Starter Adventure — Old Business

AX.GHW.14.04 - Old Business

A Starter Adventure

Overview

Premise: A woman was murdered three years ago. Her killer walked free, built an empire, and is about to break ground on a luxury development. She has come back to finish what the legal system wouldn't. In two days, she will be in front of two hundred cameras. The party's job is to understand what she wants, decide whether she's right, and find a way to end this that doesn't tear the Veil open in front of a live press corps.

Primary Plot: Revelation (5-3), Interrogator: the evidence. Seeker: the party. Problem: what happened to Connie Reyes, and whether the party can give her what she's owed before she takes it herself.

Secondary Plot Hook: Clock (5-4), Two days until the Harmon Tower groundbreaking ceremony. The Revenant will be there. The party's choices between now and then determine what that looks like.

Party Level: 9D generation package (Regional, standard)

Session Length: 2–3 sessions

Organizations Featured: The Network (entry point), Bureau of Unusual Affairs (peripheral, may be present), Grimoire Compact (research resource), Sovereign Circle (background only, hooks for future play)

Setting: Contemporary American city, a downtown law office, a hospital, an abandoned suburban property, a corporate office park, and an open-air construction site

Tone: Investigative horror with moral weight. This is not a combat adventure. The central question is whether a murdered woman can get justice, and whether the party is willing to do the work to make that happen. The Revenant is not the antagonist. The antagonist is a living man who has spent three years making sure accountability never arrived.

What this adventure introduces: - The Revenant as a category: purposeful, unkillable by conventional means, not a predator - The three-clue structure in practice across a multi-thread investigation - Veil pressure as a clock, one catastrophic event at the end if the party fails to move - Mediumship as investigation tool, not just combat support - The difference between supernatural resolution and legal/institutional resolution, and why the party needs both

Time estimate: 2–3 sessions, 3–4 hours each.

Background

This section is for the GM. Do not share it with players.

What Happened

Six years ago, Devraj Kapoor and Constance "Connie" Reyes co-founded KRD Development in Whitmore. Kapoor brought the capital and the political connections; Connie brought environmental consulting expertise and the operational groundwork that made the company legitimate. They were not friends, but they were effective partners.

Three years ago, KRD's flagship project, a mixed-use commercial development at 14 Harmon Court, ran into a problem. Connie's environmental surveys found soil contamination serious enough to require remediation that would make the project economically unviable. Kapoor had already committed to a timeline. He had political obligations. He had people expecting deliverables.

He had the reports falsified. He hired an outside firm to produce clean documentation and buried Connie's originals.

Connie found out. She had been talking to an EPA analyst. She had been quietly copying files. In the weeks before her death, her communications with Kapoor show a woman who was frightened but not backing down.

On a Tuesday night in November, Kapoor met Connie at the vacant 14 Harmon Court property under the pretense of negotiating. He pushed her down the main staircase. He staged the scene as an accidental fall. The responding officer, Carl Duchenne, noted bruising inconsistencies in his original report. He never pursued them. He was paid not to. He now runs Kapoor's private security.

Connie was ruled an accident. Kapoor bought out her estate's shares at below-market value within thirty days. KRD moved on.

For three years: nothing. Connie stayed dead.

Then Kapoor announced Harmon Tower, a luxury residential development at a different site, with a public groundbreaking ceremony in two days. The announcement of that ceremony triggered something. Connie has returned as a Revenant.

Why Now

A Revenant's anchor is its unresolved purpose. For three years, Connie's purpose had no active vector, Kapoor was running a company, staying quiet, living well. Then he stood in front of cameras and announced he was doing it again: building something new, at a new address, with the same apparatus of fraud and connections that buried her. The announcement reignited her purpose with a specific time and place attached.

There is a secondary reason, which the party may or may not discover. The site at 14 Harmon Court was previously used by the Sovereign Circle, a shadow compact practitioner organization, for decades of ritual work. The contamination Connie found was not only industrial. The site's foundations carry residual Shadow trace material. When Connie died at that site, the Shadow resonance in the location amplified her anchor. Her return was cleaner and more purposeful than most Revenants because she was anchored to a site that had been used to hold things that did not want to let go. This detail is a hook for future play, not a required discovery in this adventure.

