Session 1: Ignition

It's All Happening Tonight...

Summer 2025
To many mortals, the Valley of the Sun is a sun-bleached hellscape that only gets hotter every year. It's a nearly neat grid of intercrossing streets that cars brazenly race down every day, where engines and spoilers roar and crackle as cars of all makes and models tear down its streets.

Night belongs to whatever chill can be mustered in the air and the Dead.

A Convent of the Dead claims Dominion here. They hold midnight masses that pervade the Christian religion. They proselytize to the desperate Dead who've lost their Passions. They persecute the heretic "pagans" out in Glendale and Tempe. They are the Transubstantives who claim that Undeath is a return to life in a perfect, eternal form. That the blood of Christ flows through their veins, and as Christ suffered for humanity, so too must they suffer.

Phoenix is a bloated thing, having amassed the continent's largest population of the Dead. Year-by-year, the Dead have fewer joys as the Convent curls its fingers around their throat, suffocating the Dead. As the Dead tear up the streets in a growing scene for Deadraces, the Convent conspires to suffocate the Passion out of this as well...

Ally
A moment sits, ugly and uncalled for, as the room stills. Bursting into the room were a handful of them, the four of them in laughable cosplay: they wore tunics and hoods and cowls, drab and brown things that practically looked fresh out of a bag of Halloween costumes. One of them even had a bell that they were raising to ring when Ally shouted:

"Tch… Fucking Transubstantives!"

That's when the tension in the room shifted. Standing all around Ally are some of the Valley's most vocal dissenters. One of them—introduced to Ally as Leland—reaches over to grab an empty bottle out of a friend's hand. Other hand cuffed on one side of his mouth, he shouts over the heads of everyone else, "Fa-fa-fuckin' losers! Fuckin' BOOOOO!"

The bottle goes sailing through the air but Leland doesn't stay to see if it actually hits someone. Instead, he turns towards Ally, grabbing her by the wrist and begins cackling as he tries to lead her the other way, out the back. His hair, wild and long and all so very green, flows behind him; for a moment, this one pretty and sweet, the lighting catches the glitter on his face just right...

Perkele
How is it this late at night and still so fucking hot. Perkele rises to find his limbs are stiff and leaden, and would find that his coffin seems all too tempting a place to just lay one's head down should Perkele dare to look.

Thessa
The blood, warm and sweet, fills you the way few other Passions ever could. The truck can, indeed, take the Passion, as she initially tries to thrash about, the brunette's scream stuck as a lump in her throat, never to come pouring out save as a little whimper. Jenny

Ally
It isn't much of a view, not this late at night. The midrise apartment building sits just outside the northern edge of downtown with an impressive view of the I-10. The heat of the day has barely chilled, but there's a cold there for those who want it.

Leland rolls his neck, nonchalant like, eyes gleaming with the full moon. He is like you but different. He's what the Dead would call a werewolf—vampires with a reputation problem—and he looks ready to explode, his Pulse so damn high. "Pft., where at the start of a good night," he says, craning his head back to look up at Mother Luna, "A very, very goodnight. Let's go!"

And so he dashes forward and begins scaling the wall down. Later, as rubber hits road, you'll remember telling him about the Deadraces, about he how he'd only just heard about it and got a ride of his own...word is, there's a race tonight. The biggest one yet. He'll wonder out loud that it wouldn't at all be surprising to hear that a werewolf was behind it.

Paint the Town Red

A crowd musters brazenly in a lot off of E. Thunderbird Rd. Dozens have gathered tonight, mostly the Dead but there are plenty of mortals as well. At its center are a small line of cars where small huddles form around to check everyone's ride, the riders themselves the center of their own little world.

Nearly a dozen riders are here outside of your racing circle, but there are only three riders that people are sure to blow the rest of the water:

Wrencher, a Dead his forties who leans coolly against his red '70s Mustang Boss 429, one arm around another man pressed up against him and his freehand absently playing with his butterfly knife.

A little ways down in her own world is a younger Dead by the name of Echo who works both the crowd and last minute checks on her engine for her gunmetal Silverado, perhaps the newest ride on the lot by far.

Last but not least is a rider clad all in black, helmed with their heavily tinted visor brought all the way down. No one knows who this rider is, but they've been decimating the competition these last few races in their clearly supped up black hearse with the green under glow. Some call them the Black Rider, others the Reaper. Despite the allure, people keep their distance from this so-called Reaper who stands stock just waiting on the edge of this whole affair.

The mood in the crowd shifts and so too do the bodies, a school of fish being ushered along as a new ride enters: a black Lincoln Navigator rolls in slowly, a shark in the water. Out of the back of the car steps a person who immediately fills the scene with a swagger not yet seen tonight; they look the type that some might call a trend setter. The crowd goes quiet; it's clear the locals know the person.

"Are we ready?" they ask, hardly projecting their voice but the crowd roars anyways. Patiently, they wait for the whooping and hollering to quiet. "Tonight is going to be the biggest race we've had yet and, darlings, when I tell you that they are going to hear it tonight I mean it." Once more the crowd erupts, some yelling their feverish agreement. The mortals among them are equally as charged, though one might wonder how much they actually know. "We race in ten. Our longest one yet, from here all the way down Thunderbird until we hit Sun City Church and blow the roof off these streets," their voice continues to build as the excitement begins hitting a crescendo, "Tonight, there are no rules but one: you stay on Thunderbird. You trail off for any reason and you're out. Racers, I'll see you at the finish line!"

