Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - INTERLUDE: THE BOSTON TRIP

THE BLACK HATS
You meet Ruth, Sam and Abe in Olmstead Park, by the pond. Rachel sells the increased memory storage to Abe. In exchange:

You receive a big spool of black fishing line. The Hebrews explain that this eruv was strung atop the geomantic heart of Boston for half a century, and is marinated in occult energy. Imbued with the proper magick, it can be used to create a barrier, enclose the area of effect of a large scale spell, or permanently mark out a path for safe travel.

Abe blinks. He doesn’t notice any change, at first. It’ll be a while before the true effects become apparent, when he doesn’t forget the things happening to him right now.

Ruth and Sam also thank you for your work getting Maria and Harlan (the two shotgunners from the club) out of trouble. Judith was wondering what happened to them. You know how Mom is addicted to taking in strays? Maria was a killer nun, Harlan was a “raincoat” in some secret army. Both were refugees from the burger wars. Judith gave them new identities, a place to live. Buried a guy who came looking for them a couple years later. Everyone thought they were out of trouble.

The child following them around for the last couple weeks was a little suspect, since Maria couldn’t actually have kids, and also he basically appeared out of nowhere. They all disappeared a few days ago, before anyone could investigate. Now they're back, mostly in one piece. Maria can't raise her left arm above head level thanks to the shotgun wound.

For bringing them back alive, Mom wanted you to have this special cheesecake. She juiced it up so it’ll cure anything. Possession, curses, debuffs, magickal diseases, doesn’t matter.

VINCULUM
VINCULUM used to be an upmarket opium den, frequented on the sly by Boston’s WASP intelligentsia. A century later, it’s now a tea house and club, popular with the city’s financial elites. It’s not the kind of place the Bao Down crew would normally be welcome, even Rachel might have trouble getting inside. Thankfully, the owner is also Reba’s mom.

Yawen Rebkin welcomes the cabal. She absolutely refuses to discuss any occult business, feigning ignorance until the cabal realizes she’s afraid someone is observing her. In the back room, after pouring drinks for the crew, she opens a cabinet and removes an ancient record player. She throws on a twelve inch LP of MUSIC IN THE WALLS (composer unknown) and speaks quickly over the sound of horns and musical saws, so that she can get her whole message out before the music ends.

Rachel’s mom, Lucretia “Lucky” Tudor, is back in the game. She’s up to something in the Salem area. Yawen doesn’t know more than that. There’s a fog around Lucky that blocks scrying, the kind a cliomancer puts up when they don’t want to be observed.

When the record ends after four minutes, Yawen goes back to discussing something completely mundane. The rest of the visit is pleasant.

Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - SESSION 8

DBD, Rachel and Reba (accompanied by Scooby the Unspeakable Servant) got to the No Blood For Sex at about 8:30, half an hour before the New Maks' band Cannon Song went on.

Arthanari and Ramachandran were outside the venue, talking with the metal toothed woman the Bao Down crew had seen following Sin Woo-Jin around a day or two ago. That was Alice the ustrinaturge. She offered Reba a cigar, biting the end off with her steel dentures and lighting it with a minor charge.

No Blood For Sex was a basement club decked out with jeweled, gilded skeletons. There was a metal cage enclosing the stage, probably to shield the teenage band from thrown objects (less likely) and underage drinking (likely). Rachel and DBD sneaked backstage to parlay with the band. In attendance were Dandy Hirsch the Empty Vessel on bass guitar, Scrawny Davy the Vestimancer on guitar/vocals, and Brent on drums. Also the drug dealer and sound guy Bobby Smiles, helping them set up their amp. Rachel had some harsh words for Smiles, warning him not to sell any mystery stones to the New Maks. He assured her that he had no interest in messing up his meal ticket, but that if she wanted to tangle he'd back his family over her shoggoth any day of the week. DBD tried to persuade Dandy that she should become a capsicinaturge. The pitch was too conceptual and abstract for her. She thought he was talking about drugs. Which she was into, but which didn't communicate what he actually wanted.

