Session nine began in Salem Hospital. DBD was kept overnight after the club shootout in case he had another seizure (which he got from the poolwine) or a concussion (from the ceiling tile that hit him on the head). Rachel was kept because her arm was missing. The news had a story about the attempted mass shooting at the cub, which injured two but thankfully didn't kill anyone. The burger war news blotter CHEAP MEAT had a video taken outside the club, of Bobby Smiles being led out by police. In the video, he comes outside, melts into a pool of the same blue ooze as the poolmen were made of, and slithers down a storm drain.
Tal came to the hospital the next day to visit DBD and Rachel. They went over what happened at the New Maks show and subsequent assassination attempt. Dr Vrolick, the same doctor the cabal met when they cured the terminally ill kids, came into the ward. He explained the path forward for Rachel: she'd be evaluated for a prosthetic, possibly the injured arm would need to be "trimmed" further surgically to ensure a good fit. Followed by a long course of physical therapy. But he knew Rachel wasn't going to do that, because she was magick and could just buy another arm or something. So he wasn't surprised when she asked to be discharged.
Reba was busy with Endemic Spice, setting up the eruv that the group got during the Boston trip, in order to give Tal veto power over magick in Salem. So it was up to DBD, Reba and Tal to load the eyeballs into the unspeakable servants before the deadline.
The way it worked was, Rachel had spent the last few months setting up the required corpses in rural areas outside Salem. Animals stuffed inside animals stuffed inside animals. The only thing missing were the eyes, which needed to be installed into the bodies on a moonless night. She had five of these gross things prepared in different barns she'd rented from farmers across the State, and it was time to finally put all the eyes she bartered into them. A force of five servitors would be a potent defense force for Salem.
The insertion had to be done after sundown. The first one went fine. The team took Rachel's pickup out to the barn she left the horrible thing in, unwrapped the tarp they put around it to keep the rats out, and put the eye inside. Rachel needed help since she was still missing an arm.
It was on the way to barn number two that things went wrong.
A semi pulled onto the unlit County road, behind Rachel's truck. DBD slipped on his night vision goggles to peer into the cab. There were three people inside. Rachel instructed Shoggos to disable the truck with a minor unnatural phenomena, but the experienced trucker at the wheel was able to keep the electronics working through the unspeakable servant's interference. Tal and Rachel noticed that the terrain outside the car was repeating in an endless loop. Tal panic cast catapsi on the truck and dispelled the pocket dimension, returning both vehicles to the real world.
With his otherspace negated, the driver of the semi accelerated towards Rachel's pickup, rapidly closing the gap. DBD fired his galil out the rear window of the pickup at the semi's tires, but missed. There was a puff of smoke from the interior of the semi's cab, and an answering puff from under the hood of Rachel's pickup. Someone just deleted their engine. With no way to accelerate, she pulled off the road into a nearby cornfield and turned on the hazards. The team got out of the vehicle and took up defensive positions.
The truck rolled to a stop about 100 feet away from Rachel's immobilized pickup, parked and put on its hazards as well. Three occultists got out. The cabal recognized the one with the handgun, cigar and metal teeth as Alice, Sin-Woo Jin's bodyguard who they spotted outside the club at Blood For Sex last night. Then there was a guy in a Burger King mask and plate armor, carrying a two handed sword. The last guy didn't have any obvious weird features, just a black tank top with the words BAD GIRL in pink.
Alice pulled out a clunky cell phone and tried to hand it to DBD. He didn't want to take his hands off his rifle, so Alice put it on speaker. It was Sin Woo-Jin, Lord Procurer for the Court of the Burger Queen. He wanted to make a deal with the cabal. The people from the truck were the Brigadier Grillers, Cataphracts of the Court of the Burger Queen. If the Bao Down crew didn't feel like dealing with him, he couldn't stop the Grillers from doing whatever it was they were going to do. He didn't want much. Just one unspeakable servant out of the five Rachel was making, plus a single seat on the Salem pirate council that the Bao Down truck was convening. When the cabal wasn't convinced, he sweetened the deal by offering permanent protection for the New Maks. He'd make sure nobody went after them, especially the Court.
The cabal weren't moved. They didn't want to collaborate with the Court, and especially weren't comfortable negotiating without Reba present.
