Brown: Calabite of Nightmares, Freedom Foundation Security Chief.
Dmitri, Mercurian of Creation in Service to Wind: PC.
Gerar, Malakite of the Sword: PC.
Heliotrope, Lilim of Technology: Negotiator on Vapula's payroll.
Jamin, Seraph of the Wind: Newly Redeemed Balseraph of Death
Janus, AKA Atlas Smurf: Big Blue Guy.
Laurence, AKA The Authority Maniac: Tasty Malakite Archangel.
Nazareth & Pentapolis: Artificial Demonic Life Forms.
Tryphosa, Cherub of the Sword: Seneschal.
Unnamed Others.
Dmitri: a dashing, stylish Mercurian with Eli's Malakite Attunement and an
invulnerable umbrella.
Gerar: a fairly straightforward Malakite sworn to give challenge before
making an attack and never to lie for his own sake only.
Jamie: the goofy sidekick, a rollerblading Seraph whose preferred weapon is
the quarterstaff. It's a good thing he Redeemed, because he would never
have made it in Hell.
Janus appears and commandeers Dmitri's mochaccino in the name of the Lord. He then explains that Laurence has proposed a collaboration, one of his Malakim with several of Janus' Servitors. This offers Janus' Servitors the opportunity to subvert one of Laurence's order freaks to the True Way. Accordingly, Dmitri is now partnered with said Malakite, Gerar, and a recently Redeemed Seraph, Jamin. Dmitri is, naturally, in charge.
Laurence appears and gives Gerar his assignment and briefing folder, including a description of this collaboration. Gerar is, naturally, in charge.
The first mission - a kind of test run for the partnership - is to humiliate a Lilim Knight of Technology named Heliotrope. In essence, her job is to present Jean with information on new Vapulan technologies and determine his price for Vapula's suppressing them. Every year, she puts on a show - the "Pageant of Wonder" - in which she sells unsuppressed technology to mortal buyers. Heliotrope is a sharp negotiator, and Heaven would rather some other demon had her job. The goal is to ruin the Pageant's reputation and humiliate Heliotrope personally before her Superior; then she will be replaced. Killing her, or her associates, would be counterproductive - so Gerar is ordered to do so only if it does not interfere with the mission.
The Captain of Security for the affair is a Calabite Servitor of Nightmares named Brown, Geased into general service of the Lilim at the neighboring Freedom Tether - where Heliotrope and other Hellish negotiators work. He is considered extremely dangerous, and Laurence suggests that he not be challenged unless the PCs are able to bring overwhelming force to bear as soon as Brown cheats. This ends the Superiors portion of our story.
Gerar insists that Heliotrope be challenged before any action be taken against her. After some discussion, he compromises slightly: Dmitri may cobble together a note, in French, from newspaper or book clippings, and pass it under her door.
Dmitri and Jamie go off to find a bookstore, and hit Infernal Intervention on the very first roll of the game. 9 hours later, they finally give up - while it is logically certain that there is a bookstore in the ten-story mall they have been searching, they cannot find it by any means.
Gerar goes off and buys tools for sabotaging technological devices. The three meet up again at 8am at the Cat's Eye coffeeshop. They then head into the hotel across the street where the Pageant will be held.
Dmitri goes up to deliver the challenge, using clippings from a newspaper purchased at the coffeeshop. Heliotrope's room is easy to find, and the door of the room next to it is slightly ajar. Dmitri pushes it a little further open, and a robotic voice orders him to halt and move away from the door. (This is Nazareth, an android of Technology.) The door swings back to "mostly shut." Dmitri decides to deliver the challenge as a paper airplane, through the door. Because the airplane will not leave the room, Nazareth shoots it several times, and it dies a noble death. Dmitri reports the challenge as having been delivered.