A pair of drones are deployed over head from the back of the Lincoln. They swivel this way and that, taking in the crowd and then zipping away to make a stop at each and every racer's ride. The person, whomever they are, lingers a bit near their car, almost immediately enveloped by a small entourage.

"We'll have to chat more after the race, honey," the person says, cupping a racer's chin (one of the many other racers not expected to pull out a win). They do a lazy impression of a wave that a model at a beauty pageant might do with the crowd, looking from left to right while proffering luck and good race and all that jazz when, finally, they spy Thesse heads-and-shoulders over the crowd.

They pull down their glasses to the tip of their nose, other hand on hip. A soft invite. Their body says, "You're interesting what do you have to say?" and yet the slight turn of their body toward the door would also add, "If you have something to say, make it quick."

The crowd surges to one side as car-after-car drives off the lot onto Thunderbird. At this time of night, at this corner of the long road that spans the width of Phoenix and some of its suburbs, the roads are light with traffic. An unsuspecting cab cross the finish line, never to know how close to death they drove.

Cars line up three across, and your coterie makes up the very back line making the initial start against the odds for anyone not trying to run some fucker off the road.

It is a pair of people who come out to stand amid the cars. They each carry bright, colorful pom-poms. The two mortals give the cars a cursory scan, look to one another...and then dip their heads and wave their pom-poms and we're off to the races.

Cars tear down the corridor, a solid third already breaking ahead of the rest of the pack while the rest jockey to maintain control. (Against the Odds for anyone rolling +Duplicity or Allure).

The race started with a clear split between those who live to ride and those who ride to die (again), much to the party's chagrin. The languid movements of the slower racers suffocated the race for the first few miles.

Perkele jostles one rider in particular to the side: a forest green 2001 RX-7 FD with a driver who was just breaking away from the pack. The car gets nudged into a spin that even Perkele might not have been expected where it swerves left and firmly off into a patch of desert, disqualifying its pink haired driver off. The last thing Perkele's sees of this driver in his rear-view is a woman stepping out and waving the bird at him before other drivers sneak up.

This includes one Thessa. For several miles Perkele and Thessa ride neck-and-neck, peeling incrementally away from the all the other racers. Ally on the other hand finds herself at the head of these deadweights, but never quite able to get an edge over them.

---

The race moves on and everyone tears down the road. About halfway through—when Thunderbird East becomes West—a sleepy cop sits at the intersection, watching the fastest racers tear through without a concern in the world. Instead, he bites into his donut and mindlessly scrolls through the latest conspiracy news when a figure darkens his window. He lowers it, makes to ask if there's a problem but as he stares into piercing eyes his own grow milky and white and a dark, ugly thing fills his heart.

A minute later, as the back-half of the racers tear through, the cop radios the race in, flips on his sirens, and joins the revelry down Thunderbird...

---

This is it. Ten more glorious miles between you and life. Perkele and Thessa can even see the taillights of the racers up head—it seems that the Black Rider takes up the rear of the top three racers and its on your approach that you realize that the hearse is skimming along air itself, making seemingly impossible weaves through the heavier traffic to close the distance. The effect of powerful sorcery to be sure.

There is a shift but this one not of gears. A quarter mile behind Perkele and Thessa is a large semitruck ramming through cars like a homing missile as it barrels towards our racers.Meanwhile, chaos reigns in the remainder of the back of the pack. Ally has managed to secure a firm lead among the three remaining drivers. An orange Hyundai a dozen feet behind rolls down its passenger window and a person with armed with...something, it's wholly unclear but it does seem vaguely gun shape. They level it on Ally's ride and a moment before it could be used, lights of red and blue arrive on scene. The Hyundai swerve, their posture hesitating as an argument erupts between passenger and driver. One of the other racers peels off Thunderbird wanting nothing to do with this.

Four. Four cops have joined the race but they do not aim to win. They'll overtake the driver in the back, and maybe even catchup with the orange Hyundai, but Ally? Unclear.

There is a pulse, faint but electric, though you do not feel it in your undead hearts. You feel it in the vibration of your rides, that charge that dances across your skins raising hairs, beating against your chest even when your heart does not.

Like twin dancers, Perkele and Thessa navigate through the traffic with ease. Car horns blare and the only pedestrian on Thunderbird at this hour is nearly struck while a car veers into a gas station lot.

He stumbles out into the street, damns the driver, damns the racers, and screams, "You nearly killed m—" before the semi runs him down.

The semi with its cab wrapped as an irridescent pearl, now marred with flesh blood. The semi with its windows so tinted as to be nearly blackout. The semi that barrels down on Black Rider who swerves out and off Thunderbird to avoid being fishtailed.

The semi which now hounds Thessa. But Thessa is her own stampede. As cars cut left, veer right, or get absolutely winged by the semi's unrelenting drive forward, the large hauler somehow gains on Thessa...

Just before her racing beast rolls onto the turn, Thessa swerves to the side, cranks the handbrake to full and begins to drift, trying to make the turn, hoping to have enough room to avoid the truck and make it drive off the road.

And off road it goes, shrieking into the night skies as it jumps a curb and rolls at nearly full speed toward a building. Thessa continues her peel as West Thunderbird becomes North Thunderbird, Perkele not too far ahead and Ally not too far behind. She can even make out Black Rider and the other top two racers: Wrencher and Echo are neck-and-neck...the Sun City church, the finish line, not too far beyond them.