Hey there again, folks. Sorry this one's running a bit late, my writing time has been taken up by freelancing. But that's taken care of, so this write-up is going to cover the last two sessions of my Geist game. So it's going to be longer than usual, and the details on some of the in-character conversations might be a little shakier than usual in the first half of the post as it's been longer.
So where we left off last time, the group was wrapping up their first trip into the Underworld, returning with some Underworld fungus for plasm purposes.[0] They step out through the gate to find the last shreds of sunset passing over the horizon, leaving them in a dark cemetery. So after all that, they decide to go and make the drive out to Nelson.
As it's still early December, it's basically full-blown dark by the time they reach the little town out in the middle of nowhere. Nelson is only a couple of blocks in size, without any real electric lights out on the streets, though there are a couple of gas lamps. Nobody's out and about, though there are obvious signs of occupation, at least. They talk about the pros and cons of asking around, maybe spending some time getting to know the locals before jumping right into the questions.
Kenneth suggests that a couple of them go into the local watering hole (which they can recognize from the road, though it doesn't have a sign or anything) while the third skulks around outside for anything interesting. Richard volunteers for the latter.
Eddy goes into the bar, heads straight for the bar, and orders a beer. He leaves a good tip and asks about Mel. The bartender remarks that Mel doesn't drink in the bar. They see him every now and again, and he just heads out into the desert in the hills near Lucky Jim Camp, south of El Dorado Canyon proper.
Kenneth comes in after a few minutes and everyone just gets quiet and stares at him because he's obviously a Fed. Recognizing the reaction, he assures everyone that he's off-duty, but he still has to go up to the bar to get a drink (more out of laziness from the bartender than hostility).
As he works on his drink he overhears a guy asking the other guy at his table "What's with the weirdos these days." A moment later, he hears "First that guy in the hills, then the fortune teller, now this." His conversational companion remarks that "The Fed's probably chasing one or the both of them." Then back to the first guy: "Witches and weirdos, I swear."
Then the two guys get to talking about how the second guy is planning on getting out of town before the Earth opens up and swallows them whole, and it sounds like he means it when he says it like that. Then the first guy asks "You're having that dream again?" and when the second one confirms it, he says "It's just gasses from the mine, everybody's having that dream."
Kenneth sees an opening and speaks up. "You have that dream, too?" He starts engaging them about the dream, pretending he has it as well. The locals mention that it's probably just gas from a pocket in the mine that's been broken loose by someone trying to deepen the local gold mines (which, in case you need the reminder, is recently tapped out). It might even be something that Mel is doing, one opines.
Kenneth asks about Mel and the guys explain that sometimes Mel comes out, and sometimes he has somebody with him that nobody ever sees come back from the hills. Kenneth asks about the fortune teller, and they say she's some sort of "circus gypsy"[1] who acts like a witch of some sort. After that, Kenneth gets ready to leave.
Meanwhile, Richard's been hanging out outside. He's been wandering a bit, circling the building, trying to see something out of the ordinary. He spots a ghost sitting in the back of a pickup truck with a 'for sale' sign in the window.
The guy, Jeremy, explains that Mel and a woman matching Talya's description hired him to fix the truck, and paid with a gold coin. He was working on the truck and suffered some sort of shock. Mel and the woman didn't come back for a while, so the local law enforcement claimed the truck and put it up for sale. Richard reassures him that they'll be able to come back and help him in a day or two, that he and his friends try to help ghosts in need.
Jeremy mentions that he's seen the Reapers around but he's been hiding from them. Richard reassures him that they'll figure something out, and then Jeremy directs him to check under the hood of the truck. Richard jimmies the hood open and can see where the engine's clearly been worked on, but then he notices the symbol that marked Sam painted on the underside of the hood.
At this point we jump back to Kenneth, who's wandering around, trying to take his mind off the fact that Talya's been lying to them. While he's listening for anything interesting, he hears a sound that gets his geist's attention -- the tearing of hide. He realizes he can smell an amateur tannery and goes to peek through a window to see a guy working with a scrap of hide.