What the Revenant Has Done

In the ten days since her return, Connie has attacked two people:

Sarah Okonkwo, Kapoor's general counsel, dead. Found in her office three days ago with crushing injuries consistent with extreme blunt force. No attacker on security footage. Okonkwo knew about the falsified environmental reports. She said nothing for three years.

Marcus Chen, Kapoor's executive assistant, in the hospital in a coma. Found in the parking garage two nights ago. Chen copied Connie's original evidence files to a personal account years ago "just in case." He told Adaeze Reyes (Connie's sister) that he still had those files. Connie found out he had talked and hadn't acted.

The Revenant's Purpose

Kapoor must face genuine consequences, criminal prosecution, professional destruction, or death. The environmental contamination evidence must reach public record. Both conditions must be met. Neither alone is sufficient.

Connie was a person before she was a Revenant. Her purpose is not revenge for its own sake. It is the specific unfinished business of a woman who tried to do the right thing through legitimate channels, was murdered for it, and watched the legitimate channels bury that too. What she wants is accountability. The party can give it to her, if they move.

What's Coming

In two days, Kapoor holds the groundbreaking ceremony for Harmon Tower. Press, cameras, city council members, approximately two hundred guests at an open-air construction site. Connie will be there regardless of what the party does. If her purpose has been resolved by then, she will appear but will not act violently, a Mediumship practitioner can facilitate her transition on-site. If her purpose has not been resolved, she will go for Kapoor. Directly. Through whatever is in her way.

NPCs

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.

Key Locations

Sarah Okonkwo's Office (Stage 1)

Downtown, 14th floor of a commercial tower. A law firm with real estate as its primary practice. The office has the specific look of institutional success, clean, expensive, impersonal. The kind of space that projects competence rather than warmth.

The scene when the party arrives: police tape on the outer door, investigation winding down, Baskin present or recently departed. The body has been removed but the scene has not been fully cleared.

The file room is at the back of the suite, past three offices and a conference room. Floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets, organized by client. Forty years of a practice. The specific smell of a file room, paper, metal, recirculated air.

Whitmore PD / The Hospital (Stage 2)

The Okonkwo investigation runs through Baskin at Whitmore PD's downtown precinct, third floor, open bullpen, a detective's desk that is professionally organized in a way that communicates nothing. Marcus Chen is two miles away at St. Ambrose Medical Center, fourth floor ICU, Room 412. The party may visit both; they do not provide the same information.

14 Harmon Court (Stage 3)

A two-story commercial property in a transition neighborhood, the kind of block that was industrial thirty years ago, is vacant now, and is scheduled to become something else in six months. The building is structurally sound but empty. A demolition permit was filed two weeks ago. The permit paperwork lists the demolition contractor as a firm with ties to Kapoor.

From the street: standard commercial building, boarded ground-floor windows, a chain-link fence with a padlock that is not hard to bypass. Inside: the smell of a building that has been empty a long time, dust and cold concrete and the particular flatness of air that has not moved. Nothing has been disturbed in years. The second floor is accessible via the main staircase.

The landing at the top of the main staircase is the location of Connie's death. The building carries residual weight that characters with Psychic Sensitivity detect without a roll; it is not threatening, exactly, but it is saturated. A character with Psychic Sensitivity (Haunt, Dhampir, or Faeborn lineage) perceives it as a place where something did not end cleanly, the way a wound site carries memory in the body.

KRD Development Offices (Stage 3, optional research thread)

A mid-rise in the city's professional district. Glass and steel, late 2000s construction. KRD's offices occupy the ninth floor. The company's public-facing presence is confident and current, new development announcements, a lobby display showing Harmon Tower renders. There is a receptionist who is friendly and a PR coordinator who is efficient and nothing in the publicly accessible space that acknowledges the company's founding.

