Frederico and the Funeral Parlor

When they return to Chicago, Sonya learns that a funeral home burned down after a struggle inside. The parlor's director met with someone from Chinatown about 20 minutes earlier.

Sonya checks out the crime scene. Something came out of the Shadowlands in the back. The fire started the next room over. Something came out, leapt into a body, and left. Sniffing around for a trail, she follows it toward Chinatown. Two scents: two dead people. One was fresher than the other. They lead to the Eternal Lantern funeral home, which is surrounded by walking-dead-people scents. The building is warded in the Umbra. Entering, Sonya inquires at the desk to learn that the business is owned by Jwo Dye. She leaves her business card with the receptionist, writing on the back: 'Jwo Dye - we're hunting Giovanni.'

According to the records, the guy who owned this funeral parlor owns another one in Chicago. They've been claiming a lot of John Does. In this case, they took a Jane Doe from Chinatown, but the family came to claim her two hours later. The girl was IDed as Kimo Namura, dead of multiple gunshots in a gang conflict.

Kimo Nomura was 18, a prostitute under the Triads. She came from an upstanding family. She leaves a message with the shih PI in case he knows anything, and then checks into the second funeral parlor. It's in an Italian neighborhood, run by a Frederico Giovanni. It's staffed by him and two other Messrs. Giovanni, along with various Italian employees. She spots strange sigils scribed on the building in the Umbra. They look sort of hermetic, and are subtly woven into the brickwork. Studying them, she recognizes protective wards vs. fire and scrying. There are no wraiths in the area, and few spirits. The otherworld seems to be giving this place a wide berth. She decides to bring a mage by the place. In the meantime, she goes back to the office to requisition the file on that missing reporter (and blows the attempt to do it quietly).

That evening, Ambrose gets visited by the Mob. When he answers the door, he freaks out to see two guys in black power-suits wearing shades, because his first assumption is NWO. They barge their way in, threatening him with a gun and demanding to know about Sonya. He tells them she's with Interpol. They decide to "take him for a ride."

He collapses the stairs as the three of them are descending them, shoots one with his laser gun (they turn out to be vampires), and takes off, pausing to slash their tires on the way out. He heads for the chantry, where he calls Sonya to tell her about this.

She collects blood from the bannister where one of them scraped himself, and follows it to a warehouse she already knew was owned by Mafia people. Going back to her apartment, she finds they tossed the place (best for them that she wasn't home, probably). She gets fingerprints, and is surprised to find them turn up as Capone's men. As in, Al Capone.

Ambrose goes home in the morning to find that his place, at least, was not ransacked. They're not Giovanni, anyway. Since he's been made, Sonya drafts Rey and Jared to go to the funeral parlor instead, figuring fae might be less conspicuous. They head over in early afternoon, to find that Frederico is there--not a vampire, then. There's a guy in the back in mortician's clothes who's Dauntain, who spots them. While they fill out paperwork for their anonymous dead friend, Frederico gets called to the back. Rey and Jared take the opportunity to look around, finding papers written in Russian, which they take photos of, and magicked blank paper. Rey spots wizard-locked compartments around the room. One has a Hermetic book, one contains a locked box, and the final one holds a human hand. Rey closes them up again.

People come back out. One of them locks the door. Rey distracts them with questions. Given the contract to sign, he spots hidden sigils with fairy sight. he starts vacillating over the ivory inlay for the coffin to put off signing it. "And you know that locked door is making me awful nervous." And then he throws a chair through the window.

Jared fails to knock Frederico out. He's a ghoul, supernaturally resilient. Frederico puts up his wards, starts shouting about them stealing and wrecking things "in my house!" Sigils start glowing all over the building. Great, it's his sanctum.

"Prob'ly has all sortsa force fields and things too, eh?" Jonas asks. "Well, there's a garbage truck over there." He creates an illusion of MiBs in the truck, which he crashes through the sanctum walls.

At the Traditions chantry, a report comes in of MiBs assaulting a funeral parlor in a garbage truck. "What're they doing?" Mark wonders.

Ambrose shrugs. "I told you, they've gone insane."

Rey grabs the magicked paper and they bail into the truck for an escape, dodging a fireball that hits the truck. "In my sanctum!" they hear Frederico shriek. "With a dump truck!" Rey deliberately crashes the building more when he pulls out.

They ditch the truck a little way away, and head back. The documents in Russian are information on meetings. One is set for a couple of days from now. Taking the hoodoo'd paper to Ambrose, he breaks the invisibility on it to reveal a list of orphanages and child hospitals from which children have been going missing. They've been kidnapping 6 to 12 year old children who're in the process of chrysalizing, flesh-crafting them into dead bodies to hide them and smuggle them out! They're also spirit-trapping the dead, often killing them to guarantee the capture.

