The Murder at Clive & Koontz

Criminal Activity

Drug Kingpin Ivory sets his master plan into motion, killing an APD informant, recruiting a werewolf gang and putting the heroes in grave danger.

Apollo City's drug kingpin, Ivory, is visited by a female werewolf named Kabula in a run-down apartment building on the corner of Clive and Koontz in the Old Town District. After greeting the goblin landlord at the front desk, Uloth, Kabula makes her intentions clear about wanting to purchase some Stars capsules. Initially disgusted with yet another stargazing junkie wanting to get a quick fix in the drug den, Uloth directs Kabula to head to the 5th floor to make the exchange, pushing past a few of Ivory's guards to get there. Once face to face, Ivory expresses his doubts that Kabula is legitimate, something further cemented when she not only asks for four-thousand dollars worth of product but a potential partnership as well. To test her resolve, he orders her to take one of the Stars capsules in front of him and kill Uloth, suspicious that he may actually be an APD informant who was planted to incriminate him.   Though hesitant, Kabula understood his train of thought and obliged, transforming into her ferocious feral form. She descended to the lobby and called out to Uloth, who then revealed an APD radio he had been transmitting information through. While his body was being ripped to shreds between Kabula's jowls, he pulled the fire alarm and brought the APD racing to take down Kabula and Ivory. The Black Shields were the first to arrive, kicking down the apartment doors, arresting loitering addicts and homeless squatters while trying to rain bullets down on the werewolf Kabula. Unfortunately, with the boost of the Stars drug, Kabula was able to make a quick escape before she was mortally wounded. The scene quickly brought the attention of Old Town's creature population, who had been clashing with the APD after the disappearance of their previous ruler. This soon escalated to impromptu protests and rising tension between the creatures and the Black Shields.    Spider-Gwen, Augustus and special White Shield Hank R. Hill soon arrived at the crime scene to help with the investigation and de-escalation. Red Shield Detective Gherri and Detective Marshall arrived soon after, being cleared by the Black Shields and introduced to Apollo's heroes for the first time. While the fleeing addicts were apprehended by the Black Shields, the Red Shield detectives were informed that they should sweep the building in case of people hiding and potential accomplices to Uloth's murder. While Augustus, Detective Sarah Winters and Detective Gherri interviewed the recently departed spirit of Informant Uloth through spiritual summoning, Spider-Gwen and Detective Marshall inspected each floor in search of clues and potential accomplices. The latter pair eventually reached the fifth floor where the source of a strange, repetitive creak was sourced to a drow mother cradling her infant child. Although Detective Marshall tried to reason with the mother to leave the building with them, it was revealed that the infant, suffering from a debilitating birth defect, had been given Stars by the mother.    As a result of a rare but dangerous side effect of infant Stars usage, the child self-destructed, destroying the entire fifth floor. Concurrently, a werewolf with ties to Kabula used the protestors as cover to try and murder the Black Shields in a surprise attack. However, even with its caustic, pus-like blood, the Black Shields were able to overwhelm it with their own steroid-empowered strength and borderline psychotic determination. Edsel, a healer who was pulled into the Archipelago on the cusp of the two incidents, quickly rushed past the chaos to try and help who he could, eventually meeting with Augustus, Detective Winters, Detective Gherri and Gwen on the 4th floor. Both Gwen and Detective Marshalls were surrounded by debris, the latter passing out after mentioning to Gwen something he saw that could have implicated that someone escaped just before they got there. While the Black Shields opted to use shots of epinephrine from the Lifeline forces who arrived on the scene with the dispersing force of the White Shields just behind, Detective Marshall was kept alive and in critical condition thanks to Detective Winters, Edsel and Augustus' last-minute intervention.   The following day, Gwen, Augustus, Sakuya and Nick Acer re-visited the apartment building in search of potential clues only to come across an inebriated homeless dwarf named Doogan. After pulling him out of the alleyway dumpster he had gotten himself stuck in, Gwen began interrogating him once he muttered descriptors that matched up with the criminal Ivory. After a short back and forth, Doogan gave the heroes the slip by riding one of the large dumpsters through the alleyways and side streets like a go-kart. The heroes gave chase, dodging everything he could throw at them from massive dildos to werewolf droppings, eventually forcing the dwarf, and the co-pilot Sakuya, to crash into a car being driven by a family of Nagas. With the family safe and Doogan ending up wedged halfway into a nearby mailbox, as well as facing the untimely pressure of impending Taco Bell diarrhea, Doogan spilled his secrets to the heroes. He informed them that he was there the night of the murder, having watched Ivory and some of his henchmen leave through the back alley windows and make a hasty retreat toward the abandoned Monster Mash Theater.