THE STORY SO FAR:
SPOILER ALERT!
If you haven't read any of the epidsodes so far this season, these recaps give away plot details of past episodes.
(Ageless)Fifty-five years ago Wyshok Meen, a sweeper with the BCPD, helped in a case where a movie producer's son had gone missing. The investigation led to a strange body jumping case that involved a powerful magic relic called the Ring of Nahn Dal Ka which houses a soul after the wearer has died. The soul can then be inserted into another body. During this case Wyshok's former lover Frank Johnson introduces her to the head of the Big City Wizard's Guild, Hogarth. Several years later Frank and Hogarth would create an amicable moratorium on magic and Hogarth led the wizards, witches and sorcerers away to someplace called Ethedra. Within 10 years sweepers were dropped from the BCPD for budget reasons.
(Apheresis, Beguiled)Forty-eight years ago, on the day Robert "Smiles" Johnson was born, the first of many laws is enacted and the integration of Vampires into Big City society began. This law was due to years worth of work by Frank Johnson and Vampire ambassador Vzlass. Also the production of the synthetic blood subsitute, Medreth, begins. Several months later, as Hogarth was preparing to lead the sorcerers of the world away to a new destiny, he grants his friend Frank Johnson a request. Frank's newborn son, Robert becomes the focus of the last official magic ceremony in Big City. Hogarth performs the Ceremony of The Veil, which protects heroes going into battle. Wyshok Meen, her partner Kel and vampire Ambassador Vzlass are in attendance.
(Eight Years before AVATAR) Gina Johnson was abducted by mob boss Nick Manzetti. Both Manzetti and Gina went missing during a rescue attempt. It was apparent that Manzetti probably escaped, but a female body was found and never conclusively identified. Gina's brother Detective Sgt. Robert "Smiles" Johnson and her fiancee and Smiles' partner Sgt Adam "Stack Fury" Forray, found themselves on the losing end. After months of blind alleys and department ambivalence toward finding out the truth about Gina (whether or not she was alive), Smiles left the department, spent a while in a mental hospital and joined the private sector as a P.I. . Stack continued on the force and was paired with hothead John "Needless Action" D'yen. The two cleared away the rest of Manzetti's syndicate.
(Avatar) After years of silence, Manzetti returned in secret to Big City . In an attempt to rid the playing field of Stack, Manzetti hired shape shifting assassin Autumn to pose as a prison dentist and inserted a dangerous magic relic (The Skiv) into the crown of a convict with a grudge against Stack and Needless. During this battle a retired Wyshok Meen, who Smiles had brought in to help on the case, was killed. At her request Needless secreted the Skiv away to a secure location.
(Autumn)Several months later Manzetti convinced the city, Needless, Stack and the police department, that Needless was in fact a blood thirsty werewolf. Using a mole on the police department, he obtained tissue samples from Needless that Autumn (now posing as a werewolf) planted at crimes scenes, implicating Needless. Autumn then posed as a lycanthropic doctor who kept Needless under observation, only to torture him to the point of death. Shortly after this Manzetti revealed his presence to Stack and announced his intentions to take back the town.
(Arrow) After Stack solves a high profile, unrelated case Manzetti steps up their plans. He is dying and confides in his Wizard healer, Zahn, that he wishes to take care of business soon. He has new pictures of Gina Johnson, present day, alive and well that he has delivered to Smiles. Stack adopts the cat of a criminal he was chasing.
(Ambsace) Manzetti begins to move on a Siren prophet named Kalista Danae, whose destiny he has worked to guide since childhood. However, when kalista foretell's the death of a doctor close to Manzetti, Stack and Needless seem closer than ever to cornering him. Kalista, sensing that Manzetti's presence in her past is not a coinsidence, leaves town.
(Apheresis) They manage to capture a foot soldier in Manzetti's crew but are forced to put it on the back burner when the threat of a race riot approaches.
(Aperture) Kalista Danae, now on the run from Manzetti, dares a trip back to Big City to warn her former orphanage mate, Smiles' operative Charlie, that he is in danger. Based on images and feelings she got from a brief encounter with him, she asks him if the term MathTalker means anything to him. It doesn't. During a battle with an ancient Elf sect called the Elbum, Charlie accidentally comes in contact with the Skiv. The power of the Skiv attacks Charlie's mind. A thousand trapped memories, keys to his past, flood him and overwhelm him at once. He destroys the enemy and falls blind as Needless again recovers the Skiv.
(Atrocities) Manzetti is preparing to move into the final phases of his plan. He kidnaps Laura Medrano and dictates his life story to her. Upon completion he takes the recorded session and sends her back home, drugged. In the meantime, Autumn has assumed the form of Laura to throw the others off the trail. After a while she begins torturing Charlie, who is blind after the Skiv incident. Stack has been unable to focus on anything and is becoming more and more isolated because of his obsession with Manzetti. After nearly losing his life because of Stack's negligence, Needless confronts his partner and tells him that he's not sure he can continue to follow Stack on his crusade. A mole is still at large in the police department.
