the 2017 Toyota Corolla from Avis they arrived in while she and Mrs. Teodoro take the hearse. This disappoints the teenage girl and she looks ready to cry. It takes Sister María Teresa several minutes of quiet whispering and fond hugging to reconcile the girl to going with the young man and she agrees only because there are no ordinary seats in the rear of the hearse.

They drive off toward Indianola.

[RogerBW]

Police response is likely to be low-key for an isolated incident. Assuming there aren't any stressors in the victim's background, they'll look for blood chemistry and perhaps find something odd; two cups used recently is a pointer, and there might be trace left in them and/or fingerprints on them. Fingerprints found elsewhere in the office won't be significant unless there are other incidents where they show up. The message might also point to Sr. María Teresa and party, so the police might like to have a chat with them, but it would probably be of a "did you actually turn up, and if so did you notice anything odd about him" nature.

Is the recording compromised as well as the cameras themselves?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Police response is likely to be low-key for an isolated incident. Assuming there aren't any stressors in the victim's background, they'll look for blood chemistry and perhaps find something odd; two cups used recently is a pointer, and there might be trace left in them and/or fingerprints on them.

She washed the cups, dried them and put them in the cupboard. How would police there maybe an hour later know which cups, if any, might have been used recently?

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Fingerprints found elsewhere in the office won't be significant unless there are other incidents where they show up. The message might also point to Sr. María Teresa and party, so the police might like to have a chat with them, but it would probably be of a "did you actually turn up, and if so did you notice anything odd about him" nature.

The Houston Party Bus Rental Service seems to work like a centralized clearing house. They have contracts with various smaller car rental places and even sole proprietors that rent out some of the exotic vehicles.

So the email was answered by someone in the HPBRS headquarters, suggesting several possible vehicles. When Sister María Teresa landed, she first had her teenage companion try booking one of the suggested cars. When that didn't work, at least not for the two days she wanted, she called the number next to the hearse she liked and then she reached the clerk who worked at that specific small sublocation.

Sister María Teresa asked where they were so she could look at the car. The clerk told her. At this time, Sister María Teresa was hoping to be able to convince the clerk somehow. When that didn't work, she removed what evidence she could of their presence, but can't do anything about the email. She doesn't even know where it is stored.

But, because the camera footage will not show them arrive and, in fact, will appear as if the clerk was alone when he died, Sister María Teresa doesn't really foresee an investigation. At least not one where she becomes wanted by the police before the New Year's.

Like a crazy person, the usually careful Sister María Teresa is utterly ignoring any consequences that wouldn't manifest in the next two days, but would take longer to become a problem. It's as if she literally doesn't care what happens after New Year's Eve.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Is the recording compromised as well as the cameras themselves?

Yes. It was a metaphysical 'drain memory' ritual, where all traces of Sister María Teresa and her friends were removed from the recording.

It also degrades the quality of the recording and makes for spots where something should be visible, but isn't, but unless investigators make a roll against the Facade, they'll assume that the recording is simply always poor quality (God knows that neither me, police nor prosecutors are surprised when real-life recordings in investigations are so low quality as to be almost worthless and I've yet to hear anyone even suggest that they might have been tampered with).

[RogerBW]

Ah, I didn't pick up that the cups had been put away. OK, that's not going to be regarded as evidence. So I don't see this causing investigative problems for the cultists. A car rental lot presumably has external surveillance which would have caught them going in, but that's been compromised when the internal recordings were wiped, and as you say nobody's going to be surprised by it not working.

I don't have a feel for the Houston police. If someone takes a serious interest, they could notice and put together the blood chemistry, lack of stressors in the victim's life (and e.g. email/IM records that say he was planning to do something that evening), lack of a suicide note and hesitation marks (not probative but suggestive), lack of any history of mental illness, and think "hmm, maybe there is something weird going on here" – but they have nothing to point them at the perpetrator, not even enough to say definitely that this was a murder. And if they're in a hurry they might just say "eh, looks enough like a suicide" and close the case.

In a few days' time when the car is found to be missing (I assume they won't return it) and someone's complaining about his booking being changed, that starts to align things in the same direction. But as you say that's outside chummy's planning horizon.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Ah, I didn't pick up that the cups had been put away. OK, that's not going to be regarded as evidence. So I don't see this causing investigative problems for the cultists.