The company history is better accessed via public records and Lore research than by walking into the building, Kapoor's people will note any unusual visitors.

Harmon Tower Construction Site (Stage 4)

A cleared lot three blocks from the waterfront. The groundbreaking ceremony is set for 2pm in two days: a platform with a podium, a row of seats for officials, a general standing area for guests, and media risers at the back. The site is bounded by temporary fencing. There are two access points, the main gate at the front and a contractor access point at the side.

For the groundbreaking: city council members, a state representative, journalists from three outlets, photographers, and approximately two hundred guests. Kapoor's private security team (eight personnel, including Duchenne) will be on-site. The configuration is designed for maximum visibility. It is the worst possible location for a Revenant encounter and Connie knows that, which is exactly why she is coming.

Stage 1: The Attorney's Office

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.

Stage 2: Following the Thread

The Contemplation | NPC Interaction / Investigation, multiple simultaneous threads | Identify the Revenant, establish her purpose, understand the shape of what happened

Overview

Stage 2 is the investigation. The party has the Revenant's behavior (purposeful, connected to 14 Harmon Court), the wound profile (returned dead), and the KRD Development connection. They need three things to proceed usefully into Stage 3: the Revenant's identity, the connection to Connie Reyes, and the understanding that 14 Harmon Court is where answers live.

Three parallel threads. All three lead to the same facts by different routes. The party does not need to complete all three; they need enough of any of them to proceed with clarity.

One day has passed since the Okonkwo death. One day remains before the groundbreaking.

Thread A - The Okonkwo Investigation (Detective Baskin)

Access: A party character with Law Enforcement credentials, BUA identification, or a successful Wit + Persuade (Threshold 2) framed as professional courtesy will get Baskin's professional attention. Giving her something she doesn't have, the entity-type identification from Stage 1 wound analysis, shifts her from territorial to cooperative.

What Baskin Has: - Okonkwo's client file for the past six months: heavy real estate work, KRD Development prominent throughout the past two years - A witness from the floor below who heard "something like a heavy piece of furniture being moved, for about thirty seconds, around 2am", the right timeframe, wrong framing - Security footage from the building lobby showing a blurred figure entering through a side door that was found locked from the inside when the building was swept after the alarm. Not a camera glitch, the blur is the figure. The footage timestamp confirms 1:47am - The 14 Harmon Court compliance folder that the Revenant was looking for, Baskin pulled it as part of the KRD file sweep. She hasn't had time to read it fully. It is environmental filings. She does not yet know they matter

The Exchange: If the party can identify the entity type (returned dead, specific wound profile, purposeful behavior) and connect it to the KRD thread, Baskin will share the folder. She will also share her working theory, which is currently an exceptionally strong individual with access to the building and a connection to Okonkwo's client work, and allow the party to upgrade it.

What the Party Gets: The name KRD Development as the central thread. The compliance folder confirms 14 Harmon Court environmental filings were a matter of significant legal attention. The witness account gives a duration: thirty seconds. That is not long enough for a human attack with those injuries. Baskin will note this if the party doesn't.

Thread B: Marcus Chen (St. Ambrose Medical Center, ICU)

Access: Chen is in a coma. His room is accessible during visiting hours with minimal challenge, no one is monitoring who visits an assault victim. His personal effects (phone, laptop in a laptop bag near the bed) are present because the original assault happened in a parking garage and there was no obvious reason to treat his electronics as evidence.

Technical Access (Wit + Tech, Threshold 2): Chen's phone is unlocked (fingerprint bypass on a comatose patient is straightforward for a tech-capable character). His most recent text thread with Kapoor is visible: increasingly frantic messages from Kapoor over the past two weeks, culminating in delete everything related to CR. all of it. now., sent four days before Chen's attack. CR are Connie Reyes's initials.

His personal email has a sent folder that includes files forwarded to a personal account four years ago from the KRD company server: environmental compliance documentation, labeled in Connie Reyes's file naming convention. He made copies and has been holding them for four years.

