[tshiggins]

(...continued)

With that, Frank pulled out his notes about the cold case and found the name of the janitor, one Cleavon Hopper. That triggered more research, and the group learned that the Five Points neighborhood of the 1920s had been centered around four neighborhood institutions:

The Roxy – a theater and jazz club, still in operation

Radio Pharmacy – owned by local business leader and political boss, Sonny Lawson, it handled most of the community’s medical need. As with many pharmacies of the day, the soda-fountain acted as a social gathering place for family outings. Still standing, and designated a landmark.

The Rossonian Hotel – the best Negro-only hotel in the Denver area of the day, frequented by many travelers, including a number of early jazz and blues legends on their way from Kansas City to the West Coast. Still standing and structurally sound, but currently vacant.

Bennie Hooper’s Casino Cabaret – another jazz club and theater that had a long-running illegal casino in the back room. Opened only intermittently through the decades, the building still stands but the venue has fallen on hard times. An examination of Bennie Hooper’s geneology revealed (good Research roll) that Cleavon may have been a cousin.

With that, the group (except for A.J., who wanted to take a few days and play golf) headed back to Denver, and arrived in the late afternoon. Given that the sun had not yet set, Beatrice decided to take a ride up through Five Points, just to get a look-see, and on a whim invited the nunnupi (quite satisfied with their decision to stay on this side of the portal and observe the party’s antics…) to come along, and give Doc Bascher and Henrietta a break.

Beatrice arrived in the Five Points business district about 30 minutes before dusk, parked her bike and started to walk around, headed generally toward the shuttered Rossonian Hotel. Quite a few people walked around the streets, and she quickly concluded that this probably happened consistently, given the proximity of the light rail transit line and the fact that many of the people seemed to know each other.

Then an idle comment by Hops About brought Beatrice up short. The nunnupi noted with interest that the area seemed rich with spirits, but that was probably to be expected, given the close proximity Civic Center Park and the fact that a number of the intersections formed five-pointed stars (albeit crooked ones) that apparently channeled trickles of Decanic energies, and spirits were partial to magically-rich places.

Beatrice carefully asked for more information, and learned that spirits originated in living things of all sorts on one of the various material planes, or grew spontaneously from natural features rich with life. Most remained fairly weak and even mindless, but when a human shaman perceived the presence of a spirit, he could communicate and interact with it, and if he and others treated it with reverence, it could gain power. Others simply had existed so long that they had accumulated considerable power, on their own.

Sometimes, they said, a shaman could commune with a spirit and allowed it to possess him or her. Beatrice found that disconcerting since, with the exception of Grunt, each of the party’s interaction with spirits had been at least hazardous, or even lethal. The nunnupi said they didn’t understand why humans did some of the odd things they did, but insisted some human shamans did, in fact, do that sort of thing now and then.

When they did so, the essence of the spirit started to bleed over into the human, explained Circles Thrice, and the soul of the human began to resemble the spirit more and more. At some point, the nunnupi said, shaman souls became indistinguishable from the spirit and the human became little more than a glove or a puppet for the spirit, through which it could work its will on the material world.

Beatrice asked if either of the nunnupi had done that sort of thing, themselves. The scornful nunnupi responded that, of course they hadn’t, because they weren’t made of spirit stuff from one of the material realities. They were from a place completely different.

As Beatrice digested that little bombshell, the Hops About suggested that if she wanted to know why shamans invited spirits into them, then she should just go and ask a fellow across the street, since he had a spirit in him. The nunnupi pointed to an older black gentleman in a nice suit and a natty trilby, who had just emerged from a late-model Cadillac and was walking toward the door of the Roxy.

Beatrice glanced down at Grunt, and noted his emerald eyes were fixed on the figure.

With that, the session ended.

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Funny Quotes

Not too many, this time, as the group stuck mostly to business

Bart: “Can I get ten grand back from you, if I do this for you?
Arthur: “We’ll give you all 50 Gs.”
Sam, Rebecca and Debbie (OOC): “No!”
Anten (OOC): “We’re gonna wipe his memory anyway, so he won’t remember anything!’
Sam(OOC): “Oh. Okay.”

Randy: “We’ve got a lot of leads, we’ve just got no clue.”

Randy: “Y’know, if it turns out the janitor really did steal the books, I’m gonna feel really stupid….”