Session 1: Crime and Punishment Report

General Summary

Uniting once more, the coterie embarks to meet the Anarch leader, Nick Moreno, at his establishment of choice "Castaways." Seeking to further their insight into the strange happenings in Arizona, they tried to get Nick to let them in on what he knew, and despite his best efforts to keep them uninvolved, an untimely murder occurs that the coterie insists on wrapping themselves up in.   The murder is of a Huey McMillan, an investor affiliated with Sun Valley Realty. Knowing the murder was committed by a vampire, it only grew more & more perplexing as the killing showed little resemblance to a typical vampiric killing; There was no sign of feeding on the victim, the kine was hard to get to, and there was nothing done to conceal the murder. An investigation ensues.   A photograph found at the scene of the crime connected it not only to a previous murder, but two, drawing a connection that Nick hadn't discovered prior. After identifying the three dead subjects in the photograph, the life of the fourth was left hanging in the balance. It was now a race against time to discover the name and whereabouts of the last potential victim before the killer did.   The coterie splinters, Adel and Eleanor heading to the library to draw further connections between the killer and the victims while John, Killian, and Isaac teamed up to try and beat the killer to the Real Estate Office. At the library, Eleanor discovered that the 4 investors were responsible for buying up cheap residential properties and flipping them. However, properties that were already occupied had paid thugs sent to them to scare the tenants into leaving, allowing the office to avoid the lengthy legal processes of evictions.   On the other side of town, Killian approached an intern heading to her car after a late night of crunching spreadsheets and was able to extract the next victim's name as well as his phone number. Before they could leave however, the intern stopped to ask if maybe the man who came by the office earlier was associated with them, leaving the coterie with a haunting sense of urgency as they hopped in their car and began their mad dash to the last victim's residence.   John, through being brutally honest, told the next victim that his life was in grave danger, and quickly convinced him to turn over his address lest he and his family perish. As John instructed the victim to hide somewhere in the house with his family, they find they had just barely beat the killer to the scene as he pulls up behind him. Dressed like an 80s slasher with a death metal twist, the East Valley Butcher kicks the residence's door in before he is intercepted by John.   A brief combat ensues as John learns to grasp with his newfound strength, eventually finishing the combat by delivering a hard enough blow to his skull with his baseball bat, giving Nick enough time to arrive on the scene and stake the rogue vampire before he can hurt anyone else. Begrudgingly, Nick thanks the coterie for their help with the matter and offers to make their partnership official, disclosing that he will meet with them again soon after he's extracted some information out of this feral neonate. His fate and motive is still largely unknown, but Nick hopes he is connected to the bigger mystery at large.