There are fingerprints from Sister María Teresa on the cups from when she put them away, because she took off her gloves when she did the washing, but I don't imagine that anyone is going to be fingerprinting cups that are in the employee break room when the hypothetical crime scene is in the next room.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

A car rental lot presumably has external surveillance which would have caught them going in, but that's been compromised when the internal recordings were wiped, and as you say nobody's going to be surprised by it not working.

Mrs. Teodoro is an expert. She rolled a pretty decent success on her pre-prepared olvido ritual and it would take someone without Mundane background and with a decent resistance against the Facade to even have a chance of noticing anything out of the ordinary.

Anyone who knows about the supernatural and expects it in this case can notice that the recording has been interfered with, as it bears all the tell-tale signs of thaumatological interference with technology, with a simple success on a Criminology, Electronics Operation (Media or Security), Photography or Intelligence Analysis check. That won't tell them much beyond the fact that the recording is damaged and that there are gaps in the coverage that normal human minds try to fill with rationalizations.

Using any of the above skills (with hefty penalties unless accompanied by expertise in Occultism or Thaumatology as well), a technician can try to reconstruct the recording to pinpoint exactly what is missing. They'd quickly be able to confirm that a vehicle arrived and left at certain times and that one or more people went into the office where the clerk died, but they wouldn't get any useful data about these people or the car. That data has simply been destroyed and the best anyone can do is pinpoint exactly where in the recording it has been damaged.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

I don't have a feel for the Houston police. If someone takes a serious interest, they could notice and put together the blood chemistry, lack of stressors in the victim's life (and e.g. email/IM records that say he was planning to do something that evening), lack of a suicide note and hesitation marks (not probative but suggestive), lack of any history of mental illness, and think "hmm, maybe there is something weird going on here" – but they have nothing to point them at the perpetrator, not even enough to say definitely that this was a murder.

Well, they could have the email to the Houston Party Bus Rental Service, which is actually in the name of Sister María Teresa.

However, that email was dealt with by someone in a different office and that person has no idea if or when Sister María Teresa went to this sub-location. Careful analysis of the booking system would show that she tried to book that particular car, discovered that it was free that Saturday, but not Sunday as well, but that would be all.

And that kind of analysis requires a warrant for access to the system or social engineering to convince someone at the company to check this, which in my opinion would pretty much require an occult-savvy cop who suspected that someone who didn't appear on video had caused this man's suicide. And the first cops on scene, while they've seen some stuff in their time that they aren't sure was real or not, are not actually so well-versed in the supernatural as to think of that immediately.

They just think: "Damn, not another one!", because in this setting, violent death is roughly four times more common than in the real world (crime rates have kept increasing since the 1980s, global instability and small wars are more common and suicide rates are much higher).

Suicide contributed to by baleful spiritual influence might be approaching becoming the the leading cause of death in the world, especially around Vile Vortices, Places of Power or ley lines, although it is usually more or less accidental, involving sub-sapient spirits.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

And if they're in a hurry they might just say "eh, looks enough like a suicide" and close the case.

Houston PD and Harris County Sheriff's Office are both peripherally involved in the investigation of the (potential) terrorist shooting in Galveston the night before. Indeed, Houston PD will be asked to run down several leads in the Houston area over the day of the 29th December and by the time it gets dark (about six hours after the death of the clerk), I estimate that more than a hundred Houston PD officers, detectives and specialists will be involved in a series of raids based on warrants generated by the task force, not to mention a manhunt for several suspects.

However, Houston PD is a huge police force and the officers who respond to the call here will have no connection to that exciting case. They will, however, be overworked because so many other officers of the HPD are working on the raids down at the harbour or are part of the manhunt.

That being said, the Houston PD is not going to close this case before an autopsy, at least. It is a wrongful death investigation, at least formally. However, considering that it is Saturday the 29th of December and that the Monday is New Year's Eve... the autopsy might actually not happen immediately.

Unless Houston is a lot better funded in this area than many other places, it's fairly plausible that the weekend and New Year's shift at the ME is undermanned enough so that they just have time for priority cases, which this is unlikely to be. The body might be put on ice for a couple of days, with the autopsy only taking place Tuesday morning.

