Sin City: Treasures (Geist)

So here we are again, continuing the adventures of the Crossroads Krewe. I'm not really sure what else to add here -- as I think I've pointed out before, actually doing these every week means there's less news and updates and stuff to talk about during the pre-game show, as it were.

So let's just get to it.

So after the excursion out to Talya's place and the tobacconist, our intrepid trio return to the hotel and check in with the rest of the krewe as to whether they found anything useful about Mel. And there's good news and bad news.

First, the good news -- they know where Mel goes. A mining town called Nelson, about a 45-minute-ish drive to the southeast from Vegas. It's got a bit of a reputation as an 'outlaw' town, having once been popular with Civil War deserters from both sides who surmised (correctly) that nobody was going to schlep out to the middle of the desert looking for them.[0]

They've also learned that a colleague of Eddy's, a pawn shop owner named Nicole Lombard, helped broker the art sales that Mel used to help finance his acquisition and renovation of Bacchus. Eddy makes a note to go ask her a few questions about that. 

But then there's also a problem. Two problems, really. First, according to Larry (the ghost of a worker who died working on the Hoover Dam), while they were out and about (bringing Sam with them so he could metaphorically get some air) they got a glimpse of a Reaper following them, keeping their distance. Not the same Reaper as before, though. This one wears a bandana-like cloth as a bandit-style mask. The Reaper didn't approach, didn't engage, but they got the heck out of there. And when they got back to the hotel, they discovered something weird on Sam's back.

The group went to check on Sam. Under his jacket and shirt is a marking on his back that resembles a brand. It's shaped kind of like a fancy cursive lower-case 'y', but they recognize that they've seen a very similar symbol before very recently -- the background of the Fool artwork on Talya's house incorporates a similar symbol -- possibly another character from the same alphabet. Kenneth uses some plasm to draw upon his geist's skill with crafts so he can reproduce the symbol perfectly in his notebook.

Sam's freaked out and asks if they think it has something to do with the coins. Kenneth quickly answers 'yes,' though Eddy is a little more diplomatic with a 'maybe.'

As they're worn out and it's getting on in the evening, they decide to go with the next leg of their investigations tomorrow -- Kenneth and Richard are going to have another chat with Talya, and Eddy is going to go talk to Nicole.

But since they've got the rest of their evening pretty much free, Richard goes out to the Bacchus wreckage where some of the cleanup is still going on and there are scavengers going through the stuff that's been pulled out of the ruined building. One of the first things he finds that definitely gets Lady Luck's attention is boxes of stuff clearly pulled put of the offices, and he finds a framed newspaper photo with associated header: "New Hotel Brings Old World Flair." The picture has a woman in kind of a skimpy waitress uniform, vaguely toga-ish, next to a man about her age and an older man who might be her father or uncle if the family resemblance is any hint. Also, Manny Rossi is in the background.

Lady Luck recognizes herself as the woman in the photo, and the two men are her fiancé and her father. She remembers that the picture is from 1945, clearly when Bacchus first opened. Richard hangs onto the photo as he completes his first Remembrance.[1]

So we move ahead to the next day, where everyone gets up after a long night's rest and goes through their morning routines (like Eddy's morning cocktail).

Kenneth and Richard head out to Talya's house. She's legitimately surprised to see them, and offers and gets Kenneth a cup of coffee while they talk. He goes straight to showing her the rune from the notebook. She recognizes it as a corrupted symbol of fate and chance, meaning ruin (IIRC, that's how I explained it), and explains that seeing it on someone or something means that they've been marked to draw the attention of some entity or force. She opens her mouth to share a troubling metaphor but stops herself. Kenneth tells her where they found it, and they talk around the issue a bit before she just comes out with it -- it's like 'seasoning the meat.' She theorizes that Sam might have been a sacrifice and the marking is a side-effect of that, or perhaps the ghost is meant to be the sacrifice.

Kenneth then spins a hypothetical scenario where if someone used cursed gold to craft an item that could be used to ruin people, like say a roulette wheel, if that could be used to deliver the effect onto other people. She argues that that is indeed possible. She says that if the cursed gold was involved in the unfortunate person's death, that might even 'charge' the gold somehow. She says she doesn't know what entities might be involved with something like this, as there are multiple possibilities.

Kenneth then floats the idea of a kerberos being involved, which would track with what they know of Mel's capabilities. They really want to go after him now, before this goes any further. They ask Talya if she knew that Mel is a wizard, and she confirms she knew he's a necromancer of some sort. They recommend she turn him away if she sees him again, and she says that Mel doesn't come to her for advice very often, they've had some awkward interactions.

They leave after that, Kenneth having forgotten his coffee in the moment, and he has to stop and smoke a cigarette to calm down before getting back in the car. Both Kenneth and Richard are enraged by the implication that Mel is killing people this way and feeding their souls to something.

