Lets Make A Twisted Small Town

[Johnny1A.2]

Samantha Castley: 5'6", blonde, green eyes, very nice figure, apparent age about 32 or so. She moved to Serenity Falls four years ago, and set up a small legal practice, where she specializes in property law, inheritances, that sort of thing. She clearly knows a great deal about other aspects of law, though. She is single, and is pursued by several men in town.

Her name is the source of occasional jokes, because she bears a passing resemblance to a young Elizabeth Montgomery. She tries to be good-natured about the jokes, but she's heard them all a million times and is very tired of them. Occasionally she snaps at someone over such a comment.

She is currently dating a local farmer.

Her Secret(s): She really is an accomplished lawyer. She could easily practice almost any area of law at will, including criminal prosecution or defense, if she wished. She's also a competent doctor, and a well-trained hand-to-hand combatant, among other skills.

Her Dark(er) secret: She was born in 1921, and her daughter was the wife of Allen McMaster's son. She is Robie McMasters' grandmother.

Her Dark(est) secret: She is here to kill Allen and Robie McMasters...once she figures out who they are, that is. As part of the tech-cult that had also included Robie's parents, she is the beneficiary of treatments that can extend human life (at considerably cost and with side effects). She knows that someone killed her daughter and her daughter's husband, and took the failed Experiment #984 away afterward. What she does not know is the identity of Experiment #984 or who took him away.

The organization used a cell structure to limit possible leaks, and when their enemy murdered some of their membership, extracted the test subject, and blew up one of their labs, that worked against them because the people who could have identified the attacker were dead and the others had not been informed of the necessary information in time.

Over the years, by various means, the organization has traced their quarry down to Serenity Falls, but though Samantha knows that some particular teenage boy in town is #984, she has no idea which one. Likewise, though she knows it's likely the person who killed her daughter is in town, she doesn't know who it is. She wants to find out, very badly.

Her goal? Terminate #984 and retrieve the body for study, and kill whoever stole him. She really does think in those terms, privately. To her, #984 is not a person, it's a test subject, she knows that he is her genetic grandson but simply does not care about that. She did love her daughter, though, in a possessive sociopathic sort of way, and wants revenge for her death.

Samantha is a classic sociopath. She is utterly ruthless, but at the same time quite charming. She is utterly indifferent to human life, but doesn't enjoy killing for its own sake (revenge is a special case). She is brilliant, and has lived a long time and used it efficiently, so she has an amazing range of disparate and useful skills and knowledges.

Samantha is trying to identify her targets, using her law practice as a tool to that end, because it gives her access to lots of information. She networks and has gossip-contacts all over town. She has also learned a few of the lesser dark secrets in town and is blackmailing some people very quietly. The same treatments that extended her life have also made her surprisingly fast and strong for her size and gender, and given her the Alertness Advantage.

She is increasingly fascinated by Serenity Falls itself, she can clearly perceive that there is something strange about it, something that appeals to her scientific curiosity. She also suspects that there is something peculiar about some of the plants in town.

She has actually met her quarry (both of them) more than once, and currently has no suspicion that Robie McMasters is her grandson/target, and he for his part is blissfully unaware that he has indulged impure thoughts about his own grandmother. If she learns of who he is, though, his life and his grandfather's will be in immediate danger.

Robie she would kill cleanly and efficiently, but without any pity. His grandfather she would prefer to torture to death, but she is self-disciplined enough that she would only indulge that if circumstances made it safe. IF necessary, she would be quite prepared to result to a quick fast bullet.

Does she know exactly what Robie is, after the experiments and genetic changes his parents made on him? No...which is just as well for her peace of mind.

[Johnny1A.2]

It might be useful if we had some idea where Serenity Falls is, and when it was founded. The weirdness might be a little different if it's a 400 year old town in New England or a 200 year old town in the Midwest,. for ex.

[Johnny1A.2]

Serenity Rock: Not a person, a place.

Serenity Falls is named for a substantial waterfall outside the city limits, but not very far outside. A system of natural caves interlaces the mining tunnels, and the best known (but far from the only) entrance to the caves lies near the falls.

Serenity Rock is an outcrop of hard rock, that sticks out in the middle of theh cliff face over which the water flows, a slab of rock resistant enough to avoid being eroded by the falls. It's in the middle of the waterfall, which is about 20 feet high and 30 feet wide, and so hard to reach. It sticks out about ten feet, and has a flat upper surface wide enough for a couple of men to comfortably stand on.

