Mid-West Campaign
Session Forty-Five

Thursday, 25 January 2001 (continued)

Artemis Black is telephoned by Dave Law of Lambert & Law, enquiring as whether he needs a legal expert. Artemis arranges a meeting with them for next week. Late in the evening Dominic and Bruce return to Seattle to help sort out the mess Todd and Ecks have caused.

Friday, 26 January 2001

[Editorial Note: This day opens with a dream sequence in which Artemis Black is taught a lesson by the capricious Ghede. These events are chronicled in blue type. They didn't really happen, and only Artemis remembers them.]

Artemis convenes a discussion on the Joker case over breakfast. However, Jane is unwilling to pursue it. She argues that the Joker can wait and that the return of Nathan Harlow is far more important. Artemis is a little broadsided by Jane's renewed vigour to help Harlow. He says that if was a capricious god of the dead he would have put Harlow's spirit in the body of Apache Joe. This is good enough for Jane who immediately books tickets to Wichita for her and Drake.

Drake is extremely eager to drive to the airport in a limousine he hired. Jane agrees and the pair speed out of Los Angeles causing many traffic related accidents. After their flight they Drake drives at a break-neck pace to HQ, crashing into a heavy goods train, but somehow managing to continue.

In the Wichita HQ Jane discovers that Harlow's spirit is not in AJ's corpse - however, Harlow's severed hands are moving leading her to conclude that he is in fact occupying his own body in Ventura public cemetery. Taking a fast car, the pair hire a transport plane to fly them to the graveyard. Artemis telephones Jane who tells him what has happened. Artemis forbids her to dig up Harlow but Jane hags up on him.

Artemis and Benedict race to the cemetery just in time to see Drake drive his car out of a transport plane and parachute into the graveyard. They are accompanied by a team of formation sky-divers dressed as Elvis. The car lands in a tree and Jane rushes out spade in hand ready to dig up Harlow.

Artemis again tells her not to, and the pair have a blazing row. Artemis thinks Jane is getting too emotionally involved and obsessed and sends her to wait in her car. Because Artemis isn't seeing things her way, Jane immediately assumes that he has been replaced by one of those doppelgangers that Rock Mulholland is obsessed with. She phones Rock and discovers that doppelgangers bleed green blood. She promptly leaves the car and kicks Artemis in the face. He bleeds red.

Jane apologises, acting as if nothing had happened. She tries to persuade Artemis to dig up Harlow. Artemis tries to arrest Jane who has had enough and knocks him out. Benedict tasers Jane and then shoots her. Meanwhile Drake's car has fallen out of a tree and been replaced by the A-Team van. An ambulance arrives and takes everyone to hospital.

In the hospital Artemis has Jane sectioned. She begs Artemis to save Nathan. Artemis can't understand why Jane is behaving in such an extreme way. Then he sees the news. Drake has checked himself out of hospital and taken the A-Team van into downtown LA where he is being chased by police. He smashes into a patrol car, and then car-jacks another vehicle and speeds off. This is all too weird.

Then Artemis realises that this is Ghede's work. He appeals to the voodoo god of the dead and apologises for his inattention to confess his sin of smoking a cigar to Ghede every day in confessional. Ghede accepts his apology and Artemis wakes up.

And the day starts again for him. Jane immediately voices concern about the well-being of Harlow's spirit, but she is being much more reasonable this time. Artemis tells her that he believes Harlow's spirit is in his body in the cemetery but they are to leave it there until they have worked out what to do next. The Joker is a more important case.

However, because they don't have a clue how to stop the Joker, Artemis decides to look into the main loose end of case 0015-GCF. They never did work out what came from the past. They head to the library with the intention of checking security footage to see what left the portal. However, they have left it too long and there is no footage to be had in the library or in any of the other buildings in this district. Their best lead seems a little interference and loss of contrast on one camera, which isn't much of a lead at all.

Jane suggests they learn from the experience of their first case together and speak to the homeless who live in the area - they might have seen something suspicious. They speak to a man called Paul Garcia who runs all the shelters in the county. He says that the number of regular homeless people at the shelters are down and that around 4-5 regulars per week have been vanishing. He points the agents toward the Christopher Martin (who runs the Bay Shelter) and Daniel Thompson (who runs the shelter on Sunset Strip). The agents head to the latter because of its proximity to the library.

