First Session - Hotel Colorado

Participating Characters
Theodore Roosevelt (Nick): Police Chief of New York City and avid outdoorsman.
John Henry "Doc" Holliday (Phil): Dentist, Gunfighter, and demonically possessed bounty hunter
Johnny "Appleseed" Chapman (Eli): Venerable herbologist, floramancer, and burgeoning green man.
John Henry (Swampy): Hammer swinging railway worker and part-time Vodou houngan
Anna-Maria Talbot (Roxxy): Werewolf of negotiable affections and caretaker of Doc Holliday.
Margret "Molly" Brown (Jenny): Wife of industrialist J.J. Brown, socialite, debutante and weekend bareknuckle boxer.

New CharactersRufus C. Terwilliger (Phil): Double-amputee cavalry soldier and the next host of the demonic Ghost Rider.
"Here we go again..."
The game started with the characters scattered across the United States, nearly a decade after they fought (and defeated) the megalomaniac Thomas Edison. For many years, they had all been gradually falling out of communication with each other, but late in the winter of 1894, a series of events began that would bring them back together.

For different reasons (Roosevelt's desire to hunt, Henry's need to flee pursuers, etc), from different places, and starting at different times, all of the characters were drawn to a single point on the map - Estes Park Colorado. Though they came from the corners of the Union, left at different times, and travelled via different means, they all converged together at the Stanley Hotel. Still unopened, the hotel stood in a massive game preserve in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains.

The only person who knew explicitly why they were drawn to the hotel was Doc Holliday. A few days prior, he was contacted by the Rail Baron, an enigmatic entity who held his contract as the Ghost Rider.

The Baron told Doc that his services would no longer be required, the terms of the initial contract having been fulfilled. The Baron hinted that there were big things on the horizon that would require some new blood in the Rider's seat, and that Doc would have to 'pass the torch' to this new Rider. This new host was in the employ of the hotel, an opium addicted bootblack who ate only enough to survive and spent the rest of his wages at the Hotel infirmary.

"An audition, of sorts..."
While the Stanley brothers were not expecting anyone to arrive at the as of yet unopened hotel, the presence of Molly Brown and Teddy Roosevelt quickly convinced them to open a few rooms to their uninvited guests. While the ladies and Mr. Roosevelt set up at the hotel and prepared for dinner, John Henry, John Chapman, and Doc Holliday went back to the servant's housing, where Holliday passed the spirit of the rider to its new host. Holliday died shortly thereafter, while the Johns tried to explain the circumstance to the new Rider.

That's when the Baron appeared again. He told the trio outside that they should get ready for an "audition, of sorts." Meanwhile, at the opulent dining table inside the hotel, Roosevelt and the ladies saw as several of the dinner guests and all of the servants were violent possessed by spectral entities.

The party fought and defeated the possessed hotel workers, through combined gunfire, fists, claws, and the flaming blade of the Ghost Rider. The fight ended with Roosevelt and Molly tag-teaming a poltergeist that seemed to be in charge of the possessing spirits, killing it by skeet-shooting a silver serving platter as it passed through the ghost.

Afterword, the Baron reappeared, applauding their efforts and saying that they 'got the job.' Then sternly instructed them to get to Carson City, Nevada within a week... which for anyone else, would be impossible.

Trivia and other notes

• Freeland and Francis, the Stanley Brothers, invented a steam powered car called the Stanley Steamer. It held the landspeed record mile (28.2 seconds) for an automobile from 1906-1911, and no steam car beat its time until 2009.
• The Stanley Hotel is one of America's famous "Haunted Hotels." It served as inspiration for the Overlook Hotel, and was the filming location for the teleplay of The Shining.
  
• Other guests of the ill-fated dinner included John Harvey Kellogg, Wovoka the Paiute leader who would later found the Ghost Dance, Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin, 4th Earl of Dunraven, and the Earl's personal guard "Texas Jack" Omohundo, Jr. Kellogg was present to construct facilities for tuberculosis sufferers, while Wovoka and the Earl were both former landowners that the Stanleys purchased the land from (the Earl in the real world, Wovoka in ours).
• Unlike the former Ghost Rider, Rufus has no legs. When he summons the rider, his Nightmare literally rides up from out of the earth beneath him, and the two are fused together in a tangle. Because of this, Rufus cannot dismount while he is the rider... though why would a cavalryman ever want to?
• The Rail Baron is based on Henry Morrison Flagler, a railroad tycoon and partner in Standard Oil.