Mediumship Access (Clear, Wit + Mediumship, Threshold 2): A practitioner who establishes contact with Chen's unconscious mind does not get words. They get images: a parking garage. A figure approaching from a distance that grows very fast. And a phrase that surfaces with the quality of a recent memory, something said into a phone, "I already told her. Connie's sister called me again last week. I told her I still had them." He'd told someone he had the files. That someone told Kapoor. Kapoor texted delete everything. Three days later, Connie came for Chen.

Alternative Access (Chen's mother): His emergency contact is his mother, reachable via the hospital. She is distressed and cooperative. Her account: Marcus called her the night before his attack, upset. He said something about "that dead woman's sister calling him again. The one from the company." He sounded guilty and scared. He said he was going to call Kapoor.

What the Party Gets: The Okonkwo death and the Chen attack are connected. Both were people who knew the truth about Connie Reyes and chose silence. The Revenant is not random; it is conducting a list. CR connects to a dead co-founder. 14 Harmon Court connects to both. And Chen called Kapoor, which means Kapoor knew Chen was a vulnerability the night before the attack.

Thread C: The Company History

Research (Lore, Threshold 2, or standard internet/library access): KRD Development was founded six years ago by Devraj Kapoor and Constance "Connie" Reyes. Reyes died three years ago, accidental fall at a property the company was developing. Kapoor bought out her estate's shares at significantly below market value within thirty days of her death. The company has continued to grow. Harmon Tower is their third major project.

Death Record (Lore or research, Threshold 1): Connie Reyes, death ruled accidental. Filed by responding officer Carl Duchenne. Location: 14 Harmon Court.

Adaeze Reyes (accessible via the death record's next-of-kin listing): Connie's younger sister. She will not turn away investigators who contact her with a genuine interest in her sister's death; she has been waiting for that call for three years.

What Adaeze provides when the party has established credibility (Wit + Persuade, Threshold 2, or honest conversation about what they've found): - Scene photos from the days after Connie's death, taken by the family before the property was formally restricted. Two photos show the landing clearly. A character with Wit + Medicine (Threshold 2) examining the photos can confirm: the scuff marks on the landing wall are at the wrong angle for a fall. The bruising pattern on the landing surface is inconsistent with a solo fall from walking speed. - Communications between Connie and Kapoor from the weeks before her death. Connie was frightened. She was also clear about what she'd found and what she was going to do about it. The final message from Connie: "I've spoken to the EPA. I've made copies. This is your last chance to do this right." Kapoor did not respond. - The name Connie mentioned once, weeks before her death: a law firm she'd heard described as "the Circle." A silent partner she'd never met. She didn't know what it meant.

What the Party Gets: Connie Reyes's name. Her role as Kapoor's co-founder. Her death at 14 Harmon Court, the location the Revenant was connected to. The shape of what happened: a woman who found something, tried to do the right thing, and was killed for it. The Revenant is Connie Reyes.

By the End of Stage 2

The party should know: - The Revenant is Connie Reyes, dead three years, murdered by Kapoor at 14 Harmon Court - She attacked Okonkwo and Chen because both knew the truth and chose silence - Her death is connected to falsified environmental reports at 14 Harmon Court - 14 Harmon Court is the next location; it is where she died and where the answers are - The groundbreaking is tomorrow

Stage 3: 14 Harmon Court

The Twist | Revelation: environment + discovery | The party finds the evidence and encounters Connie's purpose directly

Scene Setting

The party reaches 14 Harmon Court, the vacant property, the place of Connie's death, scheduled for demolition in one week. Chain-link fence, padlocked gate, boards on the ground-floor windows. The building is accessible with minimal effort. No one is supposed to be here.

From the moment they enter: the quality of the building presses against characters with Psychic Sensitivity. Not threat, not danger, but weight. The air inside is cold in a way that is not entirely atmospheric. A Haunt character perceives it as a location that holds the shape of what happened here. A Faeborn character with True Seeing registers something layered in the foundation, old, below the surface reading, not from the recent death but from something much older underneath it. A character with Mediumship (passive, no roll required) feels the space as saturated: this is a place where something anchored.

