I held my new Keepsake ticket in my hand as I searched one of the rooms back at the Bed and Breakfast. There were clothes that definitely belonged to Bradley Speirs. There were knickknacks spread around. Cigarette butts. Empty beer cans. I could see on the red wallpaper that all of these things belonged to the deceased psychotic killer. None of them were what I was looking for.
When we arrived back at the bed and breakfast, Samantha was nowhere to be found. I wasn't surprised. We didn't know how long we had before the storyline started back up (or if it would), but we were going to take the chance to rest before we headed back to Carousel proper.
I could see crumpled-up pieces of paper on the ground. I unfolded a few just to read them. Some were letters to a woman named Wanda. Bradley was begging for forgiveness for some unmentionable thing. Other letters were also to Wanda but in those, he lashed out calling her every curse word that he knew but mostly sticking to his few favorite slurs.
Some of the pages were old and yellowed and covered in dust. Others looked fresh. The killers in Carousel were stuck on their own loops. That must have been part of Bradley's. Writing letters he could never send.
For all the junk in the room, I couldn't find one item that was meaningful enough to be used as a Keepsake. And I had to find something. A keepsake was like a trophy or similar that you've got after defeating an enemy. It was a new type of ticket. Antoine and I had both gotten one and they both had the same reward.
They could give us a single-use version of the signature trope from that storyline: Desperation. In Antoine's hands, it was a good trope. In my hands, it would be a game changer. The trope allowed you to transfer Savvy and Moxie into Mettle and Hustle the more desperate your situation became. For me, it would be a "break glass in case of emergency" type of deal. As a player with little to no combat ability, it could be really handy to keep around.
I had to find an item that I could use to activate it. The ticket wasn't enough. I needed some kind of memento from Bradley Speirs to imbue with the power. Unfortunately, after I threw Mr. Speirs off the roof, guaranteeing his death, he was dragged away by a horde of zombies. Having no corpse to plunder meant that it was difficult to find an item that I could use as a keepsake.
I had to keep looking.
Holding the ticket, I noticed that I was able to see whether an item in my view belonged to Bradley Speirs. There were lots of things that he “owned”, but it was mostly trash. I needed something that was important to him in some way, from what I could tell. Antoine had gotten lucky in that department. The enemy he killed was Merritt Speirs. Antoine found a class ring right next to Merritt’s bed after 10 seconds of looking.
I decided to look through Bradley's nightstand and sure enough, as soon as I cracked open the drawer, I saw an object in the shadows that indicated on the red wallpaper was an applicable keepsake. Success.
It was a magazine with the words “Sports Illustrated” printed on the cover with a photo of a woman in a bikini on the front.
He must have been a real sports fan.
I decided to keep looking. I wanted something small and I really didn't want to carry around the swimsuit edition of a sports magazine. I needed to review my options.
I decided to take a break and look for the next thing on my to-do list.
Scouring the entire bed and breakfast, I was only able to come up with two decent bags that could be used with Luggage Tags. There was a large duffel and a neon green belt pouch. The pouch was probably very useful, but it would not really blend well in any storyline not set in the 80s.
The duffel would be perfect for Antoine. I wasn't sure but it looked like it might be just big enough for his baseball bat to fit inside of. I could give the belt pouch to Bobby.
There were other options that I could use. There was a cloth shopping bag and all manner of sacks strewn around the bed and breakfast but nothing that was terribly convenient. I was struck by an idea. Luggage Tags were not just for actual pieces of luggage.
I grabbed my sunglasses and Walkman out of my hoodie pockets. I took the Luggage Tag from my stack of tickets and placed it in the pocket of my hoodie. As soon as I did, it disappeared. A box appeared on the red wallpaper titled Inventory.
Inventory
Token of Affection- Mrs. Cloudburst’s Love Letter, The Strings Attached
Enchanted Object- Masquerade Mask, The Strings Attached