(RC) Hell's Kitchen - Ch. 10, part 1

Summary: The Cabal travels to Hong Kong to find more pieces of the Shinwa Taizen and become embroiled in an open war between a fractured Consilium and the Seers of the Throne.

Recap:

The Cabal arrives in Hong Kong. Kemosiri is taking no chances. He leaves the original scroll of the Shinwa Taizen and the Codex in Kyoto and instead brings copies of the Codex with him. The Cabal make their way to a bank located in Kowloon, the purported headquarters of the Tong of the Sixth Dragon, a Hong Kong cabal Ms. Ogawa was told might be able to help the Cabal. They are to meet Hok Wo Sung.

When they arrive at the bank, they find it boarded up and abandoned. The entire bank was firebombed and destroyed. No members of the Tong are nearby. The Cabal spots a lone motorcyclist on the street. Kemosiri and Mori pass through an opening in the wooden security wall surrounding the bank. The other two stay on guard outside.

Kemosiri looks into Twilight and uses Mage Sight to find out what happened.

While they are investigating, a biker gang flanked by 2 Hummers appears outside. The lone motorcyclist disappears and the biker gang begins to drive up and down the block.

Suddenly two Hummers crash through the wood walls and two mages get out and begin tossing vulgar magic at the Cabal. The Cabal fights back, but between the mages and the Sleepwalker bikers, they are hopelessly outnumbered. Then, a Spirit Road door into Shadow opens, and the motorcyclist appears beckoning those into the door. They run into the local Shadow and travel for a while before exiting in another part of Hong Kong.

The girl introduces herself as Mingly Sui. She is a young member of a local cabal called the Five Thunders. Their cabal is part of a triumvirate of Cabals facing off against the Seers of the Throne who have gotten very aggressive in the past few months. She takes them to a small apartment – a safehouse she calls it. She will take them to her junk at Aberdeen where her stuff actually is. The Players try to get her to tell her what is going on, she says she will do what they want, but they need to find the Aethenium. The person who can tell them, a mage named Moolie (the last member of the Tong of the Sixth Dragon) had been kidnapped a few days earlier by a criminal group known as the Shay Ling.

After getting supplies at Mingly’s junk, the Cabal travel back to the Chungking Mansions located in Kowloon to visit Moolie’s last known hiding place. They find a few things they could use to find the Aethenium in his apartment. Mingly warns them that another local cabal had fragments of some old scroll and had to be put down like rabid dogs when they turned to infernalism and cannibalism.

Using Sympathetic Magic and a hidden key they find in Moolie’s place, the Cabal locates the Aethenium – it is underground near some subway tunnels. They also see humans feasting on what looks like other humans in front of the entrance.

Next: Hell's Kitchen, part 2