_30 November - 8 December, 847 IE - Charterhall_ The [[Old Town Echoes]] limped home after a bruising few days. The university heist, the alley brawl with the [[Reclaimer's Circle]]—it had all piled up, and the crew was spent. [[Cam]] divided the take from the payroll theft, splitting the silver evenly among the crew and setting aside a portion for the common fund. Nobody argued. Nobody had the energy. Word came quickly that [[Cam]]'s attempt to reach out to the assassin Steiner had gone nowhere. The man had taken a contract with the [[Reclaimer's Circle]] and sent back a curt refusal through his messenger. Whatever usefulness he might have offered was now firmly on the other side of the war. ### **Downtime in the Undercity** With the crew's notoriety climbing to dangerous levels, the Echoes scattered to tend to their own needs. [[Freakshow]] disappeared into Crow's Foot to lose himself in whatever substances he could find, returning days later somewhat diminished but calmer. [[Boo]] sought solace with the spirits, communing and consuming in equal measure, and came back lighter for it. [[Crow]] sat down at a card table somewhere and lost badly—barely taking the edge off. [[Nyx]], characteristically, spent her time in the basement injecting luminous fluids into dead rats, advancing whatever dark research she had been pursuing. [[Eidolon]] trained, honing his body in the cramped quarters of the lair. [[Cam]] focused on practical matters, assembling a package of forged evidence: doctored maps of the university, notes from the Lancaster files, and a silver ingot from the heist itself. The crew pooled resources to make the forgery convincing—if it was going to work, it needed to look like the [[Reclaimer's Circle]] had been behind the theft all along. ### **The Chronicle and the Inspector** During this brief respite, a headline in the Duskvol Chronicle caught the crew's attention: _"Inspector's Office Uncovers Devious Poisoning Plot."_ The article named [[Edrin Holt|Inspector Edrin Holt]] as the lead investigator and described a scheme in which an unnamed Charterhall University professor had been systematically poisoning people of influence throughout the city—killing some and extorting others. Among the dead was a Captain Klyra, a well-known leviathan hunter whose ship had a reputation for venturing far beyond the usual hunting grounds. The article all but confirmed what the Echoes had suspected: Holt was now in possession of Lancaster's black book. ### **Skulking and Spirits** The crew turned its attention to the war. If they were going to survive—let alone frame the Reclaimers for the university theft—they needed to know where the enemy operated in Charterhall. [[Eidolon]] volunteered first, slipping into the Alchemist's Parish on foot. He barely made it two blocks down Cinnabar Street before a pair of armed men—one of whom he recognized from the alley fight—stepped out and made their position clear. They had firearms and no interest in conversation. Eidolon raised his hands and withdrew. The [[Reclaimer's Circle]] had the Parish locked down tight; simple surveillance was not going to work. [[Cam]] tried next, crossing the canal and scaling rooftops to get a vantage point over Green Avenue. She moved well enough, but when she peered over the eaves of a brownstone, she found herself staring across at a rifleman on the opposite roof. He gave her a slow, deliberate shake of his head. She took the hint and went back the way she came. [[Crow]] took a different approach entirely. Armed with his spirit mask, he descended into the tunnels beneath Charterhall. The undercity here was quiet compared to the teeming passages under Crow's Foot—just old sluiceways, forgotten basements, and the occasional draft carrying the smell of damp stone. He found a spirit: an old man in an out-of-fashion suit, wreathed in the blue glow of electroplasm and deeply irritated by the state of the world. The spirit rambled at length about the indignities of haunting a sewer, the decline of quality pipe tobacco, and the general uselessness of the living. But buried in the complaints was something useful: he had seen men with a handcart, regulars who traveled back and forth between the direction of the Alchemist's Parish and a basement somewhere near the university. Crow tried to coax more specific directions out of the old man, but the spirit's patience ran out. _"Fuck off! It's that way!"