Dmitri, for some reason, attempts to convince the hotel that his horse is missing. Gerar, whose lockpicking skill simply does not live up to the number on his sheet, fails to get into the display room. They go to the coffeeshop for a few hours, and return when the Pageant is officially underway. The PCs buy into the event, Gerar borrowing money from Dmitri, and get schedules.
Jamin steals a "blind spot" cloak that renders its wearer invisible and blind. Then he blunders around a good deal before pitching over the second-floor balcony into the lobby fountain. The PCs observe that the staff-person overseeing the Blind Spot display is a Djinn, because he can keep accurate track of the invisible Jamie.
Dmitri asks V-Law, a computerized system for legal advice, what to do about his lost horse. It explains to him how to make the federal government replace his lost horse. Gerar then rigs the system to understand all input as random garbage. This does not deter the lawyer-in-a-box, but it does render the system's responses less relevant.
Dmitri rigs the cage for some genetically altered mice to open and let them escape when it is moved. He also gets into an argument with the man at that display over whether evolution should be hurried.
Gerar goes to Jamie's rescue, drags him into the men's room (still invisible and blind) and, thanks to a Divine Intervention, they discover that the Blind Spot cloaks don't work when torn. A guard walks in; Gerar convinces the guard that he had nothing to do with this, gets around behind him, and warns him that Jamie "might have allies." This, he tells himself, will do for the challenge that he is oath-obligated to make. He then brains the guard with a metal stick until the guard is unconscious.
The PCs spot Heliotrope and her security captain Brown. Brown notices the PCs noticing him, and they exchange informational resonance/Attunement uses - Brown discovers that the thing that scares Dmitri the most is bad hair, and Dmitri discovers that Brown is utter scum. Then the PCs listen to Heliotrope's opening remarks.
Gerar, being sneaky, takes the long way around back to the display room, and winds up on the fourth floor, where Brown is lounging. Gerar cannot resist; he challenges Brown to a fight. (Yes, Laurence advised/ordered against this kind of thing - but, since it's the first session, the GM settled on "advised.")
There is the obligatory fight scene. Gerar lunges twice with his rapier, missing Brown, while Brown dodges and looks amused. Gerar manages, finally, to tear Brown's jacket, and Brown snarls off a Song. Gerar resists. Gerar manages a lucky blow, and pierces Brown's chest; Brown gets very unhappy and resonances Gerar's rapier into tiny pieces. Then he snarls off another Song, which fails. There is some more fencing. Brown gets off a Celestial Charm, with a stellar check digit of 1. Surprisingly enough, this is useful when he gets off a Celestial Entropy in the next round.
Jamie, fortuitously, heard the rapier's destruction in the Symphony. Jamie and Dmitri arrive in time to stop the Malakite from getting completely killed. Then there is some more fencing, in which people miss each other a lot.
Nazareth and Pentapolis leave Brown's room, with rapiers in hand, and demand that the PCs halt. Then Pentapolis pauses to get rid of a solicitor calling her cell phone. Meanwhile, Jamie, who uses rollerblades as his standard method of transportation, rolls around behind Pentapolis and wraps his arms around her. Despite her great strength, he restrains her long enough for Dmitri to bludgeon the Calabite into unconsciousness with improvised weaponry.
Nazareth picks Gerar up and throws him over the balcony into the lobby fountain. (It's really the most natural place for anyone thrown over a balcony in this hotel to land.) Pentapolis breaks Jamie's ribs and gets away from him. Guards pour out of the elevator. Dmitri shoots the Calabite a couple of times with his own gun and then vaults over the edge, swinging to the floor below. Jamie tries the same, and winds up in the fountain again. Dmitri athletically swings down to the second floor, and then flops awkwardly into the lobby. Fortunately, thanks to Ethereal Harmony, the guards can be persuaded to let them go. Once Gerar stops hallucinating, they flee.
Dmitri steps in front of a cab and gets the three a ride before the guards, who recover pretty quickly, can shoot them down. (Odd, given that they're just security and not cops.) Then they go to the Laurentine Tether and get healed up.