Chapter 1.1 - The Alamo Remembers

The door is made of solid wood planks that are fit side to side with virtually no gaps. The door handle is just a wooden U-shaped piece for grasping, and it doesn't appear to have any visible lock on this side. The door fits into the door frame pretty well but there is a small gap around it. You're somewhat certain that there isn't a slidebolt on the other side, but you can't be 100% because of the imperfect light.

As you approach the door, the floor begins to vibrate like a train is passing nearby. The shaking grows louder, even clinking the glasses on a shelf behind the bar. Then it stops, and a light flashes under the door.

Eli is ready for anything

After the bomb goes off, Diego throws open the door. AJ an Eli covering him, he stares at an ... empty room? Well, not empty, but there be no people.

The room is partly a store room, with shelves along one wall and wooden boxes of various sundries. There is a small table with several small casks of liquor. A bedroll with a crumpled blanket is laid out in front of a rough, pine desk. What draws the eye, however, is the flaming outline of a door on the wall behind the desk.

A few clues, such as a burning cigar and a still warm cup of coffee, tell you that someone was here moments ago. Based on that, you're fairly certain that the flaming door isn't the product of the flash bomb that Diego set off.

---

Give me some perception or investigation type rolls. If you have any peculiar skills, or skill with the peculiar, indicate it.

Eli gives a thorough look over of all the things described, including the mysterious 'door'.

Diego stares longingly at the casks of liquor, wondering how valuable they are, and if he could get away with taking them. A glint catches his eye and he finds a small, crystal figurine of a unicorn between the casks. Instinctively, he knows this object is special.

Eli finds that the flames are dying down, and wonder on wonder, have not damaged the wooden wall at all. On the desk, he finds two items, a piece of formed leather that turns out to be a forearm bracer, and a pair of linked finger-rings. Your intuition tells you these items are 'unusual'.

AJ stares at the door, trying to perceive the nature of the room, and his eyes are drawn to a small box on a top shelf that looks uncharacteristically out-of-place. The box is contains some tissue paper, and underneath, a glass bottle with a shimmering, golden liquid, and a silver medallion with a Mexican eagle (on a cactus holding a snake in one claw). Again, you now that these items are special.

Together, Eli and AJ gain a similar understanding of the door before the flames utterly die out leaving no trace. The doorway contains the same 'magic' properties or whatever. Once the flames are gone, that property is gone, leaving a regular wall.

Lastly, on the desk is carved the word Alamo in a weird, strangely angular script.

---

You all can take two xp - one for the discovery of a portal thingy, and one more just because it seems right to do so. I'll send you pm's in a couple of hours with the nature of the cyphers that you have discovered. Let me know what you want to do next.

Over the next little while, you are able to find little more from the room, the hiding-hole used by whoever created the fiery doorway.

The bartender, Hoss Melman, seems quite worried about this persons return. He tells you that the person, a very large, hairy man (close to 7 feet tall and probably over 400 pounds, little of which is fat) comes and goes as he pleases. The man called himself John Fenris, but kind of seemed like that was a joke somehow, though why he thought was funny is beyond Hoss' reckoning. Hoss knows that Mr. Fenris has a mean temper and a meaner streak a mile wide. He's got them all trained to sort out anyone who comes into the saloon, and pays them to do it, but it's bad work.

Once before, the bartender had thought that John Fenris or whatever his name really is had been in the room, and when he went in to check if he needed anything before Hoss locked up for the night, it was empty. Later Fenris returned (through the street door) saying that he had been at the Alamo gate and Hoss just hadn't seen him leave. He knows for sure that Mr. Fenris was in there just before because Betty over there (points at the lazy barmaid) took him a coffee. "Maybe he's gone and pried up the floor boards or such," Hoss speculates.

Other than that, he tells you that this all started a few weeks ago, when Mr. and Mrs. Fenris arrived and kind of took over the saloon, but they had some kind of drop down, knock 'em fight and she went hightailing it out of town, south he thinks. Her description matches one of the she-devils from the Blue Bell hotel in Rio Grande City. They have been making trips to the Alamo, but Hoss has never figured out why the army puts up with them cuz they clearly aren't army.

"That's a phrase he used though I ain't heard it before neither, and I took it to mean, well, just like you folk, we'd mess with 'em, call 'em down, get 'em all riled up, and see what's what. If things went right, then we'd get a good fight on, and Mr. Fenris liked that a real bunch. He right near fed on it, it seemed. Got a real charge, and was always looking for more blood on the floor."

The bartender's eyes look simultaneously excited and disgusted as he talks about this.

"I don't reckon what all that means. But since Mr. Fenris makes a lot of trips to the Alamo, and he ain't here, maybe it's time for us to get back on our horses and go where we're supposed to be. The Alamo!"