Scars of Pyrrhic Domination

Scars Of Pyrrhic Domination is a storyline in the Venator universe, set 8 years after "Power of the Purple Flame" and 9 years before Once More Unto The Breach. It focuses on a young band of vigilantes who find themselves caught between the rebirth of the Blackbloods and the fading relevance of the Argonauts, with both sides asking for the group's allegiance and help.

## Chapter 1: Claw and Cordial

### Episode 1: Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls

It is August 14th, 2086. The group, sans Blair, leave to watch over their neighborhood, apprehending an unknown stalker in an alley. After beating him to near death, the police arrive and finish off the stalker as well as Samhain MacGorman. The group are apprehended and escorted to a jail, which is eventually breached and they are broken out, waking up the next day in the Argonaut base. They are met by Victor Moore, who is interested in taking in the group after expressing regrets of the loss of their friend. The group is then sent, by Tiger Eye, to the old Blackblood base in Manhattan through the sewers to retrieve Blackblood developed technology. While there, they encounter Blackblood-clad thugs who were seemingly sent by "AL" to halt them from entering the base.

### Episode 2: Benign Minds of the Hive

The group leaves the Blackblood base and returns to the Argonauts', where they are reunited with Blair. The group, knowing their seeming safety at the base, looks around the place and gets to know some people before heading to bed. The next morning, they are escorted to the main control room where the five have their criminal records wiped, as a quid pro quo to their retrieval of weaponry at the Blackblood base. There, they learn about two new occurences they should be interested in, first being a local bodega owner named Lewi Tiumalu who expresses confusion over his stolen supplies of incense. They meet Lewi, and they make a deal to steal more incense for him. The second situation regards a Cybertheist temple in Midwood, which, at the anecdote of Rabbi William Shirrf, a rabbi in a synagogue down the road, has been the site of both suspicious and disturbing activity, with seemingly dissociated people walking in and out at night, as well as strange lights emitting from the windows. The gang meets with Shirrf and learns this information, to which prompts them to investigate the temple. They're led in where they meet some key people running the temple, such as head Tome Korsten Blumgren, his sister Natasja, and another co-leader Miriam Starkaðsson. They investigate around the congregation of cyborgs and band of bots to find in a backroom where they find evidence of a supposed terrorist attack the members of the temple are planning. Korsten quickly learns of their new knowledge, and bars them from leaving. The five are subjugated by cybernetic TK waves and planned to be sacrificed to a mysterious apparition of a woman. Suddenly, the Argonauts bust through the front door after many failed attempts and stop the ritual. This is not before the five are drugged and temporarily lose a sense of reality before they are knocked out. They all wake up in the infirmary in the Argonaut base, where they are told it has been two days since they were knocked out. They were all fine, but Claude needed urgent brain surgery due to cocaine and alcohol being in his system when the drugs took effect. And as for Blair, he needed to be kept under because he suffered an internal brain injury. The gang packs their things together and heads to the barracks to wind down and go to bed.

## Interludes

Several short stories are presented between the chapters of Scars of Pyrrhic Domination to present context and background for the protagonists.