The players
- Zeke Whitaker Cunctator (Occultist, Level 3)
- Tristan Vedhart, Babyfaced "Artist" & Fast Talking Runner (Criminal, Level 3)
- Cobb "Doctor Jury-rigged immortality is still immortality" Taylor (Doctor, Level 3)
- Devin Skull “The Punk Bard” previously of LudiCURSED (Mystic, Level 2)
- Eileen Walter, Human shield for hire (Bodyguard, Level 1)
Lieutenant Lenny of the Ponda Ray Family met them at the boardwalk on the West Side. He leaned forward to eat his cannoli so the powdered sugar wouldn't drip on his 200 dollar polo shirt. The group recognized him from the secret crypt, where he'd kicked them out after they upset the don. He gave them a diplomatic pouch and told them to deliver it to the Fat Suns in the limestone caves. Under no circumstances were they to open it, or allow anyone except Inger (or her replacement, if she'd been killed) to open it.
The players decided to phone ahead and warn the Fat Suns that they were delivering a package, so the mercenaries wouldn't accidentally shoot them on the way in. They got ahold of Mara, but he was in a bad place and not interested in what they had to say. He asked them if they were ready to help him protect his client at the hotel and they weren't interested, so he hung up immediately.
Undeterred, the group got a bus to Vinculum. They decided to try going through the Lithic Court Embassy, West of the club's underground entrance. They passed Ezzy the barkeep on the way in, as usual. She was entertaining the domovoi they adopted from the fairy enclave, feeding him a White Russian in lieu of milk.
The statue of Wallace watching over the dungeon entrance had a couple new polaroids of dead dungeoneers stuck to it. One of them was of Kaldron, from the time he descended through the Vinculum entrance. The Kimeras descended the staircase into the underworld.
The air heated up fast as they traveled West from the stairs under Vinculum. They were stymied by a vast chasm, and in circumventing it, stumbled onto a strange creature: a starfish made of obsidian and polished stone, lounging in a fountain of lava. The rocky echnioderm scrambled out of the magma, embarrassed to be caught off guard, and demanded to know why they were trespassing in the Lithic Courts. The Kimeras explained they were merely passing through, to deliver a message. The stone starfish scuttled off on obsidian feet, to retrieve a Lithic Noble who would know what to do.
The Lithic Noble Microcline was a stone jellyfish, glowing and sizzling and trailing crystal filaments. It demanded to know why the Kimeras were delivering a message to the hated mercenaries of the caverns. The Kimeras explained that they would persuade the mercenaries to abandon their posts and cede the caves to the Lithic Courts. The Noble was satisfied with their explanation, and gave them safe passage through the caves. "Safe passage" turned out to be a bit of a misnomer. Cobb narrowly saved the group from hydrogen sulfide poisoning, after recognizing the telltale "rotten eggs followed by paralysis of the nose" symptoms. They passed through a chamber filled with sulfurous tubeworms, into the caverns beyond.
The tunnel ahead was blocked by an enormous worm, which sizzled with the molten lava churning inside its body. The players told it they were passing through on the authority of the Lithic Noble Microcline. It laughed in a voice like whistling steam, and warned them to be careful on the way back, or it would think they were mercenaries and roast them. Its mouth was like a tiny sun, blazing hot and charged with lethal energies. The passage it guarded was a chaotic mess of melted stone over a bottomless pit, across which the lithics had sculpted a basalt bridge. Beyond it, the Kimeras knew, lay the limestone caves. The ones their predecessors had visited on the very first expedition into the underground.
The passage forked. The fork was blocked by a mound of sandbags and rubble. Eileen spotted a rifle on the parapet. She raised her hands and asked to parlay. The mercenary asked who they were. The Kimeras told him they had a message for Inger, from the Ponda Ray family. The merc asked why the earings didn't just deliver it themselves - they were working with the rocks, after all. The Kimeras didn't know that. The merc let them in after they divested themselves of their weapons. They handed off the diplomatic pouch that Lenny gave them, and a courier took it into the caves for Inger to look at.
About five minutes passed. They heard gunshots from the caves. The mercenary didn't know what to do. He had five unarmed "guests" to guard, but something had clearly gone wrong in the headquarters room. He decided to take the Kimeras with him at gunpoint, unarmed. He herded them in front of him, into a room made of girders and catwalks over a vast pit. A mercenary captain came running out of the passage to the command cave, turned around and fired a burst from his G3 into the tunnel. The Kimeras could hear shouting from the cave beyond. "DID YOU SEE THIS? DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS?"
The two mercenaries told the Kimeras to lie down and not move, and stacked up at the door. Whoever was yelling tossed a grenade through. The mercenaries quickly decided to fall back, taking the Kimeras with them. The group retreated back to the barricade. One of the mercenaries climbed up the parapet to man the machine gun, while the other took aim down the tunnel. They told the Kimeras not to touch anything, but that didn't stop them from edging toward the heap of spare long guns stashed by the barricade. The captain said that as soon as Inger had read the message, she went crazy and started shooting. He didn't think anyone else made it out with their brain intact. The Kimeras convinced him that they knew nothing about this and had nothing to do with it. Which was true, they didn't know the message would cause such a reaction.
The attackers approached from two tunnels, shouting and shooting. "DID YOU SEE THIS? DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS? YOU GOTTA BELIEVE ME!" The guy on the twelve seven kept one tunnel clear, while the guy with the G3 held down the other. The Kimeras grabbed weapons from the pile and joined the mercs in defense of the barricade. Zeke dropped a Bleeding Curse on one of the attackers down the main tunnel, but aside from that the fight had lots of ineffectual shooting - typical of firefights where everyone has cover and nobody wants to advance. Eileen picked up the last SMAW tube from the weapons pile and used the rocket to collapse one of the tunnels, halving the avenues of attack. That gave everyone enough breathing room to debate their options.
The mercenaries wanted to skirt around the cave to the South, head out the bomb shelter and back to the surface through the Necropolis. The Kimeras wanted to go back through the lithic courts. The mercenaries weren't interested in dropping their guns and surrendering to the rock people. They went their separate ways, before the crazy former mercenaries attacked them again. The Kimeras went East to the Lithic Court, and the mercenaries retired South to sneak out of the caves.
The Kimeras ran into a whole lithic assault force, stacked up behind the big worm. The enormous lithic knight laughed and asked if the plan had worked. The gang realized that the rocks had known all along what was in the letter. Now, they were going to storm the cavern, clean up the remaining opposition and take back what was theirs. The Kimeras weren't happy about accidentally wiping out one of their few friends in the underworld, but a job was a job, and they didn't relish fighting the rock people over it.
They decided to skirt around the gross tube worm room filled with poison gas and take an alternate route through the Lithic Courts. They found a room filled with precious metals, but decided against robbing the rock people. They were in enough trouble in the underworld already.
Back at Vinculum, the mafia greaseball guarding the exit took his 20% cut of the "treasure" recovered in the caves, which amounted to two shotguns and one submachine gun borrowed from the mercenaries. Tristan paid in cash rather than trying to negotiate a fractional value or trade for the weapons.
For the first time, Ezzy wasn't behind the bar counter. This was a problem, since the Kimeras were supposed to report to her for payment after the job was complete. Where could she have gone?
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