Who let the frogs out? (OOC)

How? You have not convinced her to take meaningful action for your Dark Parton.

Remember the specific wording:
You need to convince them and they need to do something meaningful for your Dark Patron, though they don't need to be conscious of this. Viv has done nothing for them.
A step you are taking, Viv is being led, she is not taking any action that furthers your Dark Patron's interests.
Viv is the goal. I would not think that her signing the contract would even count, but we may need to look at that when that happens. Anything Viv does after that would be of her own volition... unless you are the one convincing her to act?
I don't think you are supposed to get Corruption for doing your Jobs, but also remember that not all the available jobs involve getting people to do anything, so that may be a quirk of one of the Jobs you chose?

But I don't think getting someone to sign a contract counts as getting someone to meaningfully act in your patron's interests.

When your 'investor' convinced your business partners to scam you out of all your money so you were desperate enough to sign on with them ... that was them getting someone to act meaningfully on your Dark Parton's behalf, they got Corruption for that...

Wait, was that a secret? Oops.

Getting you to sign was the Job, that does not feel like it would count for their Corruption. (Morally the Jobs should Corrupt you... but what does and does not Corrupt is a bit weird in the rules, so we follow the rules.)
We can assume 'basic demonic stuff'. It wants souls, and it wants workers manipulated into working for it... It's a demon.

It also sent you to London because of the current events with the weather and apparently the faeries, so we can assume Viv has some specific value in that regard. But you don't know if it would want you to combat or aid the faeries... we shall have to see how it plays out.
Um... yeah? If you choose not to engage with a major aspect of your Playbook, then that part is not going to see much play.

We would need to talk about what you could still do, in that case. If you don't do the Jobs then your Dark Patron will not keep providing for you... at a minimum, you would need to change Playbooks, presumably, or pay the price.

The game does not work well if we choose to avoid major parts of the Playbooks, though.
As suggested: Don't tell Emma. Maybe also don't tell Circe? You may have to suffer alone?

If Emma ever finds out and has a problem we will need to deal with it, but I do expect the players to do their best to make the characters work, so Emma would either need to find a way to work with her distaste or get excluded from what is happening, but it is also your responsibility to keep secret from your friends that which your friends can't cope with knowing.

Finish the Job. Your Dark Patron may be becoming impatient. Persephone, maybe, got the impression that something almost stepped in and took over this morning, and only her own will kept things in her own hands? If she does not act, someone else might end up finishing the Job and she may lose face?

I wasn't here for that so take this with a grain of salt, but that sounds like something that could be potentially game-breaking and should be addressed.

Ok as @vagueGM and @Delirium have suggested, Pers will finish the job, but yeah — she’s gonna keep it to herself. She tried sharing and it did not go well all around. Well, except with Viv, who was into it? I’m guessing my Patron had access to her browsing history and figured this pairing would world for just that reason…

And yeah, I don’t plan to avoid half the playbook! I just don’t want to generate any game-breaking conflict between pers and Emma, but I’ll trust @Delirium not to kill the game because I am playing the Jobs part of my playbook.

Given that they are expert at manipulation, I have been working under the assumption that you are perfectly suited to do this Job. Collecting Winter's soul may have been as a lesson or punishment, anyone could have done that —though maybe not as well— but bringing in new people is important, and you don't get a second chance, so you may have been carefully selected.

Possibly we should not have ignored the rules that set it at 'a block or two'... but having a slightly diluted level of control over a larger neighbourhood —and needing more wolves to control it— seems an interesting way to go.
Do you have a network of 'soldiers' already? People you worked with in the past as a drug dealer, maybe?
So far that has not happened. We almost did twice, but the timing was never right. So I would not bargain on it, we may have to find a way for you to turn more wolves in the timeframe we have. It is an exponential growth curve, so you can start small and it can, very quickly, get out of hand... both in terms of numbers and in terms of control.

Yes, people she's worked with in the past and people she works with currently. As established before she's in control of the drug trade in her territory... or at least she's taking steps to consolidate her control. Given that 'crime' is still one of her territories troubles I don't think it would be fair to state that her control is absolute, but she's definitely actively attempting to expand her organization and either drive out other criminals or bring them under heel.

Yeah, Jacob was a previous PC (the Imp). He left Benji the raven to look after (the raven was part of the loophole Jacob used to escape hell and is secretly a transformed faerie knight, although Benji doesn’t know that). Jacob also owned a bookshop near Yasmine’s and a magical pond suddenly appeared in the middle of it after Jacob ‘left the city’. Benji rescued a frog from the pond (not wanting it to be trapped inside where it might starve) and took it to St James Park. He didn’t know the frog had anything to do with the fae at the time.

This is an odd plot! (that's not a criticism, mind you)

Hey, don't look at me! I didn't bring the frogs into it. :)

Jacob ended up in faerie-land by Escaping a Situation (caught red-handed breaking and entering) though a magic door [ref].

The location they escaped from (also not chosen by me:) looked like this: [streetview], which put them in faerie-land.

They came back through a portal in the form of a pond, but rolled a 1... so the pond-portal remains in Jacob's shop/sanctuary ... along with its connection to faerie.

We lost Jacob (busy player) at the same time, so Benji took over management.

Benji then decided to take a frog from the faerie pond and deposit it in the ecosystem at St James Park. And here we are.
Nope. He just likes animals.
Somehow I doubt that is the entirety of their plan. Maybe frogs are larval their forms? Maybe they are just frogs... but from faerie? Maybe... I don't know, I just work here...

From what we have seen about the faeries:

• We know the rain is somehow benefiting them. [origin]
• This might be to do with people's emotional state?
• We know that water is sometimes a medium for moving from one world to another.
• Maybe the rain is to help them come through?
• We don't know their intent.
• Some think they are a threat. (Mainly those in power?)
• Some think they are here to save us. (Possibly delusional hippy-types?)
• We don't know what the other members of Wild think, they are alien and hard to understand.

Cool. You can tell us about them, whenever they come up or are relevant.

If they know about the supernatural (in a significant way) they may be Mortalis, else they are mere mortals. If any are Mortalis then you can use Moves and Debts and such with them.
Well, as established, she is only partially 'in control', there is also, at least, Jack the Merc [ref] as competition.
And do we think turning them into wolves is part of that 'bringing them to heel'? Is that voluntary or forced-conscription? (You were not given a choice, after all.)

When you think Max would take the steps, we can work on giving you scenes where you can try turning people.

One wonders about Circe, the werewolf groupie...

Does Benji mention the prisoners, or the 'hunters' he has agreed to take down there?

If it comes up Max may have heard about missing people, or might even know about Frank and Ernie.

We might want to have Persephone realise she can't actually protect herself... and do that before she goes down there and needs to. She needs to make amends with her Dark Patron before she can get her abilities back.

He will if the conversation does not move on too quickly! I was trying to avoid info-dumping too much because there was a lot to say and respond to.

110%!! She's just mouthing off. I mostly was pleased with myself for coming up with 'scaredy-drac' lol

Also, feel free to turn Circe if you wish, Max/ @morphling ! It could be fun. We could kinda share her as an NPC.

Also, does Benji *know* the puddle in the bookstore is a portal?

Oh obviously he doesn't. (adding this correction here rather than editing)