Unspent: A Tangled Web

Here's a link to a listing of the Unspent posts, if you're a newcomer to this.

Guess what? I'm going to start to pump up the frequency of my Unspent posts, and they might possibly be more caught up to the actual pace of the game, soon! Yay!! At any rate, we pick things back up with Ivy discovering that her tape recorder had been on and recording, something that she didn't remember doing. It was time to find out some very interesting stuff...

Hello? Who's There?
They stopped the recorder, rewound it, and then hit play. The first thing that they heard was Ivy, saying "Who are you?" and things like that. And then, "Run? Why should we run?" There was silence, and then they heard all the rest of the group talking: the scene from back in the side chapel. They kept listening, and heard the entire scene play out between them and the child, when everything shattered. Then, another question from Ivy: "Master? Who is the master?" Then the last bits of dialogue before hearing everyone discover the switched-on recorder.

They were baffled. The best hypothesis George had was an accidental switch-on of the recorder. Before they could discuss things further, however, Bryce came back, noting that they'd "done something". They told him what had happened, and then everyone finally got some of the explanations they'd been waiting for.

Bryce explained what he'd gleaned so far: that there was a Fae lord who'd been imprisoned, but that his cell was beginning to develop cracks. These cracks seemed to be localizing around cases in the area that involved heavy negative emotions, feeding off of unfulfilled wishes to make the cracks wider. The group had managed to seal off one crack, but more would undoubtedly come.

Bryce asked them to keep an eye out for any other strange stuff (he gave them a number to call), and he rather impromptu inducted them into the knowledge of the World of Darkness. George freaked out at the thought that vampires, werewolves, and the like were truly real. That was a fun bit of roleplay. Finally, the group decided to let Bryce take care of Jim, as long as they got to go and visit him within the Changeling community. They left the church, taking the letter and diagram, and not calling the police about it.

Searching the Station
Led by Sharon, the group then went to investigate the police station, and found it empty. There were memos in the office, telling employees to "not come in" that day. It seemed to be getting more and more suspicious. The strangest happening came as the group went to check up on the forensics lab. As Sharon looked in, she spotted a dark, shadowy figure in the room. The figure disappeared from sight, and all of the evidence bags in the room were scattered about.

Sharon looked, but the bag with the bits of wood from the church pews was gone. George had a simple answer for that: the Mages were starting a turf war with the Changelings. They called up the number that Bryce had given them, and got an answering machine for a young woman named Leona. George was worried: "What if...the Mages are looking to grab Fae power?" He left a message about the shadowy figure, and asked for a callback.

As they left the police station, Bryce pulled up in a nice black car. Well, in the passenger seat. The group, glimpsing in, could see an Elf-like, pale driver and a burly, square-jawed fellow with a buzz cut in the back seat. Bryce invited George out to a "guy's night" that evening, and George took him up on the offer. The car left, and George smelled a trap. He told the rest of the group to call him if he wasn't back in an hour.

Then, the group got a call back, from Leona.