Chronicle Two: Motor City Blues

After Sebastian decides that he cannot stay with the Rochester cabal, the young Orphan travels west with the Harbingers in the early summer of 1996. In an underground tournament in Detroit, he is there to watch his friends fight. Also there, however, is an errant Orphan, Chip Z. The two meet and start talking. In one of the fights, they see a goofy robot fighting; it gets demolished. To their surprise, they notice that its master is a mage: presumbably a Son of Ether (who they will later learn is Thomas). They see another observer, who they learn is a nurse and a Euthanatos. They only speak briefly, yet Chip, the Euthanatos, and Sebastian agree to meet with the Son of Ether and talk. As they are driving out, someone simply appears in front of them. Another Son of Ether: Martin Scorsese—no relation to the director. He is just as confused as the others.

Chip and Sebastian quickly learn that they have something in common: the clan of vampires known as the Brujah hate them. Sebastian killed their primogen in New Orleans, and Chip's old cabal was destroyed by them. As it happens, the five mages are accosted by a group of Detroit Brujah. They fight the Kindred, defeating them. Afterwards, a Scottish Garou appears, applauding their efforts, then leaves as mysteriously as he approached. As a result of this encounter, the mages are invited to a meeting of vampires; all of them besides the Euthanatos go. They are happy about what the mages did against the Camarilla Brujah. It soon becomes obvious to Sebastian, who has been around Kindred before, that these are Sabbat: creatures he has fought many times over. Invoking the trust of the other mages, Sebastian maneuvers them to leave as soon as possible. As they are leaving, they get a phone call from Lotus that something is wrong.

Investigating, the two Orphans and the two Etherites find the hotel trashed. There is a limo outside. Chip and Sebastian know from Lotus that their ex-owner, M Bison, is in town and none too happy with his ex-fighters. The Sons argue about what to do. Chip and Sebastian do not want to mess around, so they go right in. They take out fighters in the lobby and continue on upstairs. There they take out some more. Chip actually decapitates one in the upstairs hall. The duo then meets M Bison. They immediately engage him, but he blows them off, beating them soundly. When they regain consciousness, Chip and Sebastian manage to find the Harbingers, who are all beaten badly, except Blade, who was hiding. Leander and Fernando are injured enough that they must go to the hospital. With Chip's use of Life magick, however, they both recover.

 

*           *           *

 

The next day, Sebastian decides to strike out on his own. He and Lotus find an abandoned node in a vacant lot at a mall. They begin negotiations to rent it out, starting plans to fund a comic book/occult book/coffee shop store. That night, Sebastian also finds the Kindred Prince of the City, Krayvis. He appears to be a Malkavian, but after a deep conversation, he reveals himself to be a Ventrue. He uses the disguise to bait his unwitting enemies. Sebastian decides that he needs to ally himself with the Camarilla and its Prince, not the Sabbat. Sebastian also wonders if the Kindred would be willing to arrange a ceasefire with the Garou. He does manage to borrow money from Krayvis for his mall venture, though he is worried about what kind of interest the Prince will charge.

Meanwhile, Sebastian has begun studies of the 10th sphere and has began pondering about founding his own craft. These activities garner the attention of Achmed Bashir, one of the lost Ahl-i-Batin. The two form a friendship of sorts and Achmed promises to contact Sebastian again.

 

*           *           *

 

Chip, Martin, and Sebastian decide to find the Garou and make peace with them also. On their way out of the hotel, Sebastian sees someone who looks like his cousin. He runs over to her; she apparently has to go, but tells Sebastian where she is staying. The Mages let her go, and head out towards Garou territory. Their leader is an old Silver Fang, named Stands-Against-The-Wind. The trio takes a great risk in going there, but never hesitate. They get an audience with this leader and he listens to Sebastian's words. Stands-Against-The-Wind wants to know Sebastian's exploits and whether he deserves to be heard; having battled the Wrym and the kind of demon that the Garou revile, Sebastian fares well. Thus, the chief will agree to talk with the Kindred, but cannot promise a deal. The Scottish wolf, Ragnar (a Get of Fenris), and a young beautiful one, Kaitlin Fairchild (a Child of Gaia), are assigned to join the mages; they will talk to the Prince.

Going back to the city, the mages decide to look for Sebastian's cousin. Martin, however, goes with the Garou to find them temporary lodging. Chip and Sebastian go to the club at the address Katrina had left them. Sebastian picks one lock, but that door only leads to another locked door. This one is magickally sealed. Neither one of them can get in. Chip tries to use his sword to break in, but it only makes a lot of noise. Suddenly, shotgun shells rip through the door. After recovering from their instinctive positions flattened against the wall, Chip and Sebastian surge forward, ripping through the now broken door, desperate, only to see three Mages. The pair of Orphans tell these mages that they do not want to fight, but the other Mages will not listen. Defending themselves, Chip mows down two with his sword and Sebastian shoots the other, taking him out, while only suffering minor damage themselves.

