Campaign: Call of Cthulu
The latest upstart detective agency in the Kyoto area; non-profitable but not by choice, and sponsored by Lucielle Johnson. The agency runs out of a small office located above a decent ramen shop, with a single flight of stairs leading up to the second floor. The office is torn and disrepaired, barely maintained, and crowded to an unpleasant degree. The entire office suffers from a surplus of furniture, with seven desks crammed into the small space, as well as several bookshelves, filing cabinets, and a couch. On top of that, papers and computers fill most available surfaces, typically unsorted but occasionally filed properly by Noriko.
The agency has a few notable features, namely a black cat called “Space Jam” who lives in the building when Noriko has to work late shifts. The agency also has a namesake mini-fridge that sits on her desk, filled with various people’s spoiled lunches and a few jars of Space Jam.
An offshoot of the Drifters run and maintain the detective agency, being the late-shift for the office and taking in the majority of the “interesting” jobs that the agency recieves. Most of the drifters who work this shift consider the office a second home, as funds are tight and the work gets long. Noriko runs most of the agency, handling not only the necessary paperwork for keeping the place afloat but also working with Retfird to keep up communications with clients. Retfird’s assistant, Carol, takes care of him at the office and helps with transportation to other locations.
Orro and Carrie are newer hires to the company, working to flesh out the agency with different specializations. Orro boasts heavy acedemic skills and scientific backgrounds, making his debut as a forensic scientist for the firm. Carrie provides both security and handyman skills, showing dedication both for the law and for the firm’s ability ot circumvent it. Both oversee and assist Retfird and Noriko, as well as their intern, Akemi.
While work was lacking for quite some time, the firm’s representative, Tenzin, was able to acquire some leads regarding subway accidents. The drifters set out to investigate these rumors, tracking the trail of a woman who had supposedly gone missing on those lines. After investigating the stations, the group found little evidence that claims regarding the subway accidents was as the press claimed, and began finding strange markings. Through an obscure Reddit forum, the group linked these markings to one of the Elder gods, and found that a man connected to the accidents had recently bought a strange artifact. Pouring through the man’s encrypted site, the Drifters found entries convicting the man of using the tunnels to try to successfully hatch the ‘egg’ he had acquired.
Unable to properly investigate the incident or report their findings, the Drifters decided instead to attempt to flush out the subway and destroy the eggs they suspected were hiding inside. Renting a u-haul and filling it with several barrels of gasoline, the Drifters had the prodigy swimmer Akemi drive the truck off a bridge and into the river above the subway. While Akemi made his escape back to shore, Orro strapped on a lighter to the end of an arrow and ignited the flames. The entire river was set ablaze, polluting the area with gasoline and killing most aquatic life in that area of the river. After making their getaway, the group monitored the news and learned that the station’s mysterious dissapearances had indeed stopped.
A few weeks later, the group was approached by a representative of a local Yakuza family. For a large amount of money upfront, the group agreed to investigate the strange death that had occurred outside the family’s headquarters, involving a secretary who had been killed and hung outside the building, bound by soaked ropes. While investigating, the Drifters found several strange markings and a mutated rat in the vicinity of the building. Retfird befriended one of the official detectives who was not permitted to examine the scene throughly, and they would go on to share leads throughout the investigation.
The biggest consternation of the investigation involved the water found on the ropes. Orro and Akemi worked together to gather water samples from both the rope and the Yakuza family’s construction sites, hoping that they had a match. After investigating though, it was found that not only did they not match, but that the water found on the ropes was saltwater, and could not be found anywhere within a twenty-mile radius. After a long night of investigating sites, looking over forensics, and talking to Cthulu experts, the group learned a few things: 1) the secretary had recently taken a strange lamp from a construction site outside town, where a strange temple had been found by the construction company. 2) Everyone connected with this lamp had died in similar accidents that had been covered up, likely by the Yakuza family (save for the professor) 3) the secretary no longer had the lamp by the time he was killed 4) the water on the ropes had most likely come from the fish tank in the construction company’s president’s office.