His geist, the Skinwalker, floats into the room, and while the man in there can't see it, Kenneth can see and hear the Skinwalker taking on a more human appearance and replaying half of a conversation. Kenneth can tell from the way he's moving that this conversation didn't play out in this room -- the geist's movements and eyeline don't match up with the dimensions of the room he's in, but in the memory that the Skinwalker is flashing back to he's addressing someone that he refers to as "Father Guerrero" and apparently addressing some larger negotiations. But then the conversation ends, and the geist blurs a bit to take on his normal form as he drifts back through the wall to rejoin Kenneth.
His first Remembrance completed, Kenneth waits a moment to make sure the geist isn't going to do anything before he follows up on an idea he's had and goes to look for the local assayer's office.
He finds it easily enough and knocks on the door (it's like 7pm-ish at this point) and flashes his badge when the door opens. He asks the assayer about whether anyone's come around sniffing about abandoned claims or anything like that, and the guy immediately picks up that this is about Mel. They talk about what he's been looking for out in the hills, whether he's asked about mine disasters (as that's something that Kenneth suspects a necromancer would be interested in), and apparently it's come up in passing but Mel's never seriously pursued it. They also talk about what spots he's shown interest in, and it does come up that he's asked about local spots with ritual or occult significance, which the assayer knows nothing about. For one thing, they don't usually keep track of that. For another, he's only been there a few years, and Kenneth asks for the phone number for his predecessor in case he wants to follow up. The assayer gives him the number and at Kenneth's request also gives him a map of the area.
Everyone meets up outside the bar to share what they've learned so far, and they decide to head out to the hills to look for him. They pile into Eddy's car and drive towards El Dorado Canyon, and as they make a turn a figure steps out into the road in front of them. Eddy swerves to miss and skids to a stop, and they look back to see that it's the Bandit.
There's not a whole lot of preamble before they get into the fight, with Kenneth cranking up the Rage and Eddy firing up the Boneyard. As has been pointed out, Eddy's Boneyard rating is high enough that he can declare new laws for the territory, and he basically makes Reapers illegal, which gives him bonuses against the Bandit.
I'm not going to go into a lot of blow-by-blow here, but the Bandit shoots at them (getting a nasty hit in on Eddy) while Eddy uses Marionette to fling knives at him and Kenneth taps into the Rage to unleash a murder of spectral crows. Richard manages to slow him down by using Marionette to force him to drop his guns and spend time reclaiming them.
Towards the end of the battle, the Bandit blasts Richard hard enough that it causes Lady Luck to freak out, but Richard lets her go to lash out at the Reaper where she pummels him with levitated boulders and Eddy finishes him off with his knives.
The group stops to catch their breath. They're in between the hills, kind of at the mouth of the canyon, and glance up to enjoy the clear December night sky and the stars overhead... which is when they spot the smoke. They get back in the car and drive down the road for a bit, confirming that the smoke is coming from the rough direction they need to go anyways.
They find a spot to pull off the road and hike out into the hills. Down a small water-carved trail off the proper beaten path, they find four men sitting around a smoldering campfire with a pot of stew and some coffee. It's tough to tell how old they are -- their skin is tanned and leathery from what must be decades in the sun. They're emaciated, and have white hair and beards, and it's tough to guess their age. They could be as young as a really hard-lived 40 or as old as 80 or 90.
Just past them is a tunnel entrance, the classic stereotypical mine opening.
Eddy argues that Kenneth should talk to them, as these are 'clearly' his people. Kenneth wants to know why they're his people, and there's some back and forth that makes it clear that what defines them as Kenneth's people is that Eddy doesn't want to be the one to talk to them.
"Come out here to the end of the world, are ya?" one of them says. We'll call him Carl for simplicity's sake, as that's his name even though it doesn't come up in the conversation.
