The first mission

The new pack, as yet unnamed, is invited to a meeting at Dreamsoft by the man who gave Aila his card: Faris al-Moussami. Upon actually looking at it, Aila notices with a jolt of joy that the man works in research and development for the video game company. She's a video game junkie, after all.

Dreamsoft, in fact, has set up a conference, informing them that a few others will be present as well. Thus it is that the Garou meet Mark Krysillious and get (re)acquainted with Dr. Quintrell, who looks far less maniacal and much better-groomed in a suit and tie.

The gist of the meeting is that something is happening in Egypt that seems to be tied in with the strangeness of the previous day. Since a member of the pack and Dr. Quintrell were involved in it, the changelings (who have sensibilities about this sort of thing) would like them to travel to Cairo and investigate, if their respective superiors don't mind. The superiors, apparently happy to have the changelings owe them a favor or possibly simply being hopeless idealists, decide it's a perfectly splendid idea. The group is briefed on some individuals involved--a Black Spiral Dancer by the name of Hamilton "Hacks Your Soul" Prince, a vampire known as Undrech Rastov, and an infernalist called Jason Ensburg, whom the mages talk up as a "Nephandus," though no one else really sees what that matters.

After the meeting, the group is offered a tour of the facility, in which Aila and Ambrose learn that the fae are in charge of Dreamsoft, developing their game projects in a sort of pocket virtual reality (aka the Dreaming).

Rastov's name rings a bell with Sonya, who puts in some calls to contacts in the old country. They inform her that he is after an object said to "turn desires into obsessions."

Off to Cairo. They get hotel rooms, then someone snipes at Sonya. In no particular order, they scope out the city (Quintrell notices he's followed by a lot of cats, which he feeds and pets), they find out about a meeting between a Lasombra and some Setites, Ambrose gets hijacked by an Iterator while they prepare to crash the meeting, and they get another sniper attack, which leads to them locating and nailing the Nephandus. As per the terms laid out by the Iterator, the group corners Ensburg, who chooses to escape via the Web...where several digital HITMarks are waiting for him. He gets dragged off to MECHA by the Technos, which almost has the mages feeling sorry for him. But not quite.

The group catches up to Prince, pump him for information, and kill him. Dr. Quintrell pokes about on Prince's computer, through which the Nephandus crawls back out of MECHA, half-borged, and nearly savages Dr. Quintrell. This time, Ensburg gets away. Still, the group gets all sorts of useful information. They find out an attack is planned on the Children of Karnak. Rastov is after something called the Hunger Stone, which the Children guard, and an army of banes is massed to attack the Childrens' caves.

The army won't attack till Prince gives them the order, but Prince is dealt with. They send the Children info on the attack and the Hunger Stone via spirit courier, then track down Prince's pack...at a house in the city.

The BSDs don't seem to be home, so the packs slips in and find a suspicious room. But when they try to go in, the Balor Sidhe shows up and zaps them all away...

They end up on a Black Path of Balor (Faris says) and come out to find they're in some nebulous between-realm between the Umbra, the Dreaming, and the real world. After wandering around in there for a while, they go back to the spooky house's reflection in this 'world,' which looks significantly more horrid, and they melt the sucker down. Inside the protected room, Quintrell discovers a weird gizmo. He realizes that it was built by a SoE Nephandus to spiritually toxify an area. It's hooked up to some ghost-fetter, a yo-yo, from and old and powerful ghost. He hits a switch to reverse the effect and spiff up the place again, then Technos show up so the Garou grab the yo-yo and run.

In the house's back yard, a gateway opens. Sonya notes it's some kind of trickster shifter magic. She suspects Nuwisha. They go through and emerge, her cell phone GPS tells her, a couple of miles outside Luxor. Job done, they head home from there.