In 1947 Sidonie is a Countess and an upper-class Frenchwoman leaving her home which has been devastated by war and heading to California in search of some relatives. Miles is the young GI who met her there and is accompanying her on her trip across the States. Soraya is a rebellious young woman unwilling to give up the freedom she had as a working during the War, and Magda is her younger friend who follows her when she runs off after Miles. They've been travelling across the country for a while and are in New Mexico when they arrive in a small town and discover that they'll be stranded there until the gas truck arrives on Monday. It's July 1947. The place is Roswell, New Mexico.
They find rooms and some dinner and a welcome, meeting the Mexican diner chef, the old rooming house woman, the apparently idiot sherriff and his part-coyote dog and the overfriendly waitress before retiring for the night. The waitress, one Clara by name, sneaks into Miles' room that night... and he doesn't resist! Unfortunately their tryst is cut short by a noise and light in the sky. Everyone comes piling into Miles' room to look out the window and witnesses the scandalous scene. Soraya goes into a pout which lasts for days afterwards.
The light and sound climax as something crashes to earth behind bluffs to the north, and our heroes and the sherriff set out to see what happened. When they arrive on the scene they discover that a beautiful glowing boat has apparently crashed to earth (the sherriff seems confused and it's unclear what he sees). The ship belonged to Duke Aral, a sidhe lord from Arcadia whose personal aura is stronger than any earthbound changeling could ever have. He and his five boggan servants get a ride with the heroes back to town. They also inherit the sherriff's coyote-dog.
Duke Aral wishes to take over the world... Lady Sidonie politely doesn't mention her doubts to him. Everyone else is so smitten with him they can't do much of anything useful while he's in the room. Over the next couple of days, however, it becomes apparent that Sidonie is wrong: the Duke has a piece of the primal dreaming with him, and it provides him enough power to withstand the banality of earth... and bewtich almost everyone he comes across. Including the commander of the local airbase. Which has nuclear weapons!
After that shock they learn that the Duke has no interest in nuking people, and instead puts together a convoy and heads for Los Angeles, our heroes following along and plotting with the one nuclear scientist unaffected by the Duke's glamour. The scientist determines that the Duke is really an alien using mind-control... he's read way too many "Amazing Stories".
They find some cold iron in a burned-out ranch, and with a little help from the coyote-dog (which seems a little too intelligent) they find even a cold iron sword left over from the Spanish conquistadores. In a daring midnight raid they leap on the Duke, battling his boggan minions, and using the sword are able to wrest the piece of dream away from him, and run. Quickly the banality of the world wears him down, and he vanishes, leaving the humans all very confused with only the scientist's alien story to go on. The piece of the dreaming is stolen by the dog... who quite possibly was actually Coyote. Perhaps that trickster still has it even now.
Player Notes:
I am breaking my usual vow of silence as web guru to remind the GM
that Magda also temporarily had a pet dragon, named Panzer. Panzer
was released after a few days and is probably still in New Mexico,
occasionally snacking on people and adding to the Roswell myth. -MIN