Relevant NPCs and Clues

September, 1915. On the western front, battle rages less than 100 km from Paris. Paris, the beautiful. Paris, the proud. Paris, a city on her knees. The government has fled the capital, seeking a safe haven in Bourdeaux. General Joseph Gallieni is now military governor of the city, and he faces a terrible task. There is not enough food for everyone. The city is dark at night, for fear of bombardments. Explosives and ammunitions are manufactured inside the city, sometimes resulting in terrible incidents that costs tens of lives. And this is just on the surface. Dark tales tell of monstrous, yet horribly human-like creatures, prowling through the battlefields and the graveyards, eating human flesh. Even darker tales revolve around a mysterious and incredibly powerful tome of ancient, dark magic; a tome that could destroy the balance of power between the Germans and the Franco-British coalition.
And yet, even among all this despair, human nature finds his hope. Hundreds of people arrive in the city every day: soldiers, journalists, thrill-seekers. Each one injects fresh energy into the agonizing city. Entertainment is the only thing that is not rationed - music halls, theaters and the Moulin Rouge are shining beacons of light, metaphorically if not physically. New forms of art cry out as newborn children.

Semptermber, 1915. Paris, the city of tears. A mysterious murder sets in motion a chain of events that, unknowingly to the rest of the world, will decide the outcome of the war. Millions of lives are at stake. There will be no glory for the unsung heroes, no recognition for the martyrs. A terrible power awaits those willing to use it - or seal it. What will you do? How far are you willing to go for your friends, your loved ones, your country?

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Relevant NPCs and Clues

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Sebastien Dupont
One of the most rich and important men in France, Sebastien Dupont is a self-made man that created an industrial empire out of basically nowhere. He mostly deals in heavy industry, from infrastructures (especially railways) to military armaments (weapons, vehicles and ammunitions). He has immense economical and political power. Apart from his industrial empire, he is also known for his charitable acts. He is currently 49 years old. He has been married for 3 years with Anne Marie Ancelet, who died during childbirth. The baby was, unfortunately, stillborn. This happened about 10 years ago. Recently, he is said to have found a new love with a mysterious woman called Madeleine Morvan.



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Julien Faure
Julien is Mr. Dupont's personal secretary, his right hand in practically every matter. He's also an acquaintance of yours, having accepted to introduce you to Mr. Dupont himself. He's a strange fellow, very superstitious, easily angered, voiced to be homosexual - nothing proven, but these voices tend to circulate around an unmarried man of his age, especially if he doesn't show much interest in women. Still, he's held in high esteem in the social circles that matter. A very ambitious fellow, some say with a radiant future in politics. He's currently 32 years old.
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Re: Relevant NPCs and Clues

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Madeleine Morvan
The mysterious new lover of Sebastien Dupont, nobody really knows where she's from or how the two met. She is an incredibly beautiful woman, with long copper hair, green eyes and a slender figure. She is known to speak five languages and to be a skilled musician. Nobody is quite sure about her age, but most place her between 30 and 35 years.


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Adeolphe Bissette
Met at the party at Dupont's house. He told Jacques that he had seen his dearest friend, Captain Duschamps, walking around in daylight in the streets of Paris, days after his death and his funeral.


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Sergeant Proulx
The only survivor from the unit sent to attack Verchanne. He claims that he has seen the ghost of one of his dead comrades, and that means the Angel of Death will soon be visiting him.
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Re: Relevant NPCs and Clues

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Scene 1 - The Party

- A man named Adolphe Bissette had a strange story to tell to Jacques: one of his dearest friends, Christophe Duchamps, a gendarme that lost a leg on the frontline, committed suicide about a week ago. Yet Adolphe is certain to have seen him alive just two days ago, walking the streets and then entering a military vehicle.

