So it is Revealed

Sunday morning, June 22

Ebony, Sledge, and Theo revisited the pumping station, again, to see if they had missed anything.

But rather than it being deserted, they were surprised to see lights, and men in fluorescent overalls and hard-hats. These fellows were scrubbing things down and cleaning. When confronted, they grimly said nothing; closed-mouthed

Ebony phoned Ms Charleston, Oberon's PA. She said that these men were "Oberon's Cleaners" and that they were sent to clean the area of any "detritus and things suspicious". She offered to phone them to tell them to wait until the party had retrieved what they wanted. This was agreed.

The cleaners had not yet got as far as cleaning the ghoul quarters room, so the party checked there. Sure enough, they did find some more things; personal items. They bagged them up and took them back to Oberon's offices (upstairs above the Khyber Pass Bar & Grill) to Cello.

Cello cast her Locate Soul spell using each item, and got a reasonably accurate location as to where the two of the ghouls were.

The party met Mort around that area of town, and they cruised the streets of the general vicinity.

The first ghoul spotted was Rolly Barton. He was in a bad stage, in advanced ghoul-withdrawal. They didn't get much info from him, but he did give them enough clues to spot Sarah.

Sarah was more lucid. She seemed very scared of Vladislav. In fact, he was her master. Rolly's master turned out to be Dimetrius.

Jake the Blade was the next ghoul spotted; he was the ghoul of Petra. And finally they found Binro; he was the ghoul of Marceline. Both Jake and Binro were quite lucid.

After a lot of questioning, the party worked out the whole sorry story: The skeletal mummy and mist had scared the four ghouls away (assumedly from its powerful Fear aura), and then when they finally got brave enough to creep back to the nest, they found that most of the vampires had been staked. So, fearing reprisal from their masters (after all, the protect of the vampire nest was the ghouls' raison d'tre), they fled. They obviously didn't think too far in advance, because they would have known that a ghoul without daily blood from its master starts to go into ghoul-withdrawal.

With some subtle coercion, Ebony managed to find out that Sarah actually had one of the missing security tapes on her person. The party got it off her with promises of forgiveness from her master. The other nine tapes had been hidden away "in a secret location". None of the lucid ghouls would reveal where. Rolly didn't know.

Ebony managed to surreptitiously attach a GPS tracker pin to Binro's clothes. Then they showed Binro Sarah's tape and claimed that Sarah had told them where the rest of the tapes were.

Binro got worried and took off. So Ebony and Mort followed him with the GPS pin. He arrived at the Penitentiary. And allegedly visited the Warden Candy Clam there. Was she involved in this?

While Mort and Ebony were following Binro, Sledge went to follow Jake the Blade. Even after being shown Sarah's tape he just went and drank with some other bums.

Sunday afternoon, June 22

They needed to check Sarah's tape. It was a miniature digital tape, so Jacob volunteered one of the tape-players in STRIKE FORCE HQ.

With only Jacob, Ebony, Sledge and Mort in Operations Room Four, Jacob started the tape.

The date and time read: 20140618 0800

Jacob fast-forwarded to the next day, and the next.
20140620 0814 The cameras were low-light sensitive. A grey figure, in high contrast, came into view, walking down the tunnel. He was carrying a large bundle of stakes. It was very clear who it was.

"Mort!" gasped Jacob.

Mort walked under the camera and out of view. Jacob fast-forwarded.

20140620 0935 The lone figure of Mort, this time his back to the camera, wandered back down the tunnel. He now had no stakes.

"Burn the tape!" squeaked Mort. "Erase it!"