Alright, so I'm a little behind on this one. But on a more positive note, I got my final drafts in for [REDACTED], and that's what matters.
That does mean that this write-up covers two sessions' worth of material, which also means that there might be details from the first session that've been lost to time and memory. I'm 99% sure anything really important gets copied down in my notes, but I can't rule out an interesting detail here and there slipping through the cracks in the more conversation-heavy scenes. (See also those times when I include a footnote or a parenthetical with just such a moment when I can't recall how it fit into the conversational flow.)
Anyhow, with that disclaimer out of the way, here we go.
So after the incident with Abe and discovering he was a Reaper the whole time, the krewe is going to wrap up some more loose ends. Richard and Eddy go to talk to Talya to get some answers, while Kenneth tries to follow up on Nolasco de Sandoval, who was involved in seizing the Shoshone land. Kenneth would come along to Talya's place, but he's honestly not sure he wouldn't do something ill-advised after everything they've been through.
Richard and Eddy get out to her house to find the mural on the side gone, just painted over. Eddy knocks on the door and she opens it to reveal the house is full of boxes. They caught her in the middle of packing with plans to leave in the morning. She says she'd offer them some coffee but she already packed the coffee maker and kind of regrets that now.
She gets right to it, though -- she tells them she assumes they're the ones who killed Mel, and owns up to the fact that she was working with him the whole time. And with Mel gone it's not safe for her or their co-conspirator Stephanie. He was the anchor holding their band together, a conduit to higher powers[0], and without him there's no point in staying. Whatever plans their group had relied on him and without him there's nothing to do but pack up and try again elsewhere
She also confirms that Rossi is a wizard as well, a master of fate and chance, good at arranging accidents through magic.[1] And once he realizes that Mel is gone and not coming back, he's going to start expanding his own power base even more.
Richard asks if he has any weaknesses, and she says that he still has the weaknesses of a human, physically and emotionally. (They simply take that to mean that he can still be shot with a gun.)
She reassures Richard and Eddy that she'll be gone in the morning, and that she won't be coming back. Eddy's willing to let her go given that she's going quietly and was forthcoming about Rossi, though it's clear her life is forfeit should she return. She's not planning to come back, but considers that noted. Before they go, she lets Richard know that Manny still has a bunch of the rigged slot machines that he designed.
Meanwhile, Kenneth has been down at the county courthouse digging through old records trying to find out whatever happened to Nolasco de Sandoval and his company. It takes him a few hours, but he finds a trail of sorts -- Sandoval's land and assets were seized when the US took over the territory, and wound up in the hands of a company called Fremont Trading. Fremont Trading later became Fremont Mining. Fremont Mining was later taken over by Meadows Mineral and Oil, who hold those assets and land to this day.[2] Conveniently, Meadows Mineral and Oil has a branch office in Vegas.
While Kenneth is doing his research, Eddy and Richard do what they planned to do last session: discreetly drag Abe's rug out to the graveyard where he's buried. They dig a hole deep enough over his coffin and bury it more or less right on top of it. Everyone calls it a night at this point.
The next morning, Eddy has reports coming in from the krewe -- they have the intel he sent them out for a couple of days ago, information on Rossi's financials and a map of the El Cortez, but things are tough. The krewe is frustrated at what they feel is having to do Eddy's private errands (sure, getting rid of Rossi is good for everyone, but what does it do for the Crossroads Krewe specifically?), and on top of that completing their mission required having to ask for help and now they owe a favor to another Krewe, colloquially called the Enders.
In addition, Eddy has to break the news that Rossi is a witch to Kenneth so he takes it upon himself to make a big, hearty breakfast to help soften the blow. Kenneth takes it a little better than expected, given everything they've seen and encountered so far. Though he does wonder why Rossi went to so much trouble to kill him personally and as mundanely as breaking his legs and leaving him in the desert. He's also not terribly worried about Rossi expanding because of Mel's absence, because he'd already braced himself for that very likely possibility. Eddy's a little worried that Rossi will be able to curse Johnny Wallis and kill him before he can testify, but Kenneth points out that they've gotten pretty good at un-cursing people and they just might have to keep an eye on him.