This is residual Shadow trace from the Sovereign Circle's prior use of the site. It does not activate. It does not threaten the party. It simply is, a texture to the building that makes everything that happened here feel louder than it would at a clean location.

What the Party Finds

1. The Location of Connie's Death

The main staircase landing is on the second floor. The floor here is concrete under old industrial carpeting. A character who examines the landing carefully, Wit + Notice (Threshold 2), or just looking in the right place, finds:

• A stain on the carpet near the top step, partially cleaned with something that did not fully work. Old blood. Three years old.
• Scuff marks on the landing wall, at shoulder height, on the wrong side for someone falling forward down a staircase. These marks are consistent with someone being pushed from behind and reaching for the wall.
• A partial palm print in the wall plaster, preserved under decades of surface grime that was not disturbed by the cleaning attempt. The angle of the print is consistent with someone catching themselves, not landing.

This is not evidence in a legal sense, three years old, not collected, chain of custody nonexistent. But it confirms what happened. This is where Connie Reyes was murdered.

2. The SD Card

The second floor has a room that was used as an office during the building's commercial period, desk impressions in the carpet, conduit stubs where workstations were wired. Under a loose floorboard in the southeast corner, Wit + Notice (Threshold 2) to find the floorboard without a specific search; Threshold 1 if the party is actively looking for something hidden, a waterproof case sealed with tape. Inside: an SD card in a protective sleeve, labeled in small handwriting: EC - HCC.

Environmental Compliance, Harmon Court Copy.

The card contains: - The original soil contamination survey results from Connie's environmental assessment, unedited, with her professional digital signature and timestamps - A folder containing KRD's edited "clean" versions of the same reports, with tracked changes that show who made the edits and when - A voice recording: Kapoor's voice, unmistakably, telling Connie: "This project has already been approved and there is nothing you are going to do about it. These documents exist only in my possession now. Not yours." He is wrong about the second part.

This card is the evidence. It establishes the fraud in full legal detail. Combined with the original death record, the physical evidence at this location, and a witness who can speak to what happened, Duchenne, it is enough to support a criminal investigation into both the environmental fraud and Connie's death.

3. The Mediumship Reading

A practitioner who enters the landing where Connie died and attempts to receive the residue of events can, with a Wit + Mediumship roll (Clear, Threshold 2), perceive the event trace: the fall, the hands pushing, the face of the person pushing. It is not a clear image, event residue never is, but it is specific. Kapoor's face. The argument before it. Connie reaching the landing and turning to face him.

At Threshold 4 (Strained, or a second attempt): the reading extends further, the argument itself. Connie has said something that produced genuine fear in Kapoor before he pushed her. The phrase that surfaces: "The Sovereign Circle already owns you, Dev. I've seen the contract." This is a fragment, not context. Whether Connie was right, was wrong, or was partly right about something she didn't fully understand, that question is for future play. The Sovereign Circle does not appear in this adventure. The detail plants itself here and waits.

The Revenant Appears

At some point during Stage 3, at the GM's discretion, most effectively after the party has found the SD card but before they've left, Connie arrives. She does not enter dramatically. She is simply in the building, in the way of Revenants: present because this is where she is anchored.

She does not approach the party. She does not move to attack. She stands on the landing where she died and she is looking at them.

If a party member is holding the SD card: she looks at that character. Just that. No language in her posture for most characters to read; it requires empathy and context to understand what it means. A character with Mediumship who attempts communication (Clear, Wit + Mediumship, Threshold 2): two words, transmitted with the weight of three years: "Finish it."

This is the moment of the adventure that the players should feel. They are holding what she died for. She knows they have it. She is asking them to do what she couldn't.

The Kapoor Security Team

Carl Duchenne has been watching 14 Harmon Court since the Chen attack. Kapoor ordered it; he is beginning to understand that Connie's ghost, metaphorical or literal, is moving through his organization's vulnerabilities, and 14 Harmon Court is where her death happened. Whatever is happening, Kapoor suspects it connects to this place.