Sonya receives a letter from Te Hwan: the Giovanni have started pillaging bodies from Chinatown, and Jwo Dye would be pleased to have further information. They decide that going back to the funeral parlor quickly is the best way to take it out. The Giovanni vampires will be in around nightfall, and Sonya realizes there must be a Tzimisce as well to perform the fleshcrafting. The shih PI calls back, and suggests they ask Jwo Dye for help dealing with this, as a sort of repayment of the debt he'll owe them for cluing him in. They call Jwo Dye to update him, and fetch the mages.

But returning to check the place out, they discover that it's now an antique shop! There's an old man behind the counter. The mages suspect a Paradox backlash. Asking people on the street, no one else has noticed a change. The shop is even reflected in the Umbra, and its address is in the phone book. Sonya and RF note that even the spirits believe the place is normal. Aila talks to wraiths, who have noted they can't get into the Shadowlands reflection. Ambrose and Mark talk it over, and suspect that Frederico booted the parlor into the Shadowlands, and Paradox rewrote reality to clean up his mess. Frederico might've avoided the backlash himself by staying out of reality...

They decide that in the absence of information, attacking or poking overly is unwise. Jwo Dye owes them a favor for the information and knows a lot about wraith stuff, so they make an appointment to see what he can tell them.

Sonya puts some calls into New York City to put people on the lookout in case any of those funeral parlor people arrive there. Ambrose and Mark talk to the Hermetics. The fae are disappointed to miss out on killing that Dauntain mad scientists. They contact the Red Branch knights who seek out chrysalizing fae to inform them of this case.http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=824073571361907610

That turns up some information. The Red Branch is missing around 12 to 15 children who were flagged as approaching chrysalis who've gone missing and haven't triggered. Sir Guy thinks a powerful sorcerer would be needed to siphon a chrysalis' energy away...but they've already encountered something similar, in that asylum in Wales, which was funded by Sir Quinn and lurked about by a Balor Dauntain.

They meet at Te Hwan's restaurant, the pack, the fae, and Ambrose. Sonya makes the pack dress well (Jonas and Aila complain). Jwo Dye suggests calling the MiB to see if they remember anything about the funeral parlor, and Ambrose admits he was actually sort of expecting an outraged phone call after all that. They return to the site to specifically look for traces of Paradox, and find that the building was created about 10 hours ago by demonic energy--either a spirit or an investment. The Garou note that traces of spirits here are very subdued.

Aila finds hair behind the counter, where the old man was. The fae think it looks like fairy magic, but not quite. Ambrose notes the hair is made of ephemera. It changes occasionally. It smells weird to the Garou. Ambrose keeps the sample.

Sonya sees that every fiber of this place has a particular brand, like a signature. She's able to coax it out, copy it, and show it to the others. It looks Asian, but none of them recognize it offhand. Jwo Dye takes a copy to research it.

Jonas suggests coming back tomorrow to talk to the old man. Aila wonders why people like antiques. Jared tells her, because they're beautiful. Sonya says that old things can link people to their past...then pauses. Looking around, she realizes that the antiques are odd--trinkets and odds & ends like someone might have in their basement.

Rey notes that it's strangely cold in here right after Aila says it seems...strange.
Nobody else thinks so...except Sonya, who takes a sniff around, and then has Aila take a second look. Aila and Jwo Dye recognize that all these things are wraiths' Fetters.

Is this a way of buying and selling wraiths? Or perhaps it's a storehouse. The record books behind the counter are blank. Ambrose suggests getting hold of a wraith through one of these Fetters. He thinks he can ping one and get its attention... Aila suggests that he ping a newer object. Younger wraiths are usually less powerful.

When Ambrose does this, all the fetters and the whole building glow. This entire place is being used as a Fetter and a power source--an impromptu node. And Frederico didn't design this. It's Asian infernalism, Jwo Dye tells them. He suggests redirecting local leylines so this place can't draw power from them. He's seen things like this before.

Ambrose thinks they'd better leave, before something comes by to check on that ping. So they clear out to a nearby diner, where they work out how to readjust the local leylines and force the funeral parlor back to reality.