_ he snapped, gesturing vaguely before fading into the dark. It was enough. Crow attuned to the echoes left behind in the tunnels and followed the faint impressions of two men rolling a wheelbarrow—one of them unmistakably a member of the [[Reclaimer's Circle]]. The trail led to a heavy metal door with a keyhole, set deep in the undercity somewhere beneath the university campus, well within [[Glasskeys]] territory. ### **Behind the Iron Door** Crow reported back, and the crew mobilized. [[Cam]], [[Crow]], [[Boo]], [[Nyx]], and [[Eidolon]] returned to the tunnels. At the door, [[Boo]] and [[Crow]] identified protection wards—nasty ones, designed to alert and harm intruders. Working together, the two whispers carefully dismantled them. [[Nyx]] then set to work on the lock itself. Her first attempt failed, and in the tense silence of the tunnel [[Eidolon]] knelt beside her, pressing his ear to the metal, listening for tumblers. On the second try, the lock clicked open. Inside was a revelation. The room was roughly thirty feet square, clean, cool, and dry—nothing like the cluttered chaos of the antique shop basement the crew had raided weeks ago. Three-quarters of the space was filled with floor-to-ceiling shelves, each one carefully organized with trinkets, curiosities, and minor works of art. Every item bore a small identifying label. This was no haphazard stash. This was a catalog. The real prize was in the remaining quarter of the room: a pair of desks outfitted with pens, ink, and drying sand, and beside them a filing cabinet packed with folders. [[Cam]] flipped through and found what amounted to a written confession of the [[Reclaimer's Circle]]'s entire smuggling operation—receipts for items stolen to order, organized by request and fulfillment. The clients' names were in code, but the transactions were plain enough. Dozens of crimes, meticulously documented. [[Boo]] took notes on some of the receipts while the rest of the crew surveyed the room. [[Nyx]] accidentally knocked a small figurine off a shelf and it shattered on the stone floor. Everyone froze. Cam and Nyx quietly gathered the shards, but there was no hiding the damage entirely. The crew planted their forged evidence in a desk drawer—the doctored maps, the Lancaster papers, and the silver ingot—then relocked the door behind them. They could not replace the wards, which meant the Reclaimers would know something was wrong the moment anyone checked. The clock was ticking. ### **The Tip** Back at the lair, [[Eidolon]] slipped away to contact his friend in the Bluecoats, a man named Darmot. The message was simple: if the law was looking for a break in the Charterhall University theft, they might want to check a particular door in a particular tunnel beneath the campus. The crew debated tipping off the [[Glasskeys]] as well, but decided against it. Better to let the Bluecoats arrive first and let the consequences ripple outward on their own. Then, with nothing left to do but wait, the [[Old Town Echoes]] retreated to their lair beneath the [[Ink & Anvil]] and hoped the frame would hold. --- **Mechanics Notes** - The crew received 2 heat and 4 rep for the university theft, and 7 heat plus 4 rep for the Reclaimer alley fight (loud/chaotic, at war, killing involved). - Heat reached 9, triggering wanted level 1. Heat cleared to 0. - 19 coin total was divided: 4 to the crew vault, 2 to each member (Cam took 1). - Entanglement roll: Steiner flipped to the Reclaimer's Circle. - Downtime limited to 1 activity due to war status. - Cam's downtime: Acquire Asset (forged evidence package), boosted with 2 coin from crew vault. - Nyx's downtime: Long-term project (Tissue Sustainer Research) advanced 3 ticks (now 7/12). - Eidolon's downtime: Training (Prowess). - Freakshow, Boo, and Crow indulged vice to reduce stress. - The crew's rep maxed out, qualifying for a tier upgrade from Tier 0 to Tier 1 (to be resolved next session). - No additional heat gained from the infiltration job. - 2 rep gained from the infiltration, pushing the crew over the upgrade threshold. [[2026-03-28-Transcript|Chatlog]] ![[Screenshot 2026-03-28 194317.png]]