NPCs

NPCs

AX.GHW.14.04.02

Connie Reyes (The Revenant)

Role: The central figure of the adventure, not the villain, not a monster, not an obstacle. A murdered woman who has returned because nothing else worked.

Appearance: Thirty-eight years old at death. Mixed Black and Latina. She looks like herself, which is part of what makes encountering her so unsettling, a Revenant that looks like a specific person rather than a decomposing corpse forces recognition. She wears what she died in: a dark blazer, slacks, shoes that were chosen for a meeting, not a fight. Her movement is deliberate and direct. She does not hurry. She does not need to.

In Encounters: The Revenant does not speak except once, under specific circumstances: if a party member attempts direct communication and she has reason to believe they understand what she is trying to accomplish, she will say one name. "Kapoor." That is all. A Mediumship practitioner who achieves communication at Threshold 2 (Clear) will receive more, not words, but intent: urgency, fury compressed into purpose, and beneath it something that reads as exhausted relief that someone is finally asking.

Motivation: Exposure and accountability. Not death, though she will kill if she reaches Kapoor without intervention. The party should feel the gap between what she deserves and what violence can provide, and understand that the gap is what the adventure is about.

Behavior Rule: Connie does not attack party members unprovoked. She does not harm civilians unless they are actively preventing her from reaching her purpose. She attacked Okonkwo and Chen because they had the truth and chose silence. She will not attack the party unless the party physically prevents her from reaching Kapoor at the groundbreaking. She is not a predator. She is moving toward something.

Mechanical Profile: Use the Revenant (Standard) stat block from AX.GHW.13.07 without modification. Full profile: Body 4D / Speed 2D / Wit 2D, Brawl 3D / Fortitude 2D / Notice 1D / Resolve 2D, Health 34 / Defense 2, Crushing Strike 7D (4–6 dmg) / Death Grip (Speed Save Threshold 3 or Grabbed) / Ignore Pain (1×/scene at 0 HP stays at 1 HP) / Unkillable (Temporarily): reforms in 1D6 hours after collapse.

Devraj Kapoor

Role: The antagonist. A living man who made a choice three years ago and has spent every day since constructing a life that does not require him to examine it.

Appearance: Late forties. South Asian. Expensively dressed in the way that communicates that money is not a concern. He is handsome in a managed way, gym membership, good tailoring, the specific polish of someone who has always understood that presentation is a form of argument. He is currently frightened, which shows as stillness rather than panic. He is very controlled.

Personality: Genuinely intelligent. Operates through relationships, he has always been better at managing people than at the technical details of his industry. He does not think of himself as a murderer. He thinks of himself as someone who made a necessary decision under pressure, and who has since built something real. He is not without conscience, he just has a very sophisticated system for not consulting it.

Motivation: Survival. The announcement of Harmon Tower was a miscalculation in retrospect, but he couldn't have known. He has brought in outside help, his security team, currently trying to figure out what is happening, but he hasn't told them the truth because telling them the truth means admitting what he did. He is managing a crisis with one hand tied behind his back.

Secret: He knows Connie is dead. He is not yet certain what is happening, but the wound patterns on Okonkwo's body, reported to him by Duchenne, are inconsistent with anything his security team can explain. He is starting to understand. He is more frightened than he appears.

In Encounters: If the party approaches him directly, he is smooth, deflective, and practiced at misdirection. He will not admit to anything unless presented with undeniable evidence and even then his first instinct is to reach for his lawyer. If the party reaches him with Connie's SD card and Duchenne's cooperation in hand, he breaks. It is not a dramatic break; it is quiet, the way people break when they finally stop running. He asks, once, if there is any version of this where he doesn't go to prison. There isn't.

Jace Tully

Role: Entry point for parties without institutional connection. Network-affiliated.

Appearance: Mid-forties, white, built like someone who has been in a lot of situations that required being built that way. He runs "Tully Paranormal Consulting" out of a converted office above a storage unit facility on the city's east side. The signage is legitimate. The work behind it is not, exactly.