- The party was cut off by a sudden scream, as one house maid found a beheaded body in Dupont's own personal study.
The body was missing his head, and featured multiple bite wound, somehow similar to those that could be left by a dog, and yet slightly different. Probably three to four beasts. Strangely, there was not much blood on the scene.
The boots worn by the dead man presented traces of soil, in quantity that suggested the man had gone trekking or something of that sort. Additional analysis would be required to try and determine where the man had gone walking.
The killer (or killers) likely entered the room from the window, that seemed to have been opened from the inside. Outside the window, in the garden, there were traces of hooves, smaller in size than those of a horse. A more accurate inspection showed that these traces were actually left by someone standing on two legs, rather than four. There were three or four different sets of tracks.
The tracks look 15-20 hours old, and the body itself looks like it's been dead for a while. An autopsy would be required to exactly ascertain the time of death.
A wallet was found on the body, containing a sizable amount of money and a card reporting: "Sunflower Tea Room, Avenue de Saint James 17".
The library featured a vast selection of occult books on the theme of death and death cults. The owner of the library looks likely to own some morbid fascination with death. There are also some notes on the book that would remand to the freemasonry society of the Rosicrucians. Jean-Luc pointed out a man he knows by reputation as a member of the freemasonry, called Marcel Helmut, a renowned fortune-teller operating in Montmartre.
Julien reported that Dupont held in his study the plans for a new secret weapon that could change the fate of the war. These plans seem to be currently missing.
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Re: Relevant NPCs and Clues

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Scene 2 - The Tea Room

The Sunflower Tea Room turned out to be a small, cozy shop, decorated with a handful of paintings of the same stile of those found in Dupont's house. The waiter at the tea house told you the author's name, Edoard Savatier, adding that the man could most likely be found in the Latin Quarter's cafès, as many other artists or wanna-be artists.
The Tea Room served a strange tea called Sapna, with hallucinogenic effects. Apparently the tea was renowned and appreciated for this quality among the tea room's customers, including Dupont's himself. While the effect on Andre was quite terrible, the waiter was adamant in confirming that no trouble was caused until then by the tea. The Sapna was legally imported by Wilkins and Regent, an English company with a branch in Paris. A sample of the tea was obtained for further analysis.
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Re: Relevant NPCs and Clues

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Scene 3 - Savatier's House

The investigators checked the house of Savatier, the artist whose paintings were favored by Dupont, and also displayed at the Sunflower Teahouse. Unexpectedly, the investigators stumbled upon the missing Madeleine Morvan here. Apparently, after discovering the body of Dupont, she had fled here and cut her hair, affirming that there are people on her tracks, harboring no good intention. She was surprised to know that Andre had visions after assuming the Sapna, and Savatier seemed to believe that his ruined leg was somehow involved with that. Madeleine explained that the Sapna tea caused such visions on few people, and that causing visions was not its true purpose, but rather a side effect.
She confirmed that the she identified the body in Dupont's study as Dupont himself, thanks to a birthmark on his shoulder. She claimed to know who killed Dupont, and that these people were after information in his possess. Still, this information would be only half complete, the remaining half being in Madeleine's possess. She asked to be left free to leave and disappear, and when refused, she said she would share her information only after the investigators had visited the village of Verchanne, where the French army just recently obtained a great victory.
After escorting Madeleine to the Gendarmerie, and having left in good company, the investigators researched information on the battle of Verchanne and those that survived it. Apparently, the battle plan was prepared by taking into assumption that no resistance would be found at Verchanne, allowing a relatively small unit of 100 men to take control of it, while a larger force would exploit the opening to flank the Germans and force them to retreat. The plan was a resounding success. Still, Verchanne was sealed off right after the battle, and the men that entered the city were spread around and assigned to different units. Disturbingly, almost all of them died later on, either involved in incidents or committing suicide, not one falling under enemy fire.Only one survivor was identified, one Sergeant Proulx.
In the meantime, information came back from the crime scene examination. The fingerprints identified on the windows matched with those of Dupont and his house staff, plus one unidentified set. The soil under the victim's boots was analyzed, revealing that it came from two different kinds of terrain, one black, volcanic; the second mixed with bones and chemically matching that of a graveyard, or otherwise a place where large quantities of human or animal bodies piled up during the centuries.
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Re: Relevant NPCs and Clues

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Scene 4 - The Survivor

The investigators located Sergeant Proulx, the only survivor of the unit that entered Verchanne during the offensive. He was drunk and clearly unstable, mentioning repeatedly that they "trespassed on Death's land" and therefore "Death's angel was on his tracks". He mentioned having seen a death man, moving around as if alive, "a ghost" as Proulx himself said, that being the Sign that the Angel of Death will be visiting soon. He also confirmed that, when they entered Verchanne, the whole garrison of the city was already dead. More than five hundred people, dead to the last man.
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