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The Attorney's Office

Stage 1: The Attorney's Office

AX.GHW.14.04.04

The Test | Combat with investigation opening | Establish the Revenant as a category; introduce the investigation; teach that purpose shapes behavior

Scene Setting

The party arrives at Sarah Okonkwo's law office between 10pm and midnight, whatever timing works for the party's entry point. Police tape on the outer door. The main investigation is wrapping up; a single forensics technician is finishing evidence documentation in the main conference room. Baskin is either present, conducting a final walk-through, or departed minutes ago and reachable.

The outer office has been examined. The reception desk, the conference room, the senior partners' offices, all cleared. The file room at the back of the suite has not been fully processed yet; the forensics technician hasn't reached it.

When the party reaches the file room:

The room is undisturbed except for one thing. The drawers of a single filing cabinet, third from the left, second row, have been pulled. Files are on the floor, spread as though someone moved through them systematically and stopped. The name on the cabinet drawer that was pulled: HARMON COURT, K-R.

Something is in the room. It is standing at the open cabinet, moving through files with the methodical focus of someone who knows what they're looking for and has not found it yet. It does not acknowledge the party's entrance.

First Encounter: The Revenant

Give the party one full round of observation before the Revenant responds to them. What they see:

  • A woman in business dress, back to the door
  • Moving with purpose, not searching, not browsing, but moving through specific files
  • No sound except the quiet motion of paper

Characters with Psychic Sensitivity (Haunt, Dhampir, or Faeborn lineage): they know immediately, without a roll. The person in this room is not alive. This is not a presence that reads as threatening so much as it reads as wrong, not wrong like something alien, but wrong like something that has stayed past the time it was supposed to leave.

Wit + Notice (Threshold 2): The figure does not breathe. Its movement is economical in a way that suggests it does not experience fatigue or uncertainty. It is looking for something specific.

Wit + Lore (Occult, Threshold 2): The wound patterns described in Baskin's initial report, crushing force, no tool marks, are consistent with a returned corpse. Revenants. The dead come back with singular purpose. They do not stop.

The critical moment: If the party does not move to stop the Revenant or stand between it and the filing cabinet, it completes its search within two rounds, does not find the folder it wants (the 14 Harmon Court file has already been taken into evidence by Baskin), and turns to leave. If the party attempts to stop it, physically, vocally, by getting between it and the cabinet, it registers them as an obstacle and responds.

This is the teaching moment. A Revenant is not a predator. It is not interested in the party. The only reason it would harm them is if they stand between it and its purpose. Whether the party understands this determines how the first encounter goes.

If Combat Occurs

The Revenant engages whoever is blocking its path. It does not pursue characters who move clear of the filing cabinet. It uses Death Grip to remove the immediate obstacle, not to engage a sustained fight.

The Revenant cannot be permanently destroyed here. When reduced to 0 HP, it collapses. Ignore Pain may trigger once before that point (staying at 1 HP). When it collapses, it does not reform for 1D6 hours, enough time for the party to examine the scene thoroughly before needing to worry about it again.

After the collapse: The body on the floor is unmistakably the body of a dead person, not decomposed, but not alive. The face, if the party has been doing their research, will later match photos of Connie Reyes. This is the second moment of teaching: they have put her down, and she is not destroyed.

What the Scene Provides

The party should be able to leave Stage 1 with at least two of the following three pieces of information. The third is available with minimal effort.

Physical, The File It Wanted: Once the party understands what the Revenant was searching for, examining the open drawer is a Wit + Notice roll at Threshold 1, the folder pulled furthest out before the search stopped is labeled KRD DEVELOPMENT / HARMON COURT COMPLIANCE. This folder is not in the drawer, it is on a "transferred to active investigation" list clipped to the drawer face. Baskin has it. The folder that was here contained environmental compliance filings for 14 Harmon Court. The Revenant came back for a paper file that is no longer here. That tells the party two things: it came here with specific purpose, and the specific purpose connects to that property.

Investigation, The Body: The forensics technician has preliminary findings if the party has credentials or a plausible reason to be here. Wit + Medicine (Threshold 2), examining Okonkwo's available wound documentation: crushing force consistent with an extremely strong humanoid, but no tool marks, no secondary bruising patterns from anything gripped, no footwear impressions consistent with weight transfer. The skin at the impact sites is preserved in a way inconsistent with normal blunt-force injury. This is not a living attacker using a weapon. The phrasing a character with relevant Lore would use: returned dead.

Perception, The Framed Photo: On the wall of the file room, a location typically ignored in office investigations because file rooms are not social spaces, a framed photo shows three people at a ribbon-cutting: a woman in a hard hat (the party won't recognize her yet), Okonkwo in formal dress, and Kapoor. The photo is dated and labeled on the back: 14 Harmon Court, site certification, 4 years ago. The third person at that ribbon-cutting will be identifiable as Connie Reyes when the party pulls company records in Stage 2.

Foreshadowing Placed Here

In Okonkwo's hand: A single dark hair, discovered with a careful examination of the body's documentation (Wit + Notice, Threshold 2, or access to the forensics report). Not Okonkwo's. Evidence of contact with whoever, whatever, attacked her. This hair is Connie's. DNA analysis would eventually confirm this, but that is not the party's timeline.

In the conference room: Okonkwo's open calendar from the week before her death. Three entries flagged "KRD, urgent." The most recent: Dev K, status review. The entry was written in red, which is not how Okonkwo normally marked calendar items.