Thompson confirms that some of his regulars have been disappearing, and puts the agents in touch with a down-and-out called Pitcher. Pitcher is very wary of the agents but Artemis smarms him around. He says that they cannot know the streets until they have "lived the streets". Artemis decides to live on the streets until he finds an answer.

Jane points out that this has nothing to do with the Joker. The fact that some creature from the past preying on the homeless is tragic and has to be investigated, but they can't solve every case. Artemis agrees. He formally reopens case 0015-GCF and hands it over to the west coast team.

Saturday, 27 January 2001

A largely unproductive day, but one that finally succeeds in the agents coming up with (and sticking to) a plan to take down the Joker. Unfortunately for Benedict it is "Plan A: Job Him!"

Around a table in Wichita the agents belabour all the ways they can take down the Joker. They have the Requiem for the Broken which could charm him, as well as the knife from Mike, Benedict's powers and all the lesser fiends Artemis can summon. Many plans are put forward each one more complicated than the last. Jane's plan of releasing the demon the old west coast team trapped on that CD and using him against the Joker sounds promising but is in fact, pigswill.

However, by talking they have come to one very important conclusion. The silver dirk given to them in Winterset was given to them for the express reason of killing the Joker. The knife is designed to slay demons. Mike gave them an equaliser. If they could use the knife against the Joker then it would kill him utterly. The plan, therefore, is to engineer a showdown between the Joker and Benedict in the Wichita HQ. Armoured up, Benedict might be able to resist the Joker long enough to stab him. Benedict isn't thrilled with this plan, but in the absence of anything else he is willing to go along with it.

Sunday, 28 January 2001

The agents arrive in the morning in Wichita and fill HQ with dry ice so that Benedict has a chance of seeing the invisible fiend. Then Jane, Artemis and Drake leave the building, while Benedict covers himself in his trademark chitinous armour and prepares to do battle. The second the door closes, time stops and the music begins.

The Joker doesn't come to Benedict and the agent has to head out into the main body of the HQ where his heightened senses see the Joker hovering above the ground. The armoured Benedict leaps for the fiend and battle between them is joined. The use of the powers granted to him by the mysterious mineral are slowly killing Benedict. The Joker's attacks are far more dangerous but Benedict cannot find a way to bring the dagger into play. The Joker overwhelms him knocking aside the agents pitiful strikes, and also destroying Jane's desk.

But fortunately, the laws of probability are on Benedict's side. One strike is all he need and eventually he gets it. The dagger penetrates the Joker's invisible form and grows the size of a small sword. The sword erupts in flames, burning Benedict's hand but consuming the Joker. The demon in engulfed and boils away into nothingness. Benedict collapses to the floor.

A second after closing the door, Artemis opens it and he and the others rush in. Jane administers to Benedict. He is alive, but barely. In a few days he may be strong enough to use his healing powers.

At this point Lillian Winter appears, sprawled decadently on a leather couch. She congratulates Artemis, saying that he has gone further in the Game than any of the others. She is also there to deliver a warning: this game may be over, but another will soon begin.

Interesting, Lillian seems to fear the silver knife and commands that Jane puts it down. It could be the knife is capable of injuring her, although using it against Lillith would surely be more difficult than using it against the Joker.

Jane has little time for Lillian, but Artemis is willing to quiz her and find out as much as he can. This is not very much as Lillian is playing by the same rules as the angels. She says that the Joker was a blind player, just as Artemis was Lillian's blind player. He was serving someone else that Artemis deduces to be a secret society of some sort. Lillian likens the game to a bridge club for extremely bored immortal entities. She says that many games are running simultaneously. She says that some Brain Bugs are players just as some humans are players. She says that Horus was once a player, but no longer. With that Lillian departs, leaving behind her couch.

Before the three conscious agents can discuss this, the door to HQ is knocked down and Mike walks in, also to offer his congratulations. The rather inept Mike tells the group more than he probably should, including that a copy of the rules could be found in an ancient library and that various battling alien armies (including Signai) are on their way to invade the Earth.

Mike reveals that he and the angels also play the Game. He warns that the more he tells the agents the more he might be seen as breaking the Rules of the Game. This won't hurt him, but it would mean that one of his opponents might see fit to 'equalise' matters - which would be bad news for the agents. Mike tells the group to keep the knife and takes his leave.

Mid-West Campaign Index | Previous Session | Next Session