What Was Found

Stage 5: What Was Found

AX.GHW.14.04.08

The Resolution | Aftermath, what the party built and what it cost | Confirm Connie's rest; follow the evidence forward; establish the relationships that will carry into future play

Immediate Priorities

Connie's Rest A Mediumship practitioner can confirm Connie's transition if they were present at the ceremony. The confirmation is the absence of her, the location no longer carries her presence, the Revenant profile is gone. If the party is not certain, they return to 14 Harmon Court: the weight of the building is different. The landing is just a landing. The thing that held that location has released.

If the Revenant collapsed in combat during a Path 3 resolution: watch the 1D6 hours. She does not reform. Her purpose was fulfilled in the resolution, even if the resolution was chaotic. She is done.

The Kapoor Investigation The EPA inquiry is live. Whether Kapoor faces criminal prosecution for Connie's murder depends on what the party surfaced and moved through channels: - The SD card provides the fraud case in full - Duchenne's testimony, if he cooperated, provides the foundation for a manslaughter/murder investigation into Connie's death - The physical evidence at 14 Harmon Court is available for forensic documentation if the party guided Baskin to it

None of this resolves in the course of this adventure. Justice is slower than a Revenant. The party has set it in motion. Whether it arrives is a question for ongoing play.

Marcus Chen His prognosis improves within 48 hours of Connie's rest. The connection between his coma and the Revenant's active state, the attack that produced it, held in some sense by the Revenant's continued presence, breaks when she is gone. He wakes. He does not have clear memory of the parking garage; he has the phone records, the emails, the copies of Connie's files that are now also in the party's hands. He will cooperate with Baskin when he is able.

Rewards

Wealth The Grimoire Compact pays for field documentation of a Revenant resolution, including the Mediumship interaction log, photographs of the murder site evidence, and the practitioner's account of the transition. Value: $800–1,200, paid through a research liaison who will be professionally interested in the Shadow trace element at 14 Harmon Court if the party reported it.

The BUA, if they were peripherally involved (any party member with BUA credentials or a contact there), pays for the incident report. Same tier.

Adaeze Reyes offers what she can. She is not wealthy. She can provide equipment or contacts at her discretion; she has been navigating this without resources for three years, which means she knows who to call when you need something quietly. She does not frame this as payment. It is not.

Equipment Carl Duchenne, if he cooperated, provides the party with copies of Kapoor's security files related to the "current situation", the records his team compiled in the ten days between the Okonkwo death and the groundbreaking. These files include reports of two other incidents KRD has been involved in covering up: incidents the party did not have context for during this adventure. They are hooks. They are also worth something to the Network, the Grimoire Compact, or the BUA as intelligence.

Relationships Detective Mira Baskin now knows the party exists and that they made something complicated work. She does not understand the full picture, she never will, or not yet, but she knows the resolution was more than standard detective work. She owes the party a professional debt, which she will not announce and will not forget. She becomes a recurring resource: access to active investigations, forensic information, official channels the party cannot reach alone.

Adaeze Reyes is grateful in the specific way of someone for whom three years of a particular weight has lifted. She tells the party, when the immediate aftermath has settled, one thing her sister told her weeks before her death: that KRD had a silent partner she had never met, represented by a law firm that Connie had only ever heard referred to as "the Circle." She didn't know what that meant. She still doesn't.

Jace Tully, if the party worked with him, logs this as a successful Network case and flags the party as capable. That flag matters for the kind of work the Network sends.

The Hook: What Else Was on the Card

The SD card contained something beyond the environmental fraud evidence. In a subfolder labeled Personal/Other: photographs from Connie's original environmental survey of 14 Harmon Court, taken during the initial site assessment before the project was canceled. Standard survey documentation, except three images that Connie marked with a note: "Pre-existing, pre-1960s, not covered by existing permits. Architecture team has no record."

The images show the concrete foundations of the building's basement level. On the walls, partially obscured by decades of grime: symbols carved directly into the poured concrete. Not graffiti. Not architectural notation. They are precise, geometric, and systematic, designed to cover the entirety of the basement perimeter at consistent intervals.

A character with Wit + Lore (Occult, Threshold 3) can identify them: Shadow containment markings. The function of these markings is to hold something in place, not the building, but something in or beneath the site. Something that has been held here for decades. The markings are old. They are still intact.

For now.

The demolition permit for 14 Harmon Court is valid. The demolition date is one week from now.

The party can: - Investigate the markings before demolition, tight clock, one week - Pass the information to the Grimoire Compact or allow it to reach the Sovereign Circle and observe who responds first - Ignore it and see what the demolition produces

The thread does not announce itself as urgent. It simply is: a building scheduled to come down, and markings in the basement that were put there to keep something contained, and no one alive who knows what that something is or whether it is still there.