There's a big CRASH as this forces the two buildings into co-location. Scanning inside, Ambrose spots Frederico, zombies, the old man and a Japanese guy. Sonya fails to knock out Fred. Ambrose fails to use a knockout grenade on the Japanese mage, who absorbs the force of it with hand movements similar to that ninja mage he saw once in the Midnight Circus. Remembering that guy was a freelancer, Ambrose asks, "You with them?" motioning to Fred and the others.

The man nods. "Oh yes."

Aila and RF clean out the zombies. Fred summons a couple hundred ghosts from the Fetters lying around. Jared attacks Fred, but is cut off by the old man, who shapeshifts into a tiger. A Rakshasa, Jwo Dye identifies him, then attacks.

Sonya grabs Frederico and attacks the Rakshasa using him as a weapon. This is wildly successful, considering the substantial force field Fred has wrapped around himself. The blow batters the Rakshasa and overloads the force field.

The Japanese mage bows to Ambrose, then vanishes, the bow having signified the beginning of the fight. "He's invisible!" Ambrose shouts, dropping his visor to scan for the man, and gets punched. Jonas throws itching powder, which connects, judging by noises. The mage escapes into the Umbra. Aila attacks Fred, who's mauled without his shield.

Mark begins to sing, drawing the attention of all the ghosts to him. He colors all the Fetters with a sense of anger targeted at Fred, and leaves that spell hanging to trigger later. The Rakshasa turns into a gnat and flies away. The Garou grab Frederico, who says he can't talk, even if he wants to; he's been ordered not to.

Aila figures that if he's useless, they may as well give him to the wraiths. Knowing how to threaten a Tradition mage, Ambrose suggests handing him to the Hermetics instead. Fred definitely looks less than happy about that idea. Mark calls the Hermetics after setting the Fetters back and letting the wraiths go. The Hermetics are pretty sure they can get information out of Frederico, whether he likes it or not.

They dig out Frederico's spell book, and find a chair in the back that was built by a Dougal fae. It draws off excess chrysalis energy into a container, but the containers are all gone. Sonya notes that there's something twisted about it that reminds her of Tzimisce. A Dougal Dauntain? Or just a renegade?

Jwo Dye says he'll take care of the Fetters. And he'll send messages to the Go Kamisori Gama about their rogue. He suspects, given the infernal type, that this place is probably on ground that was at some point part of Chinatown.

Ambrose is bothered by that chair. It reminds him so much of the one from the Welsh asylum. Poking it a bit more...yes. A Hermetic Nephandus was involved. Like...a cross-Tradition Hermetic Etherite. It reminds him of Dr. Sinris, too. Casting his mind back, he asks if Volkav Youngsten is a Slavic name. Olesya tells him yes.

Sonya notes that Rastov is in the middle of all this. They consider that wrecking his stuff up enough could bring him out of hiding...and Sonya ponders that there are Tzimisce whose skills allow them to "recreate" themselves in other people, taking over their minds and bodies as if they were clones or mouthpieces.

Their next move is to head to NYC, to follow up on this meeting.

Ambrose and Mark feel a little bad for Frederico. When Aila asks, Ambrose describes what the Hermetics will do to him, as a ghoul and a traitor. Then he finally places what's been bothering him about the chair: part fae-built, part Etherite, assembled by a Hermetic. The Etherite was Dr. Van Allman!

Mark goes wide-eyed, thinking Ambrose has to be mistaken. They explain that Dr. Van Allman was Doc Eon's arch-nemesis, a Nazi super-scientist who vanished with him in 1951. But he's been gone for decades...and these chairs are new. It's not possible!

Ambrose, however, is inclined to believe the seemingly impossible in this case. He tells Mark about the Doc Eon watch he saw on the man giving the presentation on Time at the Doctor Who convention. He never mentioned it to anyone because he thought it was so strange no one would believe him. Mark doesn't believe him either, exactly, but they agree that they need to find that man. And Ambrose wants to take that chair to the Gernsback to have other Etherites verify the evidence. Mark still thinks it's far-fetched...but Ambrose points out that the Etherites have never believed that was the end of Doc Eon. They'll invite some Nockers to the Gerns for their faerie-crafting expertise.

Reviewing the facts: they learned in Siberia that Baba Yaga made a deal with some Yomi Lord. Mikaboshi, lord of the Wicked City, now holds that contract. Rastov is making deals with all and sundry in return for favors, such as giving chrysalising children to Sir Quinn in return for his help on other things. Quinn/Tillingtast maybe are using this chrysalis energy to throw England into a pocket Mythic Age. Maybe Tillingtast is being manipulated by the Fomorians. One group of Nephandi are working with them, while another group is mucking with the Computer. And Yomi is making pacts to spread its influence beyond Asia.