Personality: Practical. He collects facts and passes them to people who can use them. He is not without warmth but he leads with competence. He has been doing this long enough to know that the supernatural problem is usually the second problem, the first problem is usually human.

What He Knows: Two violent deaths, both crushing injuries, no physical attacker on security footage. Both victims connected to KRD Development. The wound patterns in Okonkwo's preliminary forensics don't match any tool he can identify. He tipped off whoever is appropriate for the party's composition, BUA, Network, or direct.

What He Doesn't Know: The supernatural angle. He has the facts but not the framework yet. He was waiting for the party.

Adaeze Reyes

Role: Connie's younger sister. The human anchor of the investigation. She has been waiting three years for someone to take her seriously.

Appearance: Early thirties. Connie's sister, the resemblance is there if the party has seen photos. She carries a quality of sustained vigilance, the look of someone who has been paying attention for a long time in a context where paying attention hasn't helped yet.

Personality: Direct. She is not hostile to the party but she has been disappointed by enough investigators and officials that she will not extend automatic trust. She responds to people who demonstrate they are actually listening, not just going through motions. Once she decides the party is genuine, she becomes the most valuable source in the adventure.

What She Has: A file she has been building for three years. Photos from the original scene that Connie's family took before access was restricted. Communications between Connie and Kapoor in the weeks before her death, messages that show Connie frightened, then resolute, then gone. The name of the EPA analyst Connie had been talking to. The name of a law firm Connie mentioned once, in the last week before her death: "the Circle." Adaeze didn't know what it meant and still doesn't.

What She Wants: Her sister's killer to face what he did. She will help anyone working toward that. She will immediately withdraw from anyone working toward anything else.

Detective Mira Baskin

Role: Whitmore PD investigator. Veil-adjacent; she has seen things before. Not a threat to the party, but a potential complication or a potential asset depending on how the party handles her.

Appearance: Late forties. Sharp and unhurried. The kind of detective who looks like she's listening even when she's thinking. She has been in this city long enough to have seen three cases she couldn't explain. She has learned not to push on what she can't explain, which is different from not noticing.

Personality: Methodical. She is fair without being naive and skeptical without being dismissive. If the party gives her something she can use, she will use it. She will not ask questions she doesn't want the answers to, which is a kind of professional courtesy she extends selectively.

What She Has: The Okonkwo case. Wound assessment. Witness who heard the attack. Security footage of a blurred shape entering the building. Okonkwo's client files, KRD Development prominently featured. She has not yet connected this to the Chen attack (different precinct).

What She Will Do: If the party provides information she can act on, particularly Duchenne as a witness, she will open the Connie Reyes death investigation. She has the authority to do that if given cause. She will not thank the party for it in any formal way, but she will remember.

Carl Duchenne

Role: The original responding officer at Connie's death. Currently Kapoor's head of private security. The weakest link in Kapoor's chain of lies.

Appearance: Mid-fifties. Former cop in the way that never fully leaves; he still scans rooms, still positions himself with exits in view. He is not a physically small man but he carries himself as though he is trying to take up less space than he used to.

Personality: He is not a bad man who made a small mistake. He is a man who made a specific choice, was paid for it, and has been living inside that choice for three years. The events of the past ten days have made the walls of that choice very close. He knows what he saw. He knows what the wound patterns meant. He knows the pattern is contracting toward him.

What He Knows: Everything. The bruising on Connie's body was inconsistent with a fall. The staging was visible to anyone who was looking. He wrote a report that did not include what he saw. He accepted money from Kapoor's people afterward. He is now watching people connected to that night get killed and he is scared enough to be honest if given cover.

What He Needs to Talk: Official protection from what he's admitted to, some form of immunity or guarantee that cooperation reduces exposure. Alternatively: someone who approaches him as a person who made a mistake rather than a criminal. He is not proud of what he did. He will respond to that.

Skill Note: Wit + Persuade (Threshold 2) with an approach grounded in understanding rather than accusation. Wit + Intimidate (Threshold 2) with leverage gets the same information faster with less goodwill. The difference matters for the Baskin relationship downstream; she knows Duchenne, has opinions about how he should be treated, and will have questions about method.