The entire flat surface of that rock is covered in runic marks, carved into the stone, in no known language. Nobody knows who carved them, and in fact only a few people in town know about them, because it's such a chore to get out to the spot (usually accessible only in winter when the falls freeze).

The Old School: When Serenity Falls was a young town, its first schoolhouse was located downriver from the falls, slightly back from the river bank along with the first bank, the first hotel, and the first tavern, all clustered not far from where Ferry Street reached the river. The school lasted about 20 years, before a huge spring flood washed into it and ruined the building.

The Old School had a bell near the door, about a foot tall and wide, and changing river paths mean that the river now flows over the site of the Old School and the Bell. Some people believe that they can hear the Bell ringing sometimes, from below the water, on certain winter nights when the air is still and the Moon is bright.

This might make a picturesque legend except that tape (and later media) recordings of the bell sound exist...

[ajardoor]

Carl King is a spry, young, black gentleman working as a bartender in the classiest bar of Serenity Falls. He is an expert at serving drinks, and has a cinematic level of social skills and street smarts. The regulars all love him like a son.

His dark secret is that for as long as the town has resisted falling into chaos and death under the weight of its hidden horrors and dangers, Serenity Falls has him to thank for it. He is really a supernatural entity obsessed with keeping the townspeople safe and protecting the town's reputation. He covertly arranges for any crimes or threats to public health be blunted or prevented without anyone the wiser. Sometimes, he tips off the right people (the PCs...) so they may foil the disaster before it happens, other times he simply puts the right obstacles in the right paths.

Alternate dark secret: he self-harms, he cuts himself.

[ajardoor]

Mayor Fred Warwick is the town's political leader and capable administrator. He just won re-election in a close race against Councilwoman Lisa Marsh.

He is a cheery and eloquent Caucasian man in his late fifties, and has balanced the budget for 5 straight years. He usually wears bright blue suits and stylish hats. His head is completely bald and his eyes are a bright green. He cuts a strange figure amongst all the bureaucrats in neutral colours you see in official town events.

His dark secret is that the election was rigged - in Marsh's favour! Both he and Marsh knew about this, as they both answer to the same master. When the votes were tallied and Warwick came out ahead, it was clear someone tampered with the tampering. Warwick and Marsh have been tasked with finding the fly in the ointment and delivering the pest to their master for "processing".

[Johnny1A.2]

Larry Granger: Six feet all, mildly handsome in an everyday sort of way, age 50. Thick brown hair shot with plenty of gray, just slightly overweight but otherwise in decent shape. Widower with two grown kids, owns Granger's Bar and Grill, which has been in the Granger family since 1900 (though sometimes under other names).

Larry is a native of Serenity Falls, he inherited the family bar and restaurant when his parents passed away when he was 30, he has run it ever since, making it profitable while serving good quality, home cooking food and desserts that are a town legend. The coconut pie is esp. popular. His wife helped him run it until her death from breast cancer seven years earlier.

Larry has a well-known oddity: his Bar and Grill is 'dry'. This is ironic because his grandfather was a locally well-known speakeasy operator, and his father ran the B and G as a rowdy honky tonk bar. Larry converted it into a family friendly restaurant as soon as he took it over, and has actually made it more profitable than it was as a tavern.

Larry's other oddities include a well-known disdain for most movies, TV shows, and fiction. "There aren't any heroes in real life, and not many villains, mostly just people trying to get by," he's fond of saying. "Why waste time on nonsense that exists mainly to use empty fantasy to sell people junk people don't need anyway?"

Though Larry is fond of saying that there's no such thing as a hero, he does volunteer his time at a local church shelter, gives a substantial chunk of his income to various carefully selected charities, and has quietly helped out quite a number of people in town over the years, always quietly. More than a few people in town would privately say that Larry is a hero, though never in his hearing.

Larry's son is in college training to be an engineer, his daughter is married with a kid and lives in Chicago.

His Secret: Larry's minor secret is why he is the way he is. In college, he was engaged to be married to a girl he loved very dearly, but she self-destructed on booze and drugs by the time they were both 22. He was profoundly affected, this is why he is a complete teetotaler and won't sell booze in his family business, he has an utter aversion to alcohol and drugs, he sees them as nothing but tools of self-destruction.

