Actual Play - Annalise, the Mystery of the Auspicious: Part 2

It's been about a month so I honestly don't recall all the details of the end of the game. The Captain and the Doctor decide to explore the Queen Anne, meeting the Beast, a giant white wolf-like creature.

The Doctor's possessed hand tries to kill the Captain. The Captain lost control of his fire powers and saw the Beast, which recognized him as a brother.

At this point, undead creatures (including Sailor Godfrey) begin crawling up the sides of the ship and filling the water.
The two of them manage to escape the ship in a rowboat, where the Doctor turns out to have one sentimental feeling on seeing a vision of his fiancee Annalise.

As the two escape, the Captain resists the tempting call of the Beast and uses all of his power to set the Queen Anne on fire, ending (almost) the menace of the Beast.

The Doctor isn't so lucky, however. He wakes up the next night to feel his possessed hand across his throat. He amputates himself with a scalpel, but when the Beast calls to him to give in and to serve it, he succumbs. His secret, revealed, is that he once poisoned a hospital on the command of a foreign power. (A: "Your secret is that you're a MASS MURDERER, not that you're a traitor.")

The Captain continues sailing, now a better man who has come to peace with himself and taken command.

The Doctor disappears, until a decade later, a handsome young man - a widower, who seems surprisingly young for the job - signs on as the doctor of a new merchant vessel...

And so the curse persists.

This was a good game, but the ending was less fun that Laying the Foundations. I think we dragged on the Confrontation a bit too long and didn't put high enough stakes -- there were a few too many rolls. I think this would have been served by faster confrontations.

Still, I love the way the story came together, even if I didn't get to play with the Doctor's secret that much.