The Groundbreaking
Stage 4: The Groundbreaking
AX.GHW.14.04.07
The Climax | Hybrid: Veil management + social + potential combat | Everything the party has built or failed to build arrives here simultaneously
Scene Setting
Harmon Tower construction site. 2pm, clear afternoon. A media platform has been assembled at the north end of the cleared lot. City council members are in the front row of guest seating; a state representative is in the second. Press cameras on raised platforms at the back. Two hundred guests standing behind rope guides, phones in hand. Kapoor is at the podium.
Kapoor's private security team is present: six personnel working the perimeter, Duchenne (if the party didn't turn him) near Kapoor, two additional guards at each access point. The configuration is designed for a successful event. It is maximally exposed.
The Revenant will arrive at the ceremony regardless of what the party has done. The only variable is what she does when she gets here.
The Three Simultaneous Pressures
1. Connie's Arrival She will come. If her purpose has been genuinely resolved before she arrives, evidence filed, Kapoor under formal legal investigation with an active warrant, the accountability mechanism in motion, she will appear at the site and she will not be violent. She will be present. A Mediumship practitioner can facilitate her transition: Wit + Mediumship (Clear, Threshold 2 if purpose is fully resolved; Threshold 3 if resolved but not yet fully in motion). The transition is quiet. She dissolves. It is not cinematic. It is the ending a person gets when the thing that held them here is finally done.
If her purpose has not been resolved: she will go for Kapoor. Directly. Through whatever is between them.
2. The Veil Two hundred people. Press cameras. City officials. This is the maximum Veil exposure scenario. A Revenant attacking someone in front of this crowd produces footage that cannot be explained and cannot be suppressed quickly enough to prevent distribution. The BUA can work a cover story afterward, but it will be messy, expensive in organizational capital, and require the party to spend goodwill they may need.
The party has two days of investigation behind them. Whether they spent those days moving or spent them cautiously determines whether the Veil catastrophe happens.
3. Kapoor If the party has been working, evidence filed, Baskin activated with Duchenne's cooperation, a journalist contact given the SD card, Kapoor may know by the time the ceremony begins that something is in motion. He may try to leave early. He may attempt to cancel the event. He may try to identify and approach the party if security has described them. If the party has been quiet enough that Kapoor doesn't know they're coming, they have the advantage of surprise.
Resolution Paths
Path 1: Justice Prepared
Condition: The party submitted Connie's evidence to the EPA and at least one journalist contact in advance. Baskin has been provided Duchenne's information and Duchenne has agreed to talk. The legal mechanisms are in motion.
By the time the ceremony begins, the story is moving. The EPA received the complaint and opened an inquiry. The journalist has the SD card and is making calls. Baskin has reached Duchenne and has enough to formally reopen Connie Reyes's death as a suspected homicide. There is no arrest warrant yet, these things take time, but the accountability mechanism is live and verifiable.
Connie appears at the ceremony. A Mediumship practitioner who approaches her, not intervening, but being present, can facilitate her transition with a Clear Wit + Mediumship roll (Threshold 2). The practitioner needs to tell her, in whatever form reaches her, what has been set in motion. What was found. What is happening to Kapoor now. The three-years-of-silence ending.
She does not respond with language. The transition is a dissolution; she does not fall, she does not collapse, she simply becomes less present and then absent. The landing where she died is, afterward, a clean room. The weight that the party felt in that building will not be there tomorrow.
Kapoor is still at the podium when this happens. He does not know what the party just did ten feet away. He finds out when Baskin calls his lawyer at 4pm.
Path 2: Confrontation In-Scene
Condition: The party has the evidence but did not move it through channels before the ceremony. They are arriving at the groundbreaking with the SD card in hand and no legal process in motion.
This path works. It is significantly harder.
The confrontation plays out with the party presenting the evidence publicly, stopping the event, forcing Kapoor to respond to the SD card in front of the press, leveraging the journalists already present to receive the evidence directly. This creates chaos. Baskin, if she was invited as a courtesy presence at a high-profile civic event (the GM can place her here), is present and can be pulled into an immediate investigative response. Duchenne, if he was turned, has an active decision to make when Kapoor looks at him across the crowd.
Veil pressure: high. Connie will arrive during the confrontation. The party is managing both a public exposure of Kapoor and a Revenant approaching the scene simultaneously. Mediumship to facilitate her transition under these conditions requires Threshold 3 (Strained, the noise of the crowd, the cameras, the chaos of a confrontation happening in real time around the practitioner).
The crowd response: confusion first, then phones up, then recording. The party needs someone managing the crowd vector while the principal actions proceed.
What makes this path viable: the journalists are already there. The evidence, given directly to them in front of witnesses, creates an immediate chain of custody that is harder to suppress than a quiet filing. The confrontation path produces a messier resolution but potentially a more public one, which, for Connie's purpose, may be what completes it.
Path 3: Incomplete Preparation
Condition: The party has the evidence but failed to move it through channels, and the confrontation was not planned; they arrived without a strategy and the situation is already live.
Connie arrives and moves toward Kapoor. The party must physically stop her, which requires putting themselves between her and her purpose and fighting a Revenant at full capacity in front of two hundred people and multiple camera operators.
This is survivable. It is not clean. Veil damage at this level requires active management in the aftermath, the BUA's media suppression resources are a call the party can make if they have the right relationships, but the call will cost something and the footage has already been taken. The groundbreaking ceremony becomes a chaos event in the press. There will be stories.
The fight: Connie at full standard profile (Health 34, Crushing Strike 7D, Death Grip, Ignore Pain). Security guards attempting to assist in ways that complicate rather than help. Civilians scattering. Duchenne, if present as an ambivalent Kapoor employee, watching and choosing in real time whether to intervene and which side he's on.
Kapoor's security guards: 2–3 personnel on site, at Minion tier.
KAPOOR SECURITY GUARD (Minion)
Body 2D | Speed 2D | Wit 1D
Health: 27 (20 + Body 2 + Minion modifier 5)
Defense: 1
Brawl 1D | Firearms 2D
Combat: they draw at first sign of threat and attempt to contain the situation they cannot understand. They stop if Kapoor is removed from the scene or gives a direct order to stand down. They are doing their job. They are not villains.
Resolving the Revenant in this path requires either getting Kapoor under formal legal process during the chaos (Baskin on-site, evidence in hand, someone connecting the pieces in real time) or performing a Sacred Fire compelled-rest: Wit + Sacred Fire (Threshold 3), requirement being that the purpose must be genuinely resolved; this cannot be faked. If Kapoor is arrested on-site based on the evidence, the purpose is resolved. Connie's rest follows.
Failure State: The Party Does Nothing
If the party arrives at the groundbreaking with no evidence submitted, no Duchenne cooperation, no journalist contact, and no plan: Connie attacks Kapoor. She moves through the security perimeter without acknowledgment. She reaches Kapoor at the podium. She does not kill him in the first moment; she wants him to understand, and she does not have words for that. But she will not stop. The footage goes everywhere.
This is a failure state but not an ending. The adventure continues in the aftermath: the BUA arrives in force, the story becomes a media crisis, Kapoor is in the hospital with crushing injuries, and the party now has to manage Veil reconstruction while the investigation continues, Connie has not achieved her purpose, because Kapoor facing a supernatural attack is not accountability, and she will try again. The hooks extend forward.