(Ascent) In an attempt to cure his blindness, Charlie undergoes exploratory surgery. The surgery goes wrong and an electrical current seems to unlock something in Charlie's mind that causes him to go insane. After months of study, Smiles has been able to derive some information from the pictures of Gina (with the help of techno-geek source, Sottie). Information indicates that she has some how become involved with the Mooghan Pod Dwellers, a religious sect that live out on the Flats. Before leaving town Smiles tells Needless that he has this information and is going out to find her. Needless goes to question Mest (from Apheresis) about the mole in the BCPD, he knows nothing. Breen has directed Needless to work without Stack to weed out the mole because Stack has been so unpredictable. When Stack is tipped off that Needless went to see Mest, he blows up. Out of spite, Needless doesn't tell Stack about Smiles and Gina. Laura, after a couple of months tending to Charlie, returns to work and is given her first assignment. To her horror she is slipped a note from Manzetti just before she witnesses a political assassination. At the same time Stack is contacted by Manzetti and told that if he doesn't follow directions Needless, Smiles, Charlie and Laura will be killed. Stack complies, but not before he slips a note to Greta in the Java Jalopy. Laura records her story about Manzetti being behind the assassination on her work voicemail to buy the cops some time and hold her editor off. Her editor uses the IT department to hack into Laura's voicemail and publishes the story. Needless goes to Stack's apartment to find him, but instead finds his cat and fish dead. Tim Carnaby tests the water and they find that Stack has been fed a steady stream of drugs, explaining his mood shifts and unpredictability. Stack arrives at his second marker, a car in the parking lot at the airport. The trunk contains a body and a bomb.
(Apex)While the airport garage bomb turns out to be a fake, it increases Stack's drug-caused disorientation as Manzetti sends him on the next mission. Greta finds Needless and gives him Stack's note. In the mean time Laura has stormed out of her boss' office, furious that she stole the story from Laura's voicemail. She puts in a visit to Smiles to find that he's gone and that the agency is heading toward financial ruin. Stack finds that the body in the car was Bureau agent Garret Spencer and he is directed to go to Spencer's storage locker and retrieve his file. Smiles, going on information from the Mooghan's goes to Thrombis to track down Gina. To get information Smiles starts a "respect earning" bar fight that leads to a conversation with a money grubbing geologist who knows where Gina is camping out. Needless and Breen put forth a plot to catch the police mole. At Spencer'storage locker Stack finds evidence that Spencer knew of Manzetti's whereabouts and had been following Stack and Gina years before. The images of Gina finally push Stack to the edge. Manzetti calls and invites Stack to the warehouse to finish it all. Laura visits Charlie in the hospital but she still cannot get through to him. After she leaves Charlie goes to the bathroom and comes face to face with the The Watcher. The Watcher grips Charlie's head and corrects whatever has broken. The Watcher then vanishes leaving Charlie on the floor. Needless and Breen's plan works and Callisto confesses to working for Manzetti and reveals that Manzetti is pushing Stack into killing him. Relying on gut instinct Needless races to the warehouse where Gina disappeared but he is too late. Stack has shot and killed Manzetti. When Needless revelas that Gina more than likely did not die in the warehouse, and that he knew earlier that day, Stack punches Needless and tells him to do his job. Needless arrests Stack for Manzetti's murder. Out on the flats, Smiles finally tracks down Gina who is living in a cave. Smiles is horrified as Gina's face changes into Autumn, who shoots him and collapses the cave entrance, trapping him inside.
(Beguiled) Smiles survives his own death because of the Ceremony of The Veil. At the moment of his death he was transported to Hogarth. Smiles and Hogarth discuss the Skiv and Hogarth reveals that his son Zahn stole it and left Ethedra. Smiles determines that Zahn is working with Manzetti and the two return to Big City. Because the sorcerers' world, Ethedra, exists on a different plane of existence, it has been three months since the warehouse shooting. It is the night before Stack's trial begins. Needless and Charlie have been working to prove Stack's innocence. Charlie, unable to find Smiles, has taken over the agency. Laura gets approached by Wyshok Meen's former partner, Kel, who reveals the story of the Ring of Nahn Dal Ka and that he believes that Manzetti is still alive. Manzetti, Slith and Zahn have taken up residence in the old Wizard Guild compound. Manzetti has gone slightly mad since jumping from the ring into the body of Treden Vost. He fears nothing and attends Stack's trial. Once Smiles, Hogarth, Kel and the others have a chance to pull together an idea of what Manzetti did, they, along with Dennis Breen, set about arresting Manzetti. Slith, fearing that Manzetti's madness will spell doom for them all sells him out to The Bureau. The group makes its move on Manzetti outside of Stack's trial. Hogarth subdues Zahn and gets the ring away from Manzetti. Just as they are about the arrest Manzetti, The Bureau shows up and takes him away. As they are driving Manzetti away, Kel rams the car with a garbage truck and exacts his revenge on Manzetti for causing the events that killed Wyshok (Avatar) by shooting Manzetti.
(Bane)Since his miraculous recovery from madness (Apex) Charlie has been seeing psychologist Dr. Glau. Charlie finally reveals to Glau that, while ecstatic that Smiles is alive and has come back, he had started to enjoy running the show. He is reluctant to return to the role of operative. Eventually he takes this to Smiles. Smiles has legal papers drawn up making Charlie a partner in Big City Eyes.
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