Duchenne is here with two private security guards when the party arrives. They were there first, which means the party either bypasses them to enter (Wit + Stealth, Threshold 2) or encounters them at the entry point. Duchenne recognizes the building for what it is; he was the responding officer here, he knows this address, he has been here before. He knows exactly what the party might find inside.

The Confrontation with Duchenne

Whether this happens outside before the party enters, inside during the search, or at the exit after the SD card is found, it is the same conversation. Duchenne needs to be turned from Kapoor's employee to a usable witness.

He is already at the edge. The recent deaths, the wound patterns Kapoor has described to him, the weight of what he's been carrying; he is a man who is scared enough to do the right thing if someone gives him a path to do it. The path is: protection. Formal cooperation with Baskin, which requires someone to facilitate the introduction. Duchenne cannot call Baskin himself; he's been working for Kapoor and the conflict of interest is too exposed. He needs the party to serve as the conduit.

Wit + Persuade (Threshold 2), approach grounded in understanding: Duchenne gives everything, the original report, the details he omitted, the name of the person who paid him, the amount. He asks once if Kapoor will find out. The answer is eventually yes, which he accepts.

Wit + Intimidate (Threshold 2), approach using the SD card as leverage: Same outcome, faster. Less goodwill. Baskin will later ask the party how they got to Duchenne, and she will have thoughts.

Failure (not getting to Threshold): Duchenne stalls and returns to Kapoor. He is not present at the groundbreaking as an ally. The Kapoor security team at the ceremony is hostile to the party rather than ambivalent.

What the Party Leaves With

After Stage 3, the party holds: the SD card with the original evidence, direct knowledge of the murder site, a Mediumship reading that confirms Kapoor pushed Connie, and Duchenne as either a turned witness or a closed door. They have the tools to resolve this. The question now is whether they use them before the groundbreaking begins.

Stage 4: The Groundbreaking

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.

Stage 5: What Was Found

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.

GM Notes

Running the Revenant as a Non-Villain

Connie Reyes is not the antagonist of this adventure. Kapoor is. The party's job is to understand Connie's purpose and help her achieve it, not to destroy her, not to contain her, but to do what every institution in this city failed to do: take what she found seriously.

GMs should resist the instinct to play her as a monster. She was a person. In a meaningful sense, she still is. Her attacks on Okonkwo and Chen were not random violence; they were focused on people who had the truth and chose silence. That is a moral act, if a brutal one. When the party encounters her, she should feel like a person who has been failed by every mechanism that was supposed to work, who did something drastic because she had no other path. She is terrifying in the encounter not because she is monstrous but because she is comprehensible.

The most effective way to run Connie in encounters: slow, purposeful, and without threat display. She does not posture. She does not warn. She is simply moving toward something and the party is either with her or in her way.

The Three-Clue Rule in Practice

Before running, map which clues the party is likely to find versus likely to miss. The SD card is the most direct resolution tool; it converts the investigation into a legal case immediately. But it is not required. Duchenne's testimony alone, combined with the physical evidence at 14 Harmon Court and Adaeze's file, supports the same resolution.

If the party misses all three routes to a critical fact, use the safety valve: Jace Tully surfaces the missing piece as a Network research pull. The three-clue rule means the story does not stop because of one bad roll or one unexplored thread.

Track which facts the party holds at the end of Stage 2. They need to reach Stage 3 knowing: the Revenant's identity, the connection to 14 Harmon Court, and that the site is where the answers are. If any of these are missing, route a Stage 2 NPC to supply them, Adaeze will call the party if they gave her contact information and haven't followed up; Baskin will note the connection between the Okonkwo case and the three-year-old accidental death on the same KRD property if she's been given reason to look.

Carl Duchenne

Duchenne is the most mechanically important NPC in this adventure; he is the path from the evidence to a legal outcome. Run him as a man who has been waiting for someone to give him a reason to do the right thing without it destroying him completely. He has been paid for silence, which means he knew the price of silence and accepted it. He is not comfortable with that. He is more uncomfortable now.