In any case, even if the autopsy was done that Saturday (unlikely), it's genuinely difficult for investigators to get the report as soon as Sunday and even then, they'd get a preliminary report, at best. Full toxicology results would take longer, as would getting access to the victim's medical files from his regular doctor or hospitals, if only because paperwork tends not to be done over weekends. Basically, even in the best case scenario, the cops couldn't possibly rule out the victim having been a regular drug user who was high when he committed suicide, any earlier than Monday morning.

One potential stroke of luck for law enforcement and/or PCs, however, is that the clerk, Cameron Young (b. April 3, 1995; Cypress, TX), is graduate student of business administration at the University of Houston who works weekends for his uncle, one of the owners. Also, that Cameron Young had just gotten engaged and was meant to meet his fiancée for dinner that night, not to mention that he and his father had tickets for the Houston Texans game the following day, which both were excited about.

Cameron's parents, his uncle and the fiancée's family are all upstanding citizens and not a single one of them believes that Cameron would take his own life like that. And (6-6-6 on a roll), Kaitlyn Lee, his fiancée, is a graduate student of Anthropology at Rice University with Alice Talbot (PC).

And Kaitlyn firmly believes in the existence of the occult, although, ironically, she has no idea that a girl she shares several classes with is actually a powerful magician (nor is she aware of Kessler or his occult network). Kaitlyn does, however, know some other people who are more or less aware that the world is a lot more dangerous and complex place than it used to be, so there is a chance that a report about her frenzied search for the truth might find its way to someone reporting to Kessler.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

In a few days' time when the car is found to be missing (I assume they won't return it) and someone's complaining about his booking being changed, that starts to align things in the same direction. But as you say that's outside chummy's planning horizon.

A very good cop might notice the car being missing. It's not booked by anyone, but has simply been marked as removed from the fleet for service, but checking that with anyone at the main office will reveal that none of them know about any such thing. And there are only twelve classic cars and limousines available at this sub-location that Saturday.

However, they share their lot with a larger car rental with less specialized vehicles and so there are about a hundred vehicles in total on the parking lot as a whole, so someone would have to ask the distraught employee who found Cameron Young which cars on the lot belong to their company and if any of them are missing that shouldn't be.

What actually did happen was that a random roll determined that the responding officers were in the lower third of the competency curve (I'm guessing that means effective skill 11) and they proceeded to handle things at the scene badly (rolled 15, failure by 4). I'm guessing this means that they are certain that this is suicide and don't really do much beyond the bare minimum to secure the scene. The case will then formally be assigned to a detective, who, by my roll, is a perfectly average detective for HPD (which probably means skill 12-13, I'm electing to use effective 13), but he rolled 14 on his skill check, so he'll not make any inspired leaps of logic nor will his investigation be noted for efficiency, tenaciousness or thoroughness.

[Varyon]

I think most places, when someone updates a file or similar (like the clerk marking the hearse as "in the shop"), there ends up being a timestamp. If the rental place continues its business on Sunday (it may well close on account of the clerk's apparent suicide), the grieving family who gets a Lincoln Continental rather than the Cadillac they requested is likely to inquire after the discrepancy, and the fact the Lincoln's reservation and the hearse's unavailability were both set around the time the clerk died is going to raise some red flags. If all the data is stored on that computer, it might not be terribly difficult for the clerk to alter the timestamps (perhaps by simply changing the clock on his computer), although he may not even think of the possibility in his addled state. It's more likely that the data is stored on a server that the clerk's station logs into, and he is unlikely to have the sort of access needed to alter the timestamps within the server.

