Three ways for dukes to kill time on a slow day.

Snow Sharks

There’s been several child abductions in the PC’s stomping grounds this winter, and the suspicious eyes of the neighborhood and law have turned to the “weirdos” in the area. It doesn’t help that most dukes have a criminal record of some kind. Police are asking probing questions that the magickally savvy can’t answer honestly without waking the Tiger. As the tally of missing children rise, the otherwise normal mundanes are getting riled up and may decide it’s time for some old-fashioned vigilante justice.

The only other explaination for the missing kids is an old, drunken homeless man who says he saw some kids eaten by moving snowdrifts. The PCs have to find out just what the man saw and try to save the kids, or at least prevent any more from being captured. Because they know none of them are doing it… right?

Outstanding Debts

There’s a strange pattern afoot in the local underground. Occultists, enforcers and mages are all getting hassled, but instead of with astral parasites or bullets, the trouble comes from collections agencies. Sure, most dukes have to cut corners to make ends meet, but when a wizened old clockworker who barely makes $1500 in a YEAR is getting calls about paying for a brand new High Definition TV and associated hardware, something is up. And the people coming to collect on these peculiar debts come in two distinct flavors — the unusually bad-ass kung-fu types, and the cowardly skinny guys who will scream for lawyers and police as soon as they get intimidated.

It’s just not practical to scare them away or kill them all off, but the Underground isn’t going to just sit around and pay for stuff they never bought — or even stole. Someone’s trying to stick them with other people’s debts, and the PCs have to figure out who and why before things come to open blows. A sort of Plutomantic Proxy effect? Government agencies trying to keep dukes down? Or perhaps it’s just a crooked collections agency trying to get money from people who can’t or won’t use legal means to defend themselves… but have some other ways of settling scores and debts that these bullies are about to encounter first hand.

A Show of Inhospitality

The word in the bars and back alleys is to stay the hell away from the Municipal General Hospital. Losing a patient happens all the time in the medical field, but this is ridiculous; a kid was brought in to get his tonsils taken out, and they took out his gall bladder instead. Fatal combinations of drugs are happening every other room. Heart and lung machines fall apart in the middle of important surgery. A few girls reported to the police that a few of the male staff tried to grope them. It’s not looking good, especially for denizens of the Underground, since getting seriously injured happens to dukes about every other day, on average. They say the FBI is coming to visit too, but nobody hooked up to the grapevine knows why the place hasn’t been shut down yet if it’s so unsafe.

A little legwork by the PCs matches up the time that the hospital started dropping the ball to when a bodybag called Eric the Unlikely broke his leg (just like every other month), was billed for all he was worth, and thrown out the door when he was out of cash. He died a few weeks later from an infection where the IV needle poked him. At least that’s how his girlfriend tells it. Maybe Eric is now a demon out for revenge or something, but the PCs have also heard about a fleshworker with a serious temper who got rushed to the emergency room after the landlord found her passed out with one eye gone. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what Crazy Daisy wanted to do after she woke up and her major charge was gone. Between powers of possession and powers of Chameleon, either one could be responsible. Or both could be teaming up. Or perhaps it’s a third force altogether. Or no force it all — the hospital staff may just have hired some really unqualified people.

Ultimately, the PCs only have a few days to stop whoever or whatever is turned the local hospital into a butcher shop before the Underground in the area is wiped out by attrition, not to mention the mundane population of the city. And that’s not even considering troubles with the FBI visitors, who are greener than broccoli and see international terrorists under their beds at night.