The two crouch down by the fallen leader, the one who did not want to listen. Chip heals him and then the three talk. Yet the mage refuses to answer Chip and Sebastian's questions, calling them assassins. The two Orphans tell him repeatedly that they are not, but their protestations fall on deaf ears. Which is when two Garou enter the room. The Mage tells them that Chip and Sebastian are the assassins. Sebastian tries protest, but they attack without hesitation. One knocks out Chip with one powerful swipe. Sebastian realizes that he probably cannot take down one Garou, let alone two, so he blows away the mage instead. This makes the Garou enter a frenzy. Sebastian literally has seconds to live. Luckily, before they can rend Sebastian's flesh from his bones, he uses his magick to leak the gas main, ignites it with his lighter and the building explodes. They all fall through to the next floor as the building collapses, while the two Garou burn, vulnerable to the fire. Sebastian's Entropy guides him downward, protecting him and Chip, who is magickally healing himself. Through the ruined first floor, they run for Katrina, but a group of other Mages teleport her away before Chip and Sebastian can reach her. For the Mages and Garou behind them, it is too late.

Visiting the Harbingers at the hospital, Chip continues to help heal Fernando and Leander's wounds with his knowledge of Life. In the ensuing days, Chip and Sebastian try to bring the Streetfighters around, so that they can be acolytes; all but Blade and Fernando buy into it. So they bring them all to their meeting with the Prince of the Kindred. However, just after arriving at his club, they are attacked by a HIT Mark. They manage to defeat it, but the Prince is not happy about the ruckus in his club. Nonetheless, he still agrees to listen to what Sebastian says. After hearing him, the Prince says that he will talk to the Garou about peace, and further, that he will talk to Mages only through Sebastian. Krayvis stipulates only one condition: Sebastian must give him Blade for his Assamites to embrace. Sebastian surprises him by saying yes. It is then that the Harbingers also learn that Blade was a spy for M Bison, so the others have no problem with it, either. Thus, the beginnings of peace between the supernatural powers is established.

 

*           *           *

 

Chip and Sebastian manage to win the lottery, using their magick. They re-invest those winnings of about four million in various legal and illegal betting pools surrounding the much-hyped, first match-up of Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield. By the end of the night, their money has made a total of close to $100 million. They buy a mansion and cars, outfitting themselves and their new apprentices well.

Word gets out that someone is trying to break the peace already, so Chip and Sebastian investigate. They get info from both Crazy Eights, a Brujah, and Omen, a Nosferatu. They find the perpetrators late that night in a park, consisting of four Red Talons and four Brujah: all conspiring to break the peace. Using Time magick to accelerate themselves and slow down their enemies, they run among the eight before they realize what is happening. Chip and Sebastian use pre-arranged devices to spray the congregation with gasoline. Then Chip ignites a spark with Forces and they all go up in flames, all howling in pain. To make sure that they are all down for the count, Sebastian fires his shotgun into the blaze at anything still moving. One Brujah does make it away, sprinting towards a pond. Chip is going head him off, when Omen comes and takes the remains of the Kindred, before he dies, as proof of betrayal.

In the days to come, Paradox begins to become ineffectual, and the mages have problems. Chip, Martin, and Sebastian encounter an open firefight between Technomancers and Tradition mages. By mistake, they help the Technomancers kill off the Tradition mages. Realizing their mistake too late, they turn on the Technocrats, killing them also. They run into mad Marauders, who are killing and torturing, indiscriminately. One in particular, Kenneth, becomes their antagonist, as he refuses to show himself, and only talks in their heads.

Kenneth puts the cabal through his versions of movies: Speed, LiveWire, and a third one they never guess. While Martin and Chip run in circles trying to win the movie game, Sebastian cheats, breaking the rules, going right for the Maruader instead, much to Kenneth's annoyance. Ultimately, Sebastian alerts the others and they prove threatening enough that Kenneth is forced to retreat.

Finally, the mages learn that paradox has been 'kidnapped.' In particular, they must find Wrinkle, the paradox spirit of time. It is the Batini, Achmed Bashir, that tells Sebastian this. So led by the Garou, Ragnar, the trio of Mages heads into the spirit realm: the Umbra.

There they are forced to navigate their way through spiritual test after test: each test a realm in itself; and each realm mirroring the demigod-like versions of their friends, the Harbingers. Whether they are the actual Harbingers from their universe, from another, or constructs altogether, none of them know.