If indeed the timestamps match up with around the time of his death, the worker who discovers this will be rather inclined to inform the police. The service garage the rental place uses may be closed for Sunday, but the police (and his loyal customers) may be able to convince the owner to go in and check on the status of the hearse, particularly considering it may be linked to someone's death (and the mechanic may have known the clerk personally, as someone skilled with servicing classic cars may have received a good deal of business from that location in the past). Once it's found to not be present, and indeed to have not been checked in recently, the police are likely to put out an APB on the vehicle, as it is clearly connected to the man's suicide. By that point, the groups will have already reached Indianola and probably cut it off from the world, but a classic black hearse going down the highway was probably memorable enough of an event (particularly considering a nun was driving it, or was at least a passenger if her friend was driving) that whoever was working highway patrol at the time may well remember and will let dispatch know he saw it heading south. Provided Kessler's sphere of influence catches wind of it, a mysterious suicide linked to a missing, classic black hearse is going to absolutely reek of malign supernatural influence. While the police will be at a loss to figure out where the hearse is headed, and certainly won't get any reports of it once it reaches Indianola, Kessler's group may, through a combination of internet research and dowsing/detection rituals (the latter will be particularly useful if the effect cutting Indianola off from the rest of the world leaves some sort of supernatural imprint), be able to figure out Indianola was the intended destination. They may not realize the Keepers of the Last Hearth are involved, or indeed that there is any connection to the events in Galveston, but will likely try to call some of the businesses there (the Indianola Fishing Marina and Powderhorn Lake RV Park pop up) and will probably know Something is going on when the numbers are out of service (or whatever error the cut-off ritual causes). Certainly, this seems like it could warrant investigation.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I think most places, when someone updates a file or similar (like the clerk marking the hearse as "in the shop"), there ends up being a timestamp. If the rental place continues its business on Sunday (it may well close on account of the clerk's apparent suicide), the grieving family who gets a Lincoln Continental rather than the Cadillac they requested is likely to inquire after the discrepancy, and the fact the Lincoln's reservation and the hearse's unavailability were both set around the time the clerk died is going to raise some red flags. If all the data is stored on that computer, it might not be terribly difficult for the clerk to alter the timestamps (perhaps by simply changing the clock on his computer), although he may not even think of the possibility in his addled state. It's more likely that the data is stored on a server that the clerk's station logs into, and he is unlikely to have the sort of access needed to alter the timestamps within the server.

This is all exactly correct.

The clerk had no independent ability to think while he was doing this and Sister María Teresa wouldn't recognise a remote server or a digital timestamp if they bit her. So the issue of access or trying to change it never came up.

As soon as someone thinks to check on what Cameron Young was doing on his computer before his 'suicide', all sorts of questions are going to be asked. However, judging from the skill rolls I made on their behalf, none of those questions are going to be asked by the police, at least not without prompting. And even with prompting, somebody is going to have to connect the dots enough to discover that the 1970 Cadillac hearse is missing before the police will give this a high enough priority to even check it out during the weekend.

Originally Posted by Varyon

If indeed the timestamps match up with around the time of his death, the worker who discovers this will be rather inclined to inform the police.

I checked and no one notices this until at 17:43 that afternoon. At that point, the employee closing up at the Houston Party Bus Rental Service main location will notify his boss, who happens to be Cameron Young's uncle, that it seems that the last thing his nephew did before his death was put in a note that one of the lot cars was being serviced, but he hasn't heard anything about something being wrong with that car.

Mr. Young (the uncle, not the nephew) considers this odd, but when he gets the phone call, is half-way into a bottle of whiskey. He asks his employee to email the garage and ask about it and also tells his brother, Cameron's father, about it, but doesn't check up on it personally until next morning at 09:46.

Originally Posted by Varyon

The service garage the rental place uses may be closed for Sunday, but the police (and his loyal customers) may be able to convince the owner to go in and check on the status of the hearse, particularly considering it may be linked to someone's death (and the mechanic may have known the clerk personally, as someone skilled with servicing classic cars may have received a good deal of business from that location in the past).

It's closed Sunday and the owner was not working the Saturday before either, but he knows the senior Mr. Young well and once he has explained, he agrees to drive in and check his records to see if one of his employees picked up that car the day before.

So, at noon, Mr. Young knows that the last thing his nephew did before he died was mark a car as being sent for repairs, but no request for service seems to have been filed, no one seems to have been asked to drive the car in for service or to pick it up from the lot and there is no evidence that the car required service that day. He's also aware, from an employee he asked to check this, that the car is definitely not parked anywhere on the lot it should be and that the keys are gone. At 12:25, he has double checked everything and is certain enough that the car is missing to go to the police.

