Greetings again, my good folks. I can't believe it's only been a week since the last one of these, as I've been pretty busy on my end. (Which is partially why, more and more, they're turning up the day before the next session.)
But anyhow, the time is upon us, the bell tolls, etc. and so here we go!
So where we left off, Richard just had a very emotionally trying visit to the hospital where he met the widow of the woman he tried to save the day he became a Sin-Eater.
The group decides to give it another night to see if Mel turns up, and Kenneth spends the rest of the evening making more Native American crafts -- nothing he can strictly pass off as 'authentic,' but something he can use to pitch the tobacconist owner to open up his proposed mini-museum/cultural center.
So the next day comes with no news, and Eddy greets the others with mimosas and a possible plan. He thinks he's found a way to track down a good chunk of the rest of the coins. His mastery of the Boneyard is such that he can cast wide net with it, and then declare a rule like the Old Laws of the Dead Dominions. He could make a rule disallowing carrying the coins, and then he'd be able to sense everyone breaking that rule. He'd instinctively know where the coins are and who has the. It'd use up a lot of plasm, but the theory is sound.
So the krewe collectively sits down and looks at their options. They could go with Eddy's plan, give the town of Nelson a try, or they could go to the Underworld and have a chat with the Dealer. They wind up leaving it up to Richard, who randomly choses the Underworld option. So they've got a trip to plan!
First, they have to figure out the easy way into the Underworld. Pretty much every cemetery has an Avernian Gate they can use, so they decide to go with the Woodlawn Cemetery. For ease of opening the gate, they start digging through Eddy's old notes and stuff, talk to the ghosts in the krewe, etc., to find the key that can open it. Every Avernian Gate has a special condition that will open it, if you can only find it, and with Richard's help (as he's really good at research) they find it -- the Avernian Gate in Woodlawn has a coin slot that, if you feed it a coin from a dead man's pocket ('the last coin he'll ever spend'), the gate opens. So they get one of the cursed gold coins that Sam had on him when he died[0] (taking care not to get the one that's his anchor) and take that with them, figuring that it's also a good way to be rid of it.
They get out to the cemetery about noon. It's quiet and chilly out, so not really a lot of folks milling about. They approach the gate and they see the coin slot appear in the frame. As they step up, a shadowy figure, dressed like a turn of the century laborer and carrying a shovel, steps out. This appears to be the Guardian Geist -- every cemetery has one at some point, the first person who was buried there. Not all of the Guardian Geists remain with their cemeteries forever -- they can be destroyed, or make the Bargain and create a new sin-eater, or meet some other fate -- but this one still does. He just quietly chats with the krewe for a moment, making sure they really want to go down there, and he wishes them luck.
They feed the coin into the slot and the gate opens.
They step into the tunnels, hearing water trickling in the distance. Kenneth leads the way, talking to ghosts they find to try and get directions. They take a wrong turn early on and almost wind up in a cavern full of nasty-looking ghosts, but eventually find their way to a literal ghostly Hooverville. Kenneth takes the lead in talking to the ghosts there, looking for better directions, and manages to connect with them thanks to his working class background (his father was a fisherman)[1]. He follows their directions to a small village of boxcars on train tracks that go... who knows where? (Well, technically, the ghosts know -- some of the tracks head towards nearby rivers)
They follow one of the tracks to the river city of Las Minas. The outskirts of it look like a run-down Old West frontier town, and as they progress towards the only tall building in the cavern (it's dark, lit by torches and barrel fires, and the ceiling is too high for them to see) the buildings get more and more modern until they resemble something out of the 30's. The building, which looks kind of like a cross between a bank and a church with a big bell tower, sits near the river.
Eddy goes to take a closer look and a ghost using a net to haul stuff out of the river warns him to be careful, as that's the River Lethe. Eddy makes a note of that and asks the ghost if he knows where the Dealer is. The ghost gestures to the nearby tall building, where he's heading himself with a net full of junk pulled out of the river. He heads around the side as the krewe heads for the front door.
Kenneth stops them and points out they need a plan going in, or this is going to get really messy if he has to improvise. They quickly hammer out a rough plan -- they're going to find out what the relationship between Mel and the Dealer is, and see if they can screw it up. They go into the building and encounter a ghostly old woman behind a desk. Kenneth flashes his badge and demands to see the Dealer. She pauses a moment and tells them to go up the stairs and keep going until they find him.
The stairs lead up into the bell tower. As they arrive up there, they see a man with some sort of shawl or cloak draped over his shoulders facing out to look over Las Minas. He turns to face them, giving them glimpses of a pinstripe suit under the shawl but more notably there's the fact that he doesn't have a face. It's gone, there's just a ragged hole where his face should be, and you can see the inside of the back of his head -- it looks like the visual effect in Hollow Man when you can see through the face of the rubber 'mask' that Kevin Bacon's character wears.
Kenneth introduecs himself and just goes into full-Fed mode, asking about the Dealer's relationship with Mel.
"It's business."