Outside on the club floor, Ramachandran bought drinks for Reba and Ardhanari. He congratulated Reba for skillfully playing the other factions against each other. One of the CSC shooters was dead at the hands of the police, and now the Coterie was sending their top hitter to strike back at the cop who did it. He showed Reba a couple videos on CHEAP MEAT - Dispatches From the Burger Wars: tightly edited daredevil assassinations by a woman in rollerskates, who used drive by magick to set up her targets for gruesome fatal accidents.

The band played their first song. DBD went to look for some drugs. In the bathroom he scored a water bottle spiked with X, but noticed that a gateway to the pool rooms had opened in the end bathroom stall. Out on the dance floor, Reba noticed the Orthodox Jewish couple from the McDonald's parking lot earlier that day. The man was carrying the creepy child like a ventriloquist dummy. Rachel approached the lady and apologized for Tal magicking the child's head off during their initial encounter. The woman didn't know what she was talking about. Rachel suspected she was drugged or something. The couple was clearly armed, short shotguns under their heavy clothing. DBD cannoned out of the restroom, stumbling into the man as he made a beeline for the stage with the kid. He dropped the child and pulled out his scattergun, as did his wife. 

Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - SESSION 7

The cabal still had some time to kill before catching the show at Blood For Sex. That meant they had time to visit Granny Ethel at her herb shop in Salem.  Since the police were still hunting them, DBD took the food truck out of town, while the group rolled up in Rachel's pickup.

 

Trinity Herbs faced Salem Common, just down the street from the Witch Museum. The gang parked a good distance away and walked right into the store.

 

One of the guerrilla gardeners from the Marblehead apartment break in was working the counter. He recognized the sentai-suited unspeakable servant, and shouted for the attendant up on the shelving ladder to go in back and get GE. Rachel's unspeakable servant immediately told her that he was burning. She sent him back outside and the burning stopped. The guy at the front desk told them that GE would be out in a minute, and offered them some tea from a samovar behind the desk. Rachel asked him why he broke into the apartment, he declined to answer. While the group waited, Reba perused the shelves for interesting items. They noticed that the store was conspicuously out of "mandrake root", and based on the sign had apparently been so for some time.

 

Granny Ethel emerged from the backroom, accompanied by Nadia, the Fulminaturge from the Karst Following Cavers - the local Colone's Secret Cadre cell trying to take over the pool rooms. Nadia kept her cool, and the Bao Down cabal kept theirs. Rachel offered help in future caving adventures, Nadia didn't say anything. She skirted around the group and left, then almost shot the unspeakable servant when it got too close to her, before fleeing. Granny Ethel congratulated the cabal on not flying off the handle and invited them through the employees only door.

Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - SESSION 6

Tal had business to attend to, and the cabal didn't want to visit Granny Ethel without them, so they decided to collect more eyeballs for Rachel's unspeakable servants. They had two days left before the ritual took place, and wanted to get it out of the way. 

Rachel and co had arranged for three eyeballs - two from Lindsey the Sin Eater in prison and one (hypothetically) from Jason the heroin addict in Lynn. Three was enough for her hypothetical Unspeakable Servant security force to protect the town, but she had a total of five animal corpse piles she'd been ritually preparing over the last few months, meaning that she could use another pair of eyes.

The team decided to do some arbitrage at the local hospital. If they could get an already terminally ill guy to agree to being loaded up with diseases, Rachel could buy the diseases off a bunch of terminally ill kids, curing them and taking a payment of eyeballs from their parents in exchange. The gang parked the food truck outside Salem Hospital and headed inside.

Rachel dressed up as a visiting specialist, and the others pretended to be the family of a patient. With that disguise they were able to get into the palliative care ward without being hassled by the front desk people. Rachel looked at the charts of the patients, and identified the cancer victim Edric as a likely mark for negotiating a terminal disease based deal. They offered Edric a wish of his choice if he would accept a few diseases from other people that would kill him faster. Edric wanted to know what happened when he died.