Shin used his Userer powers to coerce DBD, who owed him for the heroin he bought a few days prior while addicted to the stuff. DBD freaked out and opened fire with his galil, hitting the man in the Burger King mask but dealing minimum damage against the enchanted armor. Rachel gave Shoggos the sign, and he teleported Alice away before she could cast any more smoking spells. The masked man struck DBD with his sword, seriously injuring him. Tal used catapsi on the swordsman, stripping him of any minor magick protecting him. Then Shoggos tackled him before he could swing again. The man in the black tank top struck Tal, who juked him and ran for the truck.
Rachel tried to intervene, but was clobbered by a fourth man, some kind of Solid Citizen who appeared out of nowhere to defend his fellow Cataphracts. Tal got into the truck and smashed the pursuing driver's hand in the door when he tried to pry them out. The Solid Citizen tried to get the gun away from DBD, who wildly fired another burst from his rifle. The guy stumbled back onto Rachel's remaining hand as she crawled toward him, breaking her fingers. She yelled at him to cut it out before he got shot.
He calmed down. DBD calmed down. Nobody was ready to escalate the fight and kill each other. The cabal disarmed the Cataphracts, but let the armored man up off the ground. Alice came back through the cornfield she'd been teleported through, still armed, but didn't try to shoot anyone. The cabal got into a big argument with the Cataphracts:
- Alice the Ustrinaturge (Smoking magick, metal teeth, a gun. The one who destroyed the engine in Rachel's truck with a sig spell)
- Leomard the Fencer (Two handed sword which ignored armor, armor which reduced incoming damage, magick aura which negated damage from anyone except the single person he was dueling)
- Wren the Driver (The guy who drove the truck. Able to suck people into an otherspace and trap them in the same stretch of highway over and over)
- Protovalski the Solid Citizen (Intervenes to protect Cataphracts and truckers whenever they're in danger)
The Bao Down crew had the upper hand, and were able to dictate the following terms to the Brigadier Grillers:
- Since the Grillers disabled Rachel's pickup, the Bao Down crew would take their truck for the night
- First, they would deposit the Grillers in the nearest town, sans their weapons
- Next, the cabal would use the truck to complete the rest of their errands for the night
- The Bao Down cabal would leave the truck somewhere, along with the Grillers' weapons, and vacate the area
- Finally, Rachel would phone them with the location of the vehicle
There was a lot of awkward conversation on the ride to the gas station. Leonard was impressed with Shoggos' wrestling abilities and Tal's ability to negate magick. He invited both to Osmium, a fencing gym back in Salem. Rachel recognized the name - it was where Otis from the Brahman Occult Society and Brent from the New Maks went to spar. Alice tried to get Reba's phone number, which the cabal thought was for tradecraft/stalking purposes, at first. Turns out, the cigar they shared outside the Blood For Sex the day prior meant a lot more to Alice than anyone expected. Regardless, Rachel figured out that Alice was in debt to Sin Woo-Jin, and offered to transfer that debt to someone else. She said she'd think about it.
The Bao Down crew kicked the Brigadier Grillers out in town, and took their truck to the remaining four barns, loading the gestating unspeakable servants up with eyes. They parked the truck and caught the morning train from Manchester back to Salem. They had time for breakfast before visiting Granny Ethel in the herb shop.
GE met the cabal in the moon room of Trinity Herbs. The gang noticed a couple new additions to the collection of astronomy stuff directed at the outsized moon overhead. There was a rain stick connected to the telescope, which they recognized as the magick rain stick that the Endemic Spice gang mentioned. The charts on the table had a pinned location East of the Mare Imbrium, and some printed pages about Luna 2, the Soviet probe which dispersed titanium tiles across the surface of the moon when it impacted there.
Granny Ethel accepted the nine significant charges offered by Rachel. She concentrated on the moon, peered through the telescope. Blinked. The moon closed and opened like an eye. Rachel felt five eyes open. All her unspeakable servants spawned successfully. Two of them were even abominable, the rarest and most powerful kind. Salem finally had a force worthy of protecting it.
Genesis Peru the Cliomancer came in, pushing a hand truck with a diving suit made of rolled copper snakes, with a big plexiglass faceplate. Jim the Gremlin opened the faceplate and climbed out of the suit. The cabal realized that Jim was GP's familiar, and that she was trying to get a major charge by visiting the moon.
With five new unstoppable nightmare creatures, the Bao Down cabal contemplated which objectives were worthy of their newfound power:
- Guarantee the local Mak's independence
- Create a local occult pirate council
- Give Tal veto power over Salem's minor magicks
- Gain control over the pool rooms
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