What kind of business?
"Import-export."
Does the Dealer plan to be uncooperative?
"Sort of."
Eddy steps in at this point before Kenneth loses it, and he decides to talk to the Dealer in a manner he's probably more used to, talking to him criminal-to-criminal. Once they get going, the Dealer is petty up-front about his deal with Mel. Mel gives the Dealer power that he needs to deal with a rival of his, and in return the Dealer trades him treasures from the Underworld.
When pressed, he explains that the Mel is marking ghosts in a way that gives the Dealer power when he consumes them. Richard gives him the "So what you're telling me..." summary, spelling out the deal, the Dealer's end in the deal, all that. And the Dealer simply says that when someone winds up in the Underworld, they will be consumed by something, whether it's a ghost or the Underworld itself. It may as well be him that does the consuming.
His tone is confident, the sort of confidence that comes with sincerely believing there's nothing these three sin-eaters can do to stop him.
They ask how they can get him to break the deal. He says that if they can deal with this rival that Mel is helping him with, then his business would be concluded. He looks them over (at least, they think he can, they kind of have to guess with the lack of face and all) and he tells them that he thinks they could handle said rival, though it would give them more of a fight than the Dustwalker.[2] They ask for a moment to confer and he lets them, turning back to the city as they back off.
It's pretty obvious that their best chance to stop all this is killing Mel, but Kenneth doesn't want to just let the Dealer go. Eddy argues that taking him out could cause a power vacuum and cause more pain and chaos. Eddy says he's willing to back Kenneth's play if he insists on fighting the Dealer, but he's concerned it's going to be a Pyrrhic victory.
Eddy suggests that they find someone to replace the Dealer to prevent a power vacuum. Richard suggests talking to the local ghosts and finding out who they would want to take over, and get a better idea of what's going on around here. Also, it occurs to them that if they can figure out the Dealer's bane, then that would give them a massive edge. Kenneth agrees to the plan and goes out to talk to the nearby ghosts as Richard and Eddy turn to speak to the Dealer some more.
When asked, the Dealer gets into the details of his rival... it's a Kerberos called the Bouncer. She runs a Dominion called the Neon Table, based on a casino where memories and Mementos can be won and lost. Long story short, he wants to take her out and claim the Neon Table for himself. He explains to them the rules and customs of the place, and what happens to those who break the rules or fall into debt (servitude or worse).
They also discuss Mel, and he doesn't know the full details of Mel's situation, he knows that Mel is a wizard of some sort and that he's serving someone else. The Dealer is pretty sure that the marked ghosts that Mel's been sending him are a side-effect of something else he's doing for his true master.
Once they've exhausted the conversation, Eddy and Richard go to take their leave, and on their way out the Dealer tells them that just because he's already died once, not to assume he'll go down so easily the second time.
Meanwhile, Kenneth has been trying to find out more about the Dealer. The most he's been able to glean by asking around the river city in the limited time he has is that the Dealer actually hasn't been around Las Minas long -- only about 3-ish years, give or take. He asks if there are any other old ghosts around, and he gets the name Evette Wood, a madam from Block 16, Vegas' recently-closed red light district. She hasn't been down there long -- not a lot of ghosts last a long time in the Underworld without passing on to a Dominion -- but she's been there longer than the Dealer has, at least.
At this point Eddy and Richard catch up with Kenneth and fill him in on what they've learned. Upon hearing about the Neon Table, Kenneth outright asks if there's any part of the Underworld that isn't Hell. They get into a discussion over whether it can be changed, and Richard suggests that the Underworld is like a desert, inhospitable to life and that at best you can make it livable. Kenneth counter-argues that the desert is plenty alive, and that if the 'lord of the Underworld' can sweep in and take over and change the place for the worse, then it stands to reason that sin-eaters can change it for the better.
The group agrees but Eddy points out that Mel is the immediate threat and needs to be dealt with first. And then they can figure out how to take out the Dealer. Kenneth suggests using the Dealer to take out the Bouncer, to get rid of Mel, replace him in the Dealer's whole deal, and once the Dealer has dealt with the Bouncer then to betray the Dealer.
They hike back to the gate, and on the way Eddy says that no matter what happens, when he dies for the last time, he'll do whatever he can to not have to come back to the Underworld.
So they get back to the Avernian Gate and try to 'pick the lock' by improvising a celebration of life to trick the gate. They pretend it's Richard's birthday and party, drinking some mundane booze in a flask that Eddy brought with him, and it works -- they trick the gate into thinking the sides were reversed and it opens, letting them back out into the land of the living.
And we left off there.
[0]-- I'll admit when I came up with the key for this particular gate, I didn't have the gold coins in mind. I just thought it seemed cool and Vegas-y.
[1]-- Kenneth now has the Connected persistent condition, which gives him social bonuses in dealing with these ghosts, which is quite the boon.
[2]-- In case you need the reminder, this was the Reaper they fought back at the casino, and no, he had not come up in the conversation up to that point.
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