Part I: The Tip of the Iceberg
General Summary
The campaign opens on Ren Fujiwara, a former member of the Kazoku, enacting harsh vigilante justice on members of the Cromoni Mafia in Malheur, Valland. Slaughtering two of them with ease, her mission is interrupted by 6 other gangsters who attack her within an inch of her life, Ren just barely making it out alive.
Also in Malheur was Nora Corbin, a mysterious agent of some unknown organization, who had successfully infiltrated a charity event run by Anton Govoni, Isabella Cromoni's consigliere. Making her way into his office, she shot off the ring and pinky fingers of the mafioso in order to squeeze information out of him; domestic terrorist Jinx Castellan's home address. According to Nora, she needed to track down Jinx in order to gather her intelligence on the criminal underworld to assess it's threat level.
In the very same city, Venus Viadon, Copperhead Fang of Venomshroud, was sitting in on her father's lecture of several Venomshroud students. After demonstrating her incredible accuracy with a longbow, she went inside the base to be assigned on her mission by Cottonmouth: to hunt and kill Jinx Castellan.
Home Invasion
Ren returned to her apartment with her girlfriend
Mara Theirin, where she was able to tend to her partner's grievous wounds. Heading to bed,
Ren's sleep was interrupted by the
Witch, the last remaining
Slicer, who had flown into the bedroom window and contorted herself through its crack. The Witch awoke
Ren to locate
Mara Theirin, at the very same time their apartment was invaded by Venus Viadon, wholly unseen as she infiltrated through the window.
Nora arrived at the scene, knocking on the front door to display security footage of Venus entering the apartment. in a swarm of confusion and fear, the five all of a sudden became aware of each other, and learned one thing:
Jinx was nowhere to be found.
The
Witch presented the group with a secondary goal: to aid her in tracking down and killing Null, an old enemy of the
Protectors thought to have disappeared 30 years ago. The group decided to redirect their shared efforts into this shared interest, following the Witch's intel to Madame Kreller, the supposed Director of Null, currently running a Malheurian nightclub known as Club Underdark.
Club Underdark
Arriving at the scene, the gang witnessed Madame Kreller enter the backroom of the nightclub. They followed suit, only to find her body, murdered behind her own desk. On her open tablet on top of her table, the party found something much more terrifying. Pressing a reveal button, they start to see a map of the continent be covered withhundreds, thousands of small red dots. A counter at the top left labeled “Members:” is steadily going up, well over 5000. Images of every member speed by too quickly to recognize anyone, showing mobsters, police officers, politicians,
cultists,
shinzoku, and
Protectors. The entire continent is flooded with members of Null, and this continues until the power shuts off, as the lights come back on, flooding the entire floor with red light.
They begin to hear footsteps down the entrance staircase and shattering glass as unknown people began to break in. Madame Kreller was just the tip of the iceberg.