Well, he tries to call first, which wastes 30 minutes and doesn't get him anything more useful than the name of the detective assigned the case, who, however, doesn't answer when he calls his precinct. Going down there, however, gets his statement taken and a promise that the detective will call him when he gets in. This is done at 13:45 on Sunday the 30th of December, but the statement won't be put into the system until the detective has seen it and given specific instructions about it. Which happens at 16:30. The decision of the detective in charge of the case is to make a note to check it out himself on Monday. He rolled a 16 on his Professional Skill (Law Enforcement) skill check. No APB is put out that Sunday night.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Once it's found to not be present, and indeed to have not been checked in recently, the police are likely to put out an APB on the vehicle, as it is clearly connected to the man's suicide. By that point, the groups will have already reached Indianola and probably cut it off from the world, but a classic black hearse going down the highway was probably memorable enough of an event (particularly considering a nun was driving it, or was at least a passenger if her friend was driving) that whoever was working highway patrol at the time may well remember and will let dispatch know he saw it heading south.

Mrs. Teodoro drove, because Sister Maria Teresa never does.

Yes, it is certainly a noteworthy sight, but, of course, highway patrol would be the Texas Department of Public Safety, not Houston PD.

Does the fact that someone who committed suicide did so shortly after misfiling a car at this job that had gone missing justify a statewide APB? Houston PD will look into the car, true, but will they send out anything to other law enforcement agencies?

And even if they do, how much of a priority will that request be?

Especially in light of the fact that in the interval between Cameron Young's death and his uncle's discovery that the Cadillac hearse is missing, there has been a firefight onboard the Aqueronte, a container vessel heading for the Port of Houston (but technically, while it was still inside Galveston County waters), with several police injured, several women killed, about forty women who appear to be victims of human trafficking rescued and about twenty possible terrorists killed.

Unconfirmed reports were that there might be biological or chemical weapons on board the ship, but although these seem to have been wild rumours, there exists some kind of connection between the armed men aboard Aqueronte and the men who attacked police the day before.

In relation to that case, there have been APBs about some couple of dozen people* and up to fifty cars registered to several companies that might have a connection to the case. All of them of the highest priority, because, well, there have now been two possible terrorist incidents involving the people being sought.

While this is going on, with most of the attention focused on the island of Galveston and the Port of Houston, as well as the investigation in Dallas (no attacks were made there, but it looks like the attackers may have come from there and some worked for Dallas-based companies), how high in priority will a report about a missing 1970 Cadillac be?

Is Houston PD even going to bother putting out an APB to state-level agencies or the feds, in light of the fact that pretty much everyone even close to Houston is working on the huge (potential) terrorism case?

*Mostly US citizens or at least residents living in Dallas and Houston, working for one of four companies that have been connected to some aspect of the attacks. These would be the Consortium people.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Provided Kessler's sphere of influence catches wind of it, a mysterious suicide linked to a missing, classic black hearse is going to absolutely reek of malign supernatural influence. While the police will be at a loss to figure out where the hearse is headed, and certainly won't get any reports of it once it reaches Indianola, Kessler's group may, through a combination of internet research and dowsing/detection rituals (the latter will be particularly useful if the effect cutting Indianola off from the rest of the world leaves some sort of supernatural imprint), be able to figure out Indianola was the intended destination. They may not realize the Keepers of the Last Hearth are involved, or indeed that there is any connection to the events in Galveston, but will likely try to call some of the businesses there (the Indianola Fishing Marina and Powderhorn Lake RV Park pop up) and will probably know Something is going on when the numbers are out of service (or whatever error the cut-off ritual causes). Certainly, this seems like it could warrant investigation.

Exactly so.

Provided the PCs have a bit of luck, they might hear something about the hearse Sunday afternoon and provided they succeed at some analytical skills, they might connect it with something useful, especially if they've also heard about Kaitlyn Lee desperately seeking someone to hold a seance, perform a ritual or otherwise tell her how her fiance was killed, because she absolutely doesn't believe it was a suicide.

If not, Kaitlyn Lee will try to perform a divination ritual by herself Sunday night, from a book of historical Suan ming practices. She'll ask a classmate for help and when they are unsuccessful in achieving any sort of magical effect at all, that classmate will suggest that they ask the girl who wrote that paper comparing several forms of divination, Alice Talbot (PC), if she knows how to help them (rolled 17 on a 'Reaction Roll' on if she might contact someone the PCs know).