His powerlessness to help his first love also left an impression, he learned the hard way that a lot of problems have no solution, that sometimes there's just nothing that can be done to save someone or help them, no matter how much you might want to. This is the source of his 'no heroes' attitude. He considers heroism a dangerous illusion.

He's considers himself a realist, and has little interest in exotic matters. It's not so much that he believes or doesn't believe in the supernatural, supertechnology, or whatever, as that he sees it as 'So what? I have a restaurant to run whether Bigfoot is real or not. Better to focus on the stuff that matters to my life.'

Larry does have an exotic Secret that he himself doesn't know, though!

Whatever it is that makes Serenity Falls what is, whatever the innermost Secret is, Larry is its antithesis. Not only does the weirdness never touch him, it avoids his demesne as well. Larry is never touched by the deadly people in town, and the never come into his restaurant or onto his street. Whatever it is that shields Larry, it also shields his property, his neighbors, and those people immediately associated with him. The Weird people in town stay away from his restaurant and don't even know that they do.

Which is part of why it's so popular. The normal people in town (who even in Serenity Falls are the large majority) feel subconsciously safe in Granger's Bar and Grill. The Weird stops at the front door, and on some deep down level, they sense it.

The only exceptions are Carl King, the secret guardian, and the superintendent/romance novelist. Both are regulars in the restaurant. So might the PCs be...or maybe just one of them can go in and the others can't grasp why they can't.

[ajardoor]

All the PCs know Georgia Lopez, a hairdresser and a cliched sexy Latina party girl in revealing clothes. She is (at least) one PC's lover/girlfriend/best friend/co-worker. She has no qualms about sexual encounters with any of them. In private, she is nurturing, understanding and warm.

The dark secret is that she doesn't actually exist, the PCs are all delusional or hallucinating or haunted by a ghost or tormented by a demon. Once the PCs figure out she doesn't exist and confront Lopez, she will casually admit to the truth...and then things will get disturbing as the visions of Lopez try to drive the PCs insane or get them to do something particularly..."important"...

[ajardoor]

The Serenity Falls Tabletop Roleplaying Game Club boasts a membership of 14 TRPG hobbyists, who get together to play campaigns and upload the actual plays to their own podcast. Their main GM at the moment is a 21-year-old wanna-be fantasy novelist Jake Minnow, although his sister Karen also occasionally GMs a campaign.

The dark secret of the club is one of the following;
A) Jake pimps his sister out, making sure the John takes her to his house. Karen then arranges to make Jake's later robbery of the place easier by cloning spare keys, unlocking doors, taking notes on the security, and so on.

B) Every member of the club is a black magician, the club is a front for a sinister Satanic cult or Cabal cell.

C) Jake's exposure to the mind-altering pollen of Serenity Fall's plants has given him a False Memory of witnessing another citizen commit a horrible crime and gathering concrete proof. Jake is working up the nerve to come forward with his "evidence" of the "crime", even the false accusation and resulting scandalous investigation could lead to a genuine shake-up and expose a real crime.

D) Every member of the club is in on a plan to rob the town bank.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

It might be useful if we had some idea where Serenity Falls is, and when it was founded. The weirdness might be a little different if it's a 400 year old town in New England or a 200 year old town in the Midwest,. for ex.

The extensive cave systems suggest it exists in a karst geology. Here's a map of karst regions in the United States
https://karstwaters.org/educational-...-it-important/
(the blue and green bits of the map).

We also know that beryl occurs in the area, and beryl mostly forms in granitic pegmites. This suggests subsequent modification by intrusive silicic magma, forming dikes and sils.

We can rule out the karst region in Florida, because one of the residents wants to move there.

I haven't been getting much of a western, southwestern, Texan, or southern feel from the town. Given the locations of major karst formations, I would suggest Missouri, Indiana, or Wisconsin.

Luke

[lwcamp]

Geological stuff, continued ...

The town definitely has some bizarre things going on with its geology. We know a river flows through town. Basic hydrology tells us that the water table will be at about the level of the river. Yet we know that there are many caves that extend underneath the town, and that these caves are not flooded. What strange powers are messing with the waters around Serentiy Falls?

Luke