In This Chapter
What happens after 3:07 a.m., how the Archive and the Lyncean Office close the case, advancement, and where the characters can go next.
The Morning After
Run a short closing scene the next morning. The characters hand the sealed case to Fiona Kessler, who drives up from Pittsburgh at dawn if the relic is secured, and they file their reports.
| Outcome | The Hale house | The relic | Laura |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full resolution | The clocks keep time. Maddie sleeps past 3:07 for the first time in three weeks. Joan finds the green notebook. | Class I within a day. Archive vault, Pittsburgh. | Moved on. Room 411 is warm. |
| Partial resolution | The house is quiet. Maddie still has the phone and has not played it. | Sealed, Class II, open petition. The Archive flags it: do not open outside a consecrated vault. | Lingering at Lakeshore General. |
| Failure: the broker | Quiet; the relic is gone. | With Drury, sealed in his case after 3:07 a.m. He sells it back at cost if contacted. | Withdrew with the seal. Still lingering. |
| Failure: the clock, then saved | Maddie saw her mother in the garage. Curtis did not, or says he did not. | Sealed after the scene. | Moved on if the voicemail was played; lingering if the box was closed. |
Things to settle with the players:
- The objects that came back. The Harborcreek family's cat, the hospital's property office, the people whose keys and gloves turned up on Ridgeview Court. Returning them is optional, and the players' choice about it is a good measure of their characters.
- Maddie. She has had nineteen nights of the impossible. Merciful Dissonance does not cover her. The Kept (Universe Guide, Chapter Four) exist for people like her, and a character may put her family in touch with them.
- Curtis. He asks, once, whether Laura is somewhere. Let the character with the most honesty answer.
Closing the File
The Archive. Fiona logs LK-NA-04471 as recovered and runs a formal classification review. If the relic arrived in iron with a clean chain of custody, she says, "Good," and nothing else; from Fiona that is high praise. Every handling deviation (barehanded contact, an unsealed ride, a breach) is logged, and she asks about each one.
The Lyncean Office. The Lyncean character files the LO-17 closure. The official record says: stolen church property recovered from a lien sale and returned to diocesan custody, no charges. Jenna Tran reads the real report and calls to ask one question: "Did the cat really come back?"
Ray's footage. If Laura came to the Hale garage, Ray Kowalczyk's doorbell camera recorded her clearly, and Ray has sent the clip to the police as a prowler report. Use the recordings procedure (Universe Guide, Chapter Twelve). The township officer who views it sees a woman visiting at a strange hour. A Lyncean character with Evidence Chain can pull the file into Lyncean custody (Average ). Otherwise, the clip sits in a township evidence folder where anyone who knew Laura Hale might one day see it.
Advancement
Award XP by the core rules (typically 10–25 per session). For this case:
| For | XP |
|---|---|
| Completing the case | 15 |
| The petition answered (Maddie heard the voicemail) | +5 |
| The relic reached the Archive with no handling deviations | +3 |
| The characters made right something the relic took from someone else | +2 |
No Corruption is expected in this case. Two ways to earn it: destroying Laura's shade rather than releasing her (1 Corruption), and promising Drury a professional courtesy the Archive would not sanction (GM judgment).
Continuing
The standing assignment. If the case went well, Fiona offers the pair a standing arrangement: the Lyncean Office forwards pattern referrals with object connections, and the Archive sends the two of them to look before anyone else does. That is a Warehouse campaign (Universe Guide, Supported Play Modes).
Drury's client. On a Breakthrough in Scene Five, Drury said his client asked whether the relic could find "an object the Latchkey Archive lost in 2019." Fiona reacts to the date. She will not say why without Archive Clearance, and with it she says only: "We did not lose it. Someone took it out of a sealed case in transit, and the case was still sealed."
Room 411. If the case ended with Laura still lingering, she is still at Lakeshore General, and the Hales still have the phone. A second, quieter session can close it: the hospital, the night staff, Adaeze Okonkwo's twenty-two years of not putting patients in 411, and a girl deciding whether to listen.
Father Doyle's note. The 1994 Registry assessment was signed by an Order of Mercy priest. If Father H. Doyle is still alive, he knew the parish custom and he knew Frank Mazur, and he may know what else the parish kept.