The approach method matters. A party that comes to Duchenne with understanding, acknowledging that a scared cop made a bad call under pressure, offering him a path through that does not require complete self-destruction, will find him cooperative and ultimately relieved. A party that comes with leverage will get the same information and leave him humiliated. Baskin will have opinions about this. Not stated opinions, Baskin is professional, but she will remember when the party needs something from her later.

Do not let Duchenne be a simple obstacle. He is a specific kind of compromised person: not fully corrupted, not fully innocent, genuinely frightened by what has happened since. The events of the past ten days have made what he covered up feel much more real than it did three years ago when it was paperwork.

The Veil at the Groundbreaking

The party has two days. That is enough time to avoid the catastrophic public exposure scenario if they move with purpose. If they spend Stage 2 cautiously, taking their time, building a complete picture before acting, they may reach the groundbreaking with the evidence in hand but nothing submitted. This is a real consequence of pacing choices, not a puzzle the GM should solve for them.

The chaotic resolution path (Path 3 or the failure state) is harder and messier but not a campaign-ending outcome. The BUA's media suppression resources are substantial, they exist precisely for this category of incident, but calling on them costs organizational capital and creates a debt the party will need to address. Treat the aftermath of a failed Veil containment as a campaign thread, not a punishment. The world noticed. What do the people who noticed do with it?

Scaling

Street Level (6D generation package): The Revenant's Death Grip poses serious risk to underprepared characters. Add a practical mitigation at the Stage 1 encounter: a line of salt across the file room doorway, placed by a previous investigator who recognized the threat type (an older Network contact who got there first and left without engaging). The salt line buys the party a round or two to observe before the Revenant can exit. Reduce Crushing Strike to 5D and remove Ignore Pain for this tier. The investigation difficulty is unchanged; only the combat profile is adjusted.

National (12D generation package): The Sovereign Circle sends a representative to observe the groundbreaking, the Shadow trace at 14 Harmon Court is known to them, and the pending demolition has attracted internal attention. The representative is not hostile. They are assessing whether the containment markings in the basement require maintenance before demolition breaks them, an assessment that does not include informing the party. This representative has their own objectives and will not appreciate supernatural disruption of a civic event before the Circle has determined their exposure. The party now has a third party with an unknown agenda operating at the climax. Whether they are a resource, a complication, or an obstacle depends on how the party handles the encounter.

NPC Reference

Connie Reyes (Revenant), Full mechanical profile from AX.GHW.13.07 (Standard tier). Does not speak except under Mediumship communication; will say the name "Kapoor" once if addressed directly. Does not attack party members unless physically blocked from her purpose. Singular Purpose: the accountability of Devraj Kapoor and the public record of the environmental fraud.

Devraj Kapoor, Human. Not statted for combat, he has security. Key Talents: Persuade 4D, Deceive 4D. Will not confess without undeniable evidence. Will bargain if given a path that reduces exposure. That path does not exist.

Jace Tully, Human (Network-affiliated). Treat as an information source and organizational contact, not a combatant. Key Talents: Lore (Occult) 3D, Notice 3D, Persuade 3D. Pays out of Network budget at standard rates for field documentation.

Adaeze Reyes, Human (civilian). Not statted. Provides evidence, emotional grounding, and access to three years of personal documentation. Requires trust before sharing full file. Will not help a party that treats her sister as a puzzle rather than a person.

Detective Mira Baskin, Human (Whitmore PD). Treat as a Wit-primary NPC with authority rather than combat capability. Key Talents: Notice 5D, Interrogation 4D, Lore (Law) 3D. Has seen things that she doesn't explain. Will cooperate with the party if given professional courtesy and something she can use.

Carl Duchenne, Human (private security). Not statted for combat. Key Talents: Notice 3D, Persuade 2D. The weakest structural point in Kapoor's apparatus. Can be turned with patience or leverage; the method has downstream consequences.