But then Eddy drops a big question -- How do you keep someone like Rossi behind bars? What's to stop him from magicking himself free?[3] They talk around the problem for a bit and settle on the fact that getting him convicted at all and at worst forcing him to live on the run or in the shadows with a drastically reduced quality of life is still something (and might have to be something to settle for).
So they talk about how they might be able to disable his magic, or at least weaken him. They're reminded to Mel and how he used his lead coin to focus his own powers. They consider that there might be weaknesses to Rossi's magic, and Kenneth suggests that there are destinies that he can't magically do anything about, which is why he killed Kenneth directly. This segues into how Johnny Wallis's current status hasn't been made public yet so Rossi doesn't know he's going to flip, and Kenneth wonders if they can put together some sort of pre-emptive curse protection on themselves. He floats the idea of seeing if they can get the krewe to help them find something like that.
Eddy asks if they're at least thinking about taking out Rossi as a last resort, and Kenneth is willing to consider that option.
Knowing what he now knows, Eddy's giving up plans to burgle him and his casino but he still has the intel that the krewe acquired and makes it formally available to Kenneth. He at least goes over the financials and doesn't find anything particularly surprising there, aside from what might be some wonky construction on the casino aside from the usual embezzlement via contractors that one would expect from a mob-owned operation.
He sets it aside for deeper analysis later, though, as he wants to go check out Meadows Mineral and Oil since it's late enough they're probably open. The trio head out to their local office in town, and Kenneth flashes his badge at the secretary to get a meeting with whomever's in charge. She gestures to a bench in the lobby to have a seat and calls into the office.
The group waits, and Eddy asks if it's ethical for Kenneth to use his badge in something like this. Kenneth just looks him right in the eye, casually says "Nope," and takes a drag off his cigarette. The secretary eventually gets off the phone and leaves the desk.
While they brace themselves for some sort of ambush or something, the secretary comes out with a tray with a pot of coffee and cups and things for the krewe while they wait. I can't remember who took any -- I think just Richard -- but I forgot to write that down for some reason. Ah well.
So the executive in charge of this branch, William Estrada, comes out and introduces himself. He leads them up to his office, which is large and decorated but not ostentatious -- trophies, pictures with celebrities, business awards, a bag of golf clubs in the corner. What you'd expect.
William tells them to have a seat and asks Kenneth what he's here for. Kenneth explains that he's following up on these companies that were eventually acquired by Meadows Mineral and Oil, and says it's for a case involving some acquired land. He's trying to find the original records of the land transfers and such. William makes a couple of calls real quick and determines that the originals are stored in a warehouse off-site but the basement records room should have copies on microfiche.
The executive gives them directions down to said records room and when they get down there a guy named Bob offers to help them. They dig out the necessary materials, and what the building has on file has been somewhat sanitized -- basic details, like dates and such, are there, but any and all context has been lost. Clearly Kenneth needs to find the originals. So he marches back up to William's office and the executive gives them the address of a warehouse out in Henderson.
So we do our 'spinning logo' cut to the krewe arriving out there, where a security guard lets them in and another guides them to the right spot in the warehouse full of boxes and crates and such. The security guard goes out to smoke and let them get at it, but the specific records he's after are missing. Conspicuously missing. He can even see signs in the dust where a box or crate was removed before they got there, and he rushes outside, thinking the guard has run off with it.
The guard's still out there, smoking, but Kenneth sees that one of the cars in the lot has dusty handprints on the trunk lid, and he goes over to take a closer look. The guard in the security booth comes out with his gun drawn, trying to warn them away from his car, suggesting that Kenneth's credentials are fake. The other guard, stuck in the middle, just panics and backs off.
Richard uses Marionette to pop the trunk on the car to reveal the box, and Kenneth steps forward to intimidate the confused man into backing down by telling the man that if he actually thinks the FBI badge is fake, then to pull the trigger... and it works. Kenneth takes the box back to his car and the krewe leaves without any further hassle. As they leave they see cop cars coming towards the warehouse, and Kenneth reaches out the window to flag one of the cars down. He quickly explains everything and the cop asks if he wants to press charges. He says he doesn't, but wants the cops to go there and take statements and act concerned and say they'll 'get the guy' and he wants to see what the boss does next.
