PLEASE!

If you plan on playing in this adventure, read no further!

Eighteen days ago in Paris, France, a hermetically sealed, stainless steel coffin was shipped overnight air freight to a priority mail depot outside Washington, DC. Or rather, it was supposed to be. Actually, it was confused with a similar coffin and shipped to Los Angeles.

Its occupant, Darian Grelet, had been expecting to be released from the coffin in Washington. Instead, a starving, maddened creature of the night finally clawed its way through the latches of its prison and emerged inside a moving boxcar just outside Laramie, Wyoming.

Insane with hunger, it went after the engineer first, peeling open his ribcage to feed directly on the blood of his heart.

When Freddie Santiago, the fireman, tried to interfere, the vampire backhanded him across the side of the head, crushing his skull and sending his corpse hurtling from the train.

Still starved for essence, the vampire left Harvey's body slumped over the controls and headed for the caboose. The train began to accelerate out of control. The vampire reached the caboose just as the sun rose. It was already burning in the light of the dawn when it got to Torrance.

By the time the train left the tracks, there was no one left alive aboard. Even the vampire Grelet was so much dust.

GMs: Your hunters have most likely destroyed Margaret and Susan in the First Hunt, (SHADIS #32) and at least locked proverbial horns with Molly Malone at Club Noir (#33). Perhaps they have even cleansed a few other lairs in the interim.

But now it's time to step up to the pump. The vampires your players will be facing in the next four hunts are a new breed. They are educated, resourceful, and cautious. Their conspiracy goes all the way to the top... or it will, if you can't stop it.

What you have just read above should be what your players should initially know, or surmise from the evidence presented. Here are some things they do not know:

1 ) Special Agent Nathaniel Swain died in 1988, in a shoot-out with a band of South American arms smugglers in Los Angeles. The man using his identiry is one Frank Gutenberg who is, incidentally, the present deputy director if the FBI. Needless to say, "Mr. Swain's" credentials are airtight. Most of the rest of the FBI believe Gutenberg to be on a 3 month sabbatical diving in Belize. Swain is a believer--so much so that he has taken the hunters on to try and rout a very organized and well-connected coven of vampires.

Swain's actual identity is something that your players will likely discover eventually, but you should be careful as to how soon you let on. This vampire hunt is Swain's private gig. He is right: his own people would laugh him right out of the bureau if it were to come out.

Still, he is the deputy director of the FBI, and as such, has a great deal of pull with the local authorities. He can use his power in a limited fashion to keep the hunters out of the klink and in rhe action. But remember: his own people don't know about this, so his power is limited.

2) What the hunters have found here is a vampiric "travel agency" or "underground railroad" shipping Undead from countries all over the world to the U.S. in overnight mail. For reasons that will become apparent later, the U.S. will soon be a very cool place to be a vampire.

The headquarters of this operation is actually under the new postal depot in Leesburg, VA. The coffins are shipped in by international air carrier and picked up from Dulles International Airport by a special truck that brings them back to the depot to be opened. The occupant will then be released and welcomed to the US. The cost for this service is $50,000 or the equivalent in gems, precious metals, or artwork.

Until recently, our perpetrators just let the coffins mix temporarily with the other freight--then some bungling mortal clerk accidentally forwarded the wrong coffin to L.A. This mortal clerk is now dead (more on him later).

3) If the hunters can successfully complete this hunt and stay off the guest list at Leavenworth, the clues provided here will lead them all the way to the doorstep (and pocketbook) of Senator Jonas Clay of Califomia--the Democratic party's prime candidate for President.

The hunters must go to Leesburg, confirm the presence of the Vampire and eliminate him.

Ready? Here we go.

More Hunters

Player's Introduction
GM Introduction
Leesburg, VA
Main Facility
Garage and Vampire's Lair

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