As they drive back into town proper, Richard confides in Kenneth that he thinks Manny had something to do with his geist's life and/or death. Kenneth gives Richard his blessing if he wants to have a talk with Manny about it to try and resolve that, and Richard considers the idea.

And then we switch over to Eddy, who's headed over to Lombard Loans and Gifts. Frank Lombard owns it on paper, but his daughter Nicole actually runs the place. She and Eddy are kind of friendly, being colleagues who respect each others' assorted situations. Eddy asks Nicole about Mel and the art, and she explains that he turned up one day with a bunch of pieces from a rich guy's collection that was thought lost. Apparently the guy's mansion burned down 20 years ago with all of his stuff in it, and the pieces (some sculptures and such, mostly paintings) was thought lost. 

Officially she didn't ask, but unofficially Mel confided in her that the rich guy snuck his artwork out somewhere safe to burn his house down for the insurance money, with the plan on selling the artwork himself later. Well, something happened, and somehow Mel got ahold of the stash. She doesn't know if it's true, but it's what she's been told. Eddy wants to see what she's got left of the collection, and she closes up the front of the store and takes him into the back.

She's got a few portraits of pre-Revolution French nobles, and then there's... the dolls. Two of them, also dressed like nobles, locked in a dance like a waltz, wearing creepy jeweled masks that made them resemble the clockwork droids from Doctor Who. Eddy immediately recognizes them as a Memento, a magical relic of the Underworld, with the Key of Stillness.

Eddy busts out the gloves and takes a closer look at the artwork, looking for any signs of past soot or smoke and finding none. He does find, on the portrait frames, the slightest scent of must as if they've been kept in a basement or a cave. He theorizes that Mel may have stored the artwork in the Underworld for a while -- or possibly pulled it out of the Underworld, with the help of the Dealer.

He and Nicole talk about the buyers, and how Mel went to her instead because he was looking to sell the artwork a little more openly to genuine collectors (and a couple of mobsters), which meant that having someone like her broker the deals would be a little more appropriate than a fence. She and Eddy just have different clients and buyers for that sort of thing, and it wasn't anything personal, and he understands that.

Nicole then remarks that she had a potential buyer for the dolls until the guy saw them and then he suddenly vanished. Which, hey, she gets that -- they look like something found in the home of a Victorian spinster in a penny dreadful. But Eddy offers to buy them from her, and she gives him a fair deal.

As Eddy leaves the shop, his new acquisition in a crate where nobody has to look at it, the Reaper in the bandit mask approaches him. He explains that he doesn't want to have to fight anyone or attack the hotel or anything. But he answers to someone who wants Sam, and nobody has to get hurt if they turn over the soldier. Eddy asks about the symbol on Sam's back, if Mel put it there, and I can't remember exactly how I worded it but the Reaper implied that Mel may have applied the symbol but he's not the source of it. Eddy makes it clear to the Reaper that he's not going to get Sam, and that Eddy and his friends took out the other Reaper and they can handle him as well. The Reaper just sort of acknowledges that before taking his leave, taking a few respectful steps backward before turning to leave.

Everybody gets back to the hotel at the same time. Richard tells Eddy about how they think Mel's trying to feed peoples' souls to something in the Underworld. Eddy then says that Mel has had a hand in the symbol but doesn't appear to be the original source of the effect. He then gets deeper into what he learned at the pawn shop. They theorize that Mel is marking souls to feed to someone and trading them to the Underworld in exchange for treasures.

Eddy then relates his conversation with the Reaper. Richard suggests they use the Crow Girl Kiss ceremony to try and cleans Sam of the marking and make him useless for the Reaper's purposes. So they start gathering symbolic ingredients -- rainwater that's washed over a tombstone, the cursed gold, and Kenneth is going to use his pocket knife to pantomime cutting puppet strings tying Sam to the coins. They get a bone with raven feathers tied to it to use as the talisman to contain the curse.

So they perform the ceremony, in particular pouring the rainwater over the gold so it lands on the talisman, and as they do so the marking on Sam's back runs as if paint being washed off. The bone then appears to have the marking wrapped around its structure. So now they have the curse from the gold trapped in the bone, and they tuck that away in a safe and lock it up.

And with the group having potentially saved Sam from a horrible fate, we leave off there.

[0]-- Nelson actually exists, by the way. It's a ghost town in the modern day. But in 1951, the mine has actually just dried up and the people who live there are starting to ask "What now?"

[1]-- I realize I didn't explain this last time for folks unfamiliar with Geist. Remembrances are scenes where the sin-eater learns more about the geist's past, who they were in life, and what drives them in death. Completing these increases the character's Synergy rating, which makes them more powerful and makes it easier for them to relate to their geist. Each sin-eater can go through a certain number of these, going on a journey with their geist that opens up certain options once they've completed the final one.