The krewe takes the box of documents, some of them very old, and carefully go through it now that they have time. They find out what happened to Coyote's Cackle's people -- there's enough material to make it clear that Sandoval used Father Guerrero to provoke an incident from the local natives[4] which he could then use as an excuse to seize the land by force. Afterwards, the village was violently subjugated, with Coyote's Cackle imprisoned and forced to watch. And after that, he was hanged and shot.
As Kenneth reads this, trying to find the location of the unmarked mass grave of the locals who were killed fighting back (and where Coyote's Cackle himself was buried), at one point his hand is on the documents and five puncture marks appear in the paper about an inch or two from his fingertips, as if he's just unsheathed claws from his fingers. He takes pictures of all of the papers to make sure the information is preserved so he can use this material to pressure the courts to restore the land.[5] He also makes plans to have a monument built for the mass grave, and drives out there to see if he can get his geist to give him some names to put on the memorial.
(This completes Kenneth's final Remembrance, by the way, and the accompanying Synergy boost improves his relationship and ability to communicate with his geist.)
So next we decide to get some closure on Richard's remembrance, next. (A subject last visited a while ago) He waits for Kenneth to come back from his excursion so they can use Memoria to find more information.
It's mid-afternoon by this point, so they get out to the Hoover Dam where Lillian Loch apparently died. They wander around the public areas a bit and find what they're pretty sure is the spot where she went over the edge. Eddy loans Kenneth the detachable masks of his Memento from the hotel[6] so he can tap the Stillness Key for extra plasm. Kenneth, to get the resonance for the Key, sends Richard and Eddy back to the car so he can use Memoria alone. Since he can store the memory in the bottle and share it, that's not much of a drawback.
He sees Lillian and her fiancé Max at the tail end of their argument, and she storms off to stop and think. And then, close to the edge of the dam where there's a gap in the railing (which they can see has been fixed in the 'modern' day), she has some sort of seizure. She starts slapping her side and staggers towards the edge, and before she goes over the edge a bee comes out from her pocket or under her jacket. An allergic reaction to a bee sting at just the wrong time, with the bee just happening to be in her clothing? That's one hell of a freak accident, but definitely not a suicide.
A security guard tries to grab her, but he's not fast enough. Max rushes over and has a breakdown, but there's something oddly fast about it -- it seems sincere, but it's like he knew something was going to happen and he was hoping it wouldn't happen to her or so soon.
Kenneth stores in the memory in his bottle and takes it back to the car. He warns Richard as to what he's going to see and they head back to the hotel where Richard can safely peruse the memory, which he does. He wants to talk to Max before he does anything else, so looks him up in the phone book. He then asks Eddy to come along, partially-joking about needing him along to use Boneyard to traumatize him. He does think he might need some backup and/or extra intimidation factor, though, so he asks Eddy to come along (it's agreed that Kenneth deserves a bit of a break after everything). Besides, Rossi's tangled up in what happened to Lillian, and if they can get anything useful out of Max then so much the better.
And we leave off there, with Eddy and Richard on their way to the confrontation.
[0]-- Obviously she doesn't use this term with the characters, but for the record: 'Higher powers' = Exarchs.
[1]-- In other words, an Acanthus.
[2]-- If this seems like a really short series of takeovers, remember that this game takes place in 1951 in a region that's been sparsely populated and developed, in the era before casual hostile takeovers and such, when the US has actually held the land for just over a century. I mean, the Pinkertons existed as an independent company from 1850 to 1999 and still survives as a subsidiary of a larger company today.
[3]-- Cue basically everyone who's ever played Mage muttering "limited mana supply and Paradox" under their breath. However, those players don't exist on the same plane of existence as my sin-eaters, so...
[4]-- Said incident being the shaman shapeshifting into a coyote and ripping the priest's throat out, interpreted by the locals as the man having brought an animal with him into negotiations and sicced it on the priest.
[5]-- We all recognize this is the sort of thing that, even with these papers, is going to take years if not decades to resolve, so nobody's expecting a slam dunk on this.
[6]-- I can't remember if I mentioned this and I'm not going to look it up now, but when Eddy's player spent the XP to purchase the Memento he acquired from the pawn shop I made it worth it by letting him make it portable by carrying a piece of it with him.
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