Kenneth explains that he's out here looking for something, and he thinks he's found it. He asks what's wrong with the place.
"This is a place that has accepted that the world is dying," Carl calmly says.
There's some back and forth, but the message is clear -- these guys are certain that the world is dying and has been for a few years, and they're on a patch of land that's already died, as evidenced by the nearby mines drying up. When asked about Mel, they insist they came to this conclusion themselves, but Mel simply confirmed what they already knew. He came by a few days ago, and sometimes he goes into the cave and doesn't come out but still turns up back in the area. But they're certain that he's not leaving through some normal back door. Not that it matters much, with the world dying and all and the ruin is all going to spread.
Kenneth argues that if 'ruin' can spread, then fixing things can spread, but the four men just laugh because entropy doesn't work like that. Kenneth says that for all of Mel's wizard tricks, he's never been properly dead. Whereas he and his compatriots have been dead and they understand death and the end of things better than Mel does.
Kenneth counterargues that Mel is interpreting a natural process for his own ends, and that death is just a change of state rather than a strict end to everything. He talks a little about you don't just end when you die and he's seen that with his own eyes.
The men nod, conceding that point, and Carl says that according to Mel, the Ruin[2] has touched the world, the Ruin is coming, and Mel is on its side. Carl then says that sometimes they see Mel take people into the cave with him, and those people never come out and the men never see them again. Kenneth argues that doesn't necessarily mean anything, as these guys obviously don't go poking around looking for whether these people turn up in town or anything. Eddy thinks they're past arguing at this point. He wishes the four old men well as they wait for the end of the world, and as one they all raise their tin coffee cups.
As the krewe moves on to approach the cave, Richard mentions that they're getting entropy wrong in any case. Eddy says they're dealing with some sort of cult in any case. Kenneth points out that he's pretty sure 'entropy' is a made-up word.
They step into the cave, and the place feels wrong, like anything can happen as long as that 'anything' is horrible. They travel through the tunnel, eventually coming up to what looks like a simple hole in the wall until they take a closer look and see that there's an underground river with water so clear they can barely see it. They get a distinct vibe that this is somehow an extension of one of the Underworld Rivers into the living world. They make a note of that and find where the tunnel continues past it.
Eventually they come to a dead end that holds an Avernian Gate. They consider the possibilities of whether it would be possible to seal or destroy the gate. Destroying it would likely just rip open the hole to the Underworld and let anything through on either side, but they kick around the idea of getting what they'd need to collapse the tunnel in front of it. However, while normally that would probably be enough, they couldn't rule out the possibility of the gate relocating to the new 'dead end' in the tunnel, given the weird feeling they have in the passage.
Kenneth thinks that going through the gate at this point is just a good way to risk getting killed again, and he's not sure there's much else to gain. So the group decides to go back to town and confront Talya. They head outside, where the old men are, and Eddy just simply says "Gentlemen," to them, acknowledging them, and without looking up they all raise their coffee cups in unison again.
As the group gets ready to hike back to the car, they get to thinking about the Reaper. What was the Bandit doing there? Richard thinks that the Reaper might have just been laying the trap, but they wonder if the Reaper was out there to guard the gate or guard Mel. Why leave an actual Reaper to guard the gate unless there's something behind it? After some waffling, the group turns back around and heads back into the tunnel.
Now, they don't know the key to the gate. But Richard tries to pick the lock with a little ritual symbolic of death and mourning, and he sings "Danny Boy." But it goes badly, and he gets a dramatic failure (voluntarily taking one for a Beat), and then chains appear to lock the gate up even tighter as now it becomes impossible to trick the gate open for a while.
They consider their options to get it open, perhaps using one of their own Keys, but after the fight with the Reaper they're not sure weakening themselves further is the way to go, especially if Mel is down there. Eddy in particular is still suffering from some mild hypothermia from using the Cold Wind Key in his fight against the Bandit.
