Fiona Kessler — The Latchkey Archive
Relic Containment Specialist
Class II, contact hazard, containment priority high. That is not a warning label. Coming from her, that is a compliment.
Fiona Kessler
Composure Initiative: 5 Corruption: 2 Sanctity: Fully Effective
Background
Fiona Kessler came to the Latchkey Archive by way of material culture studies. Her doctorate, unfinished, was in the history of sacred object transmission: how relics moved, were authenticated, disputed, lost, and recovered across the European Catholic tradition from the fourth century onward. Eighteen months from completion, a research placement at a private collection in Vienna put a specific object in her bare hands for approximately forty seconds.
She will not describe those forty seconds. She will describe what came after: reclassifying her entire doctoral framework overnight, then spending a month tracing the object's own paperwork backward through three countries and two defunct auction houses until the trail stopped at a single recurring signature she did not recognize. She wrote to the name on the signature. The reply took nine days and turned out to be the Latchkey Archive, informing her that her academic interest was genuinely useful, that her new practical experience was going to require training, and that they would like to begin as soon as she could travel.
Two years of training preceded her first solo field retrieval. The Archive's containment protocols outstrip anything she found in the academic literature, anything the Church publishes, and most of the secular preservation frameworks she had studied besides. The Archive has simply been doing this longer than most institutions have existed, and every protocol carries a story behind it. Fiona has read most of the stories. Several of them she found personally instructive, in the sense that she understood immediately and precisely how someone had died.
She is precise, efficient, and reserves a particular professional irritability for people who approach her objects before she has finished her initial assessment. Six years of field work have also given her a genuine affection for what she protects: not the danger in it, but the weight of it. These are real things that have done real things in the world. They deserve to be handled correctly, and she intends to be the one who handles them that way.
Skills
| Skill | Rating | Skill | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Relic Lore | 3 | Research | 3 |
| Streetwise | 4 | Containment | 3 |
| Composure | 2 | Athletics | 2 |
| Ranged | 2 | Discernment | 2 |
Faction Passive — Do Not Touch That (Latchkey Archive): Fiona's training gives her immediate assessment capability that other operatives lack. When she observes an object, space, or material that may carry supernatural significance, she may make a passive Average Relic Lore or Containment check (no action required) to determine whether it requires containment protocols before contact. On a success, she knows. On a failure, she knows she is uncertain, which is also valuable. Additionally, when she explicitly warns a character not to touch or interact with an object, and that character does so anyway, any resulting complication is not her responsibility per Archive protocol: a mechanical note that matters in Corruption and liability discussions.
Talents
Tag and Bag (Containment Tree, Tier 1, Chapter Six): Fiona adds 1 Boon die to Containment checks when using standard Archive containment gear: proper gloves, sealed cases, treated materials. She does not improvise the parts that can be prepared.
Relic Evaluation (Chapter Nine): Given thirty minutes of uninterrupted examination, Fiona can determine an object's relic class, primary activation condition, and primary supernatural property, the same information that would require a successful three-phase identification procedure by a less trained examiner. She must have the object physically present and her examination kit available.
Bag and Tag (Relic Operations Tree, Tier 2, Chapter Six): With proper containment gear, she adds 1 Boon die to safely transport, label, isolate, or hand off a Class I-II relic or cursed object. For higher-class objects, the talent identifies what additional containment requirement is missing.
Emergency Seal (Containment Tree, Tier 3, Chapter Six): As an action, Fiona makes a Containment check to suppress one active relic effect for one scene. Success suppresses it; failure may escalate it. This is what she does when the object is already awake and the standard kit is not enough.
Equipment
- Dark utility coat — high-collar, deep pockets, chemical-resistant lining; Archive-issue
- Fitted field harness — carries the primary containment kit in an organized draw system; she can access any item in it without looking
- Warded gloves — copper thread woven through synthetic reinforcement, three layers of inscribed protective formulae; they look unusual, and questions about them get a change of subject rather than an answer
- Brass keys — seven keys on a single ring; Archive master keys for specific storage facilities, plus two personal keys whose function she has not documented in any official record
- Sealed artifact case — hardshell, foam-padded interior, four combination locks; suitable for Class I–III transport; the locks are on a rotating protocol, not a fixed combination
- Containment tags — Archive-standard; each tag is logged to her field number; an untagged item in her possession is an oversight she will correct immediately
- Clipboard with assessment forms — physical copies; she does not trust digital documentation for field assessment because screens can be reviewed remotely
- Light Pistol — she carries it because the Archive requires it for Class III retrievals and above; she qualifies on paper and has never liked owning that fact
GM Notes
Fiona is the reason players know what they are holding before it hurts them. She is most useful when the party has found something and needs to know what it is and how to handle it, and most interesting when what they found is something even she has not catalogued before.
Her Do Not Touch That passive earns its keep through dramatic tension: she says don't touch it, someone wants to touch it anyway, and the question is whether they listen. Make the cost of not listening specific, not just a Corruption tick. Something happens because someone was reckless, and Fiona was right.
Her Corruption at 2 is the occupational hazard of the work. The Archive keeps the number low through protocol, training, and spreading handling duties across multiple specialists. Fiona has had two proximity events that left a mark. She intends that to stay the final count.
Use the brass keys as a story element. Two of them are undocumented. Where do they lead?
Forty seconds, no gloves. I do not talk about the forty seconds. I talk about the gloves. Fiona Kessler, The Hollow