Cast, Relic, and Adversaries

In This Chapter

The reliquary's full relic entry, stat blocks for the three characters who might end up in a fight or a spiritual contest, and a cast list for everyone else.

The Reliquary of Saint Anthony (LK-NA-04471)

Classification: Class II: Active at the start of play. Class I: Passive when no petition is open. Class III: Volatile at Petition Clock step 4.

Type: Holy relic / finding

Appearance: A gilt brass monstrance-form reliquary about nine inches tall, made in Padua around 1587. A sunburst frame surrounds an oval glass window; behind the glass, a sliver of pale bone rests on faded red silk beside a paper label in brown ink, Ex ossibus S. Antonii Pat. The base is engraved S. Antonio del Porto, Erie, 1912. It is warm to the touch in a cold room.

Active Effects: Lost objects belonging to anyone within 30m of the reliquary turn up within that radius, usually overnight and often in places they could not have reached on their own. When someone speaks a petition within 30m (a request, aloud, that it find a specific lost thing), the relic answers that petition first, reaching as far as it must. Every returned object is taken from wherever it was: a returned cat leaves another family without one.

Petition for a person: A petition for a dead person is never answered with the person. The relic reaches for the soul, and if that soul has not moved on, it draws the soul to the relic's location, where it arrives as a Grief Shade (Universe Guide, Chapter Eleven). In this case, the Petition Clock (Chapter Three) governs when that happens.

Mechanical Use: In Latchkey custody, with a Vault Access authorization, the reliquary may be used once per case as an operational relic (Universe Guide, Chapter Nine). A character who petitions it for a specific lost object connected to the case adds 1 Boon die to one Research or Perception check to locate that object, or the GM rules the object turns up within a day.

Cost: Attention. Whoever lost the object now finds it missing again, and some of them go looking.

Handling Requirements:

• Contact: Relic-grade gloves. Barehanded contact: Composure check, Average ; on failure, the handler's own most-missed lost object turns up near them within a day.
• Trigger: A spoken petition within 30m. Never petition it for a person.
• Storage: Iron-lined case in the dark. Inside a closed iron case the relic's reach stops, and any open petition waits.
• Transport: Sealed iron-lined case. Carried unsealed in a vehicle, it risks a Class II breach (Chapter Five, Scene Seven).

Identification: Phase 2, Hard (Class II). Latchkey Registry LK-NA-04471 (Handout F).

GM Notes: The relic is holy and it is doing its job. Nothing in it is malicious. The danger in this case comes from grief, and from a petition the relic was never meant to answer.

Laura Hale, Grief Shade

Tier 1: Minor | Type: Ghost

Laura Hale, pulled from where she lingered and unable to remember the one thing she came to say. Use the Grief Shade entry in Chapter Eleven of the Universe Guide, with the specifics below.

Laura Hale (Minor Ghost)

• Group Size: One.
• Skills: Concealment 2; emotional pressure uses Willpower 3.
• Abilities: Grief resonance.
• Equipment: None.

Supernatural Defense: Emotional Anchor, as the Grief Shade entry. Here the resonant loss is a parent or a child: characters who have lost either make the Composure check.

Appearance: A woman of about forty in a gray sweatshirt and hospital socks, hair wet as if from rain. She is solid enough to cast a shadow. Recordings of her are clear.

What she wants: to tell Maddie something. She cannot remember what. She says Maddie's name, asks where she is, and says "I was going to see her at breakfast."

Threat Capabilities: As the Grief Shade entry: emotional projection (Composure, Average , or 1 Strain) each round; a targeted assault against the character who most resonates with her; at full agitation, 1 Wound through thrown objects. She reaches full agitation if anyone tries to stop her reaching Maddie, or if Maddie is not in the building by 3:20 a.m.

Weakness: The voicemail. Played in her presence, it resolves her unsettled business with no roll (Chapter Five, Scene Eight). Sealing the reliquary in iron makes her withdraw.

Resolution: Play her the voicemail, or release her through banishment (Easy if she can be told Maddie has heard it; Hard otherwise). Destroying her is possible only by the Chapter Eight rules for destruction, and it costs the destroyer 1 Corruption. Do not let a player do it by accident; name the cost first.

Anselm Drury

Tier 1: Minor | Type: Human Antagonist (Candleless broker)

A relic broker from Cleveland, polite, patient, and very good at walking away from a bad deal.

Anselm Drury (Elite Human)

• Skills: Negotiation 3, Relic Lore 2, Deception 2, Streetwise 2, Composure 2, Ranged 1.
• Abilities: Broker's Patience (below).
• Equipment: Light Pistol (Ranged, WD 5, Crit 4, Short; Concealed, Reliable), never drawn first; $6,100 in a bank envelope; an unconsecrated iron-lined case (small), black market; two phones.
• Corruption: 2.

Broker's Patience: Once per scene, when a Negotiation check against Drury fails, he makes a counteroffer instead of ending the conversation. The characters may try once more at the same difficulty.

Behavioral Profile: Drury does not steal from people who are in the room; he hires that out. He does not lie about what he knows, only about what he will do. He has a hard rule about open petitions, earned in 2014 in a house in Youngstown, and he will tell that story only on a Breakthrough.

Wes Pruitt

Tier 1: Minor | Type: Human (hired hand)

Wes Pruitt (Elite Human)

• Group Size: One.
• Skills: Melee 1, Athletics 2, Subterfuge 1, Operate 1.
• Equipment: Crowbar (Melee, WD +2, Crit 4, Engaged; Brutal, Improvised), gym bag, a 2011 Silverado with a bad muffler.

Behavioral Profile: Thirty-one, paid $600 to "move a box." Runs if challenged. Fights only if cornered and surrenders at his first Wound. Knows Drury's first name and phone number, and nothing else.

The Cast