Eddy decides to go talk to the old men and see if they know anything about the gate, while Kenneth and Richard wait in the cave. Carl, when asked, doesn't know anything about any gate, but he says he does sometimes see Mel going into the cave with a bloody pickaxe. He sarcastically calls them wonderful conversationalists, and the raise their cups to him again.
Before he goes looking for a pickaxe, he yells into the cave to let his friends know where he's headed, but the echo doesn't reach. He then asks the old men to tell his friends where he's going if they come looking for him, and he asks if they want anything while he's out. They're good. He then offers to give them a glimpse as to what's beyond 'death's door' if they really want to see what comes next. Carl just calmly says that if they want to see that, they have a way. Then he reaches over to pat a gun-shaped bulge in a satchel next to him.
Now, this is a mining-heavy area, there are mining camps nearby, and it's all too easy for Eddy to head to one and grab a pickaxe and come back. He asks the old men if they have a carcass handy. They don't, but Carl points out a prairie dog town over a hill, and Eddy begrudgingly goes to play whac-a-mole. While he's gone, Richard comes out to ask where Eddy's gone, and the old men tell him. Bewildered, he goes back in.
After a little while Eddy shows up with the bloody pickaxe, and Kenneth asked if it was human blood (perhaps concerned that Eddy had snapped and killed the men outside). Eddy says it isn't, yet.
After a minute or two of fiddling, he figures out he has to hook the pickaxe in the door and pry it open like a crowbar. It opens easily at this point.
They venture into the Underworld, and find a river where the water shines with a golden sheen. On its banks is an empty Native American village, either a recreation or one that's just been taken wholecloth by the Underworld (that's a thing that happens). In the middle of it is a bunch of sand poured into the shape of the curse symbol they found on Sam and that truck. Kenneth tries to disturb it, but the symbol just reasserts itself like iron filings on a magnet. Eddy goes to town on it with the pickaxe and actually manages to properly disturb the symbol.
Then Mel steps out from behind one of the tents.
"Oh, you didn't like it?" he asks. "I made it for you. Nah, not really, I just felt like saying that."
Again, not a lot of banter. Kenneth activates the Rage again, and Eddy and Richard start activating their Marionette Haunts. Mel blasts Richard with his magic, weakening his body, atrophying his muscles. The air around them feels itchy and there's a coppery scent to it.
They all lay into him and he blasts them back. It's rough to hit him, as his body takes damage like it's already dead, not bleeding properly.[3] Eddy assaults him with his knives, Kenneth comes at him with spectral claws through the Rage, and Richard picks up a couple of the tents and tries to smash him with them. At one point, Mel curses Richard to blind him, but after he takes a couple of nasty hits from Kenneth and Eddy, Richard gets a lucky shot to finish him off.
Richard impales Mel with a sharpened log tent pole, impaling him on it and pinning him to the ground. Mel doesn't go quietly, gasping and twitching, and they can see the moment where the Death magic wears off and is body just gives out normally. They stand there and wait a couple of minutes to make sure he's properly dead and isn't going to come back as a ghost or anything himself. Kenneth isn't entirely happy as to how this has played out -- he'd been hoping to at least have Mel in a state where he could bring him back and put this on the books. But he'll just have to accept that even if it's not on paper, justice has been done -- also, it's pointed out that given Mel's lifestyle, there's a very good chance he'd vanish into the desert and his body never found anyways.
Accepting that, Kenneth then steps forward and uses Memoria to draw up the 'memory' of Mel's death, liquifying a recording of it and storing it in a bottle.
And now, the necromancer properly killed, we left off there.
Later, folks.
[0]-- This is actually a slight retcon, I meant to let them forage a bit on the way out and forgot, so I handwaved in a chance for them to find some.
[1]-- Yes, I'm aware the term is inappropriate, and I don't use it lightly.
[2]-- The characters can hear the capitalization in Carl's tone.
[3]-- For those of you at home, this is Mage Armor from the Death Arcanum at work.
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