There they must face a giant Kahn, in a barren warscape, forced to vanquish this new Mars. With Kahn's demise, they come to face an Assamite Blade on a shadowy, half-built shell of a sky-scraper, again forced to kill one who was once their friend. They fight and conquer a lion-like Leander in the jungles and are forced to bring down Siren, who is lodged in a utopian paradise, denying the temptation of her realm. Penultimately, they appear at a mansion during a proper dinner party, hosted by the Lotus. Sebastian does not flinch at killing his own girlfriend, realizing that with each death of the Harbingers, a piece of Paradox is freed, and thus a part of reality and all of its inhabitants is freed; he and the others cannot put the lives of their friends above all the rest of the world.

Lastly, they are faced with a mysterious energy field, which Sebastian suicidally, if instinctually, jumps into, followed equally as maddeningly by the others. Yet this was the ultimate answer to the puzzle. In doing so, they save reality. As a reward of sorts, Wrinkle tells Martin how to find his lost robot; he gives a magic axe to Chip, and besides giving a powerful talisman, Mr. Goodhit, to Sebastian, he places a young orphan, Devon MacAllister, into his custody. Devon was from another universe, where his powers flared out of control and helped start the entire madness that ended with paradox being sent out of whack. He suffers from permanent paradox damage now, with his hair flaming, but not hot, and not burning. Sebastian promises to teach him how to control his powers.

 

*           *           *

 

Among the supernatural community, word spreads that a Graysh is coming to town. He is an elder Lasombra antitribu. All the Kindred go into hiding. Those at the mansion find their enemy, Kenneth, thrown through their front door and all he says, is "Graysh." They take him to the bathroom, throw him in the tub and interogate him. He doesn't say much, even after Sebastian blows out his kneecaps. As Sebastian is about to end his menace forever, Wrinkle appears again. He says that they cannot kill Kenneth. After the last debacle with Paradox, Kenneth took all Paradox into himself to retain his godlike power. If he dies, all of paradox will explode in a blacklash that will destroy reality. Rather, the mages must go into the umbra again to rescue his displaced avatar.

The Mages find Ragnar among the hiding wolves (also avoiding Graysh). They also learn that Kaitlin is pregnant with Chip's child. Ragnar takes Chip, Martin, and Sebastian to the umbra again. Immediately upon arrival, they fall upon a huge dragon there, whose name is McCarthris. He goes to bite them, then realizes who they are, and helps them. Deeper in the umbra, they encounter Black Spirals; as they fight them, Sebastian sees his Garou friend Jesse D. Edmond; he is looking for his father, who is a Black Spiral Dancer. Jesse once again teams up with a cabal of Mages. Battling through this realm, Jesse finds and kills his father, while the Mages get Kenneth's avatar. To escape other forces of evil, the mages jump off of the skyscraper they had ascended (actually Sebastian tackles his cabalmates off of the building). Martin was supposed to make parachutes out of their clothes with Matter, but fails repeatedly; luckily, Jesse manages to save them. Without much ado, he helps them return to Ragnar and then takes his leave. Kenneth, with his avatar returned, regains some semblance of sanity and shortly there after teleports away to Mexico City.

On returning to Detroit, Martin takes off, but Chip and Sebastian meet up with another mage, who is also an Orphan: Dylan Brindamour. He received a note that said they were to meet. Only none of the cabal sent it. After Dylan decides to stick around, the others hear Daniel is in town: an elder Akashic vampire hunter. As is Alexander (a friend of Krayvis), and Daniel's old student, George. Chip, Sebastian, and Dylan go to see the latter two. When they arrive, they discover that Alexander has just been killed by Daniel, and George is hysterical. They take George and go to see Krayvis. There they find Daniel, who says he is finished with Krayvis. Sebastian, thinking his friend dead, attacks. The trio fights and maybe even hurts Daniel, but ultimately he knocks them all down and leaves unmolested. Krayvis is alive though. Daniel had been looking for Graysh. They also learn that Adolf Hitler was Graysh's child, embraced right at the end of the war, and he has been sighted recently in Milwaukee.

After finding his long lost robot, Bidi- Bidi, Martin returns to the cabal. The mages hear many of the Garou have been slain by Graysh. George, Daniel's old apprentice, stays with the cabal, though, deciding to teach Do to any of the mages at the mansion who are willing to learn.

Deciding to do something about Graysh, Martin, Dylan, Chip, and Sebastian head into the sewers: where their information indicates the elder Kindred is lurking. By this time, Dylan and Sebastian have begun to dislike each other. Dylan, while just being honest, unfortunately begins to sow seeds of dissent by telling Sebastian that he does not want to be led by him. At this point, Chip and Martin take offense to the fact that they are being led. The group argues. Sebastian tries to leave, not willing to suffer the arguments that doomed his cousin, but cannot, finding all the manhole covers fused. They eventually find Graysh. Graysh laughs at them for thinking that they, a squabbling bunch of children, could possibly stop him.