Lets Make A Twisted Small Town

[Kromm]

Kim Cortés is an ordinary 30-something woman who moved into town recently in search of work. She found a job as a waitress at the diner attached to the 24-hour truck stop on the nearby Interstate (which isn't strictly speaking in Serenity Falls, and thus doesn't fall within the jurisdiction of its officials).

Her secret? "Kim" is really Lilian Martín, an undercover FBI officer. The Bureau has software that tracks missing persons and questionable Internet activity. Serenity Falls showed up both maps to such an extent that the Bureau dispatched Martín to gather intelligence. As the Bureau is aware of illicit network activity in the area, she passes along physical reports to Bureau couriers who visit the truck stop. And because the Bureau is aware that missing persons could mean danger, Kim is armed (with a Glock 27) and has a "panic button" set up on her cell phone.

Another secret? The Bureau got Martín placed at the diner because the owner, Max "Slim" Winkler, is retired FBI and a friend of a friend of Martín's supervisor. Slim thinks Kim is his buddy's hard-luck-case sister; he has no idea that she's a cop. But if Kim were ever in trouble, Slim would get involved – because he's both a protective employer and an ex-lawman. He's still a good shot, and keeps a Model 19 Combat Magnum and Remington Model 870P around in case there's trouble . . . say, someone trying to hold up the truck stop at 3 a.m. The local sheriff knows Slim is ex-Bureau and likes guns; in fact, the two go hunting together.

[Jasonft]

I think for now everyone is mundane and no blatant psychic or magic stuff. That almost makes it too easy.

Charles Delorja Is a forty something dark haired man who does freelance tech support and electronics repair in the area. He is a little too good to be living hereabouts and claims to have dropped out of the Silicon Valley rat race in search of peace and quiet. He's a little absent minded about anything not tech related (his wife has to loudly remind him to pay bills) but is incredibly friendly and doesn't charge nearly as much as he could for his level of computer skills. Has paid good money for the best possible computer gear and internet connection setup.

The fact that he looks a lot like a certain famous male porn star is completely irrelevant - but they might be related.

Grace Hardy is his cheerful, red haired, and wound way too tight wife. She loves her huge garden and can often be found working there or at various chores around the house. Disturbances to her calm routine like being accidentally locked out of the house can send her into screaming tirades and she is known to gesture a lot when she talks (forgetting she has gardening tools in hand).

They regularly take trips to places far away and come back with the most amazing photos. Nobody is quite sure how they can afford this habit, but Charles claims he got out of some Dot Com business at *just* the right time.

Her Secret: Illegal substances trying to calm her mood swings and at least one buried body in that garden. Charles doesn't know about the body.

His Secret: *cough* Dark Web *cough*. Smuggled weapons, child porn, if it is on the hidden Net anywhere he or someone he knows has been involved. Not a big player himself, but he does know some of them. He does IT for some interesting people on those trips. Feds have a couple of his online code names but no idea who he is IRL yet.

Note: Good chance Charles has, or has tried to, hack any computer system in town. Hasn't gotten into that biotech company's files yet and is powerful curious about why they have such heavy security.

Pretty good chance Charles has identified at least one of the federal agents that regularly appear in town. He loves playing 'Spot the Fed' at DefCon.

[patchwork]

Melanie Torvik works as the Animal Control Officer for Serenity Falls, and looks older than she is due to early grey hair and a job with lots of outdoor time. Her husband runs a furniture store and the kids are away at college. She can be found jogging in the early hours before sunrise with her three large dogs in tow. She's friendly but distant, letting her husband Eugene handle most of the social interaction.

Her secret is that the animals she supposedly rehomes, rehabilitates or euthanizes are instead bled out over the roots of a particularly large and gnarled fir tree on her property, tall enough to be seen for miles. She believes it houses one of the vanir, whose blessing keeps the local farms and community prosperous and safe. Depending on your tastes, she may be simply delusional, or she may be the reason those transgenic shrubs are flourishing in Serenity Falls yet failing in other environments.

[AlexanderHowl]

Sandra O'Conner is a thirty year old beauty with fiery red hair, green eyes, and freckled skin. She operates a home for wayward girls on the edge of town (near the Gray Estate) and manages to turn around even the most taciturn and sullen adolescent girl. While a dozen of her sixty girls are pregnant or have given birth, the majority of them are victims of sexual abuse and/or LGBTTQ girls thrown out by their family. Her compassion and kindness allows her to befriend a new girl within a couple of weeks, regardless of the other issues the girl might have with adults. She is fiercely protective though and carries two concealed guns and two concealed knives on her person even at home.

Secret: Sarah pays for the home through an anonymous pornography service staring the girls who she has convinced to participate in the process. Within a secret subbasement of the house, her girls (masked to prevent identification) participate a number of lesbian and solo pornography scenes with each other that Sarah sends to her partners in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Sarah keeps ten percent of the money, pays for the service with ten percent, spend forty percent on the house, and pays her girls forty percent. The girls are happy and safe, so Sarah does not feel any particular guilt.

Dark Secret: Occasionlly, one of the abusers of her girls makes the mistake of trying to get one of her girls back. In the past five years, Sarah has killed a dozen such men without the knowledge of her girls. She dismantles their bodies and spreads the remains around the local area and has yet to be caught.

[ajardoor]

Detective Quentin Boles is a grouchy, bitter, rough-looking cop. At 37 years old, he's had a lot of happiness wrung out of him by both his failing marriage and his turbulent career investigating the most serious crimes in Serenity Falls. He is a good at his job, but he never misses a chance to grumble about how demoralising he finds it. His previous partner got thrown off a rooftop to his death, and the murder remains unsolved with no clues.

His dark secret is that he knows other people's dark secrets - he gets anonymous e-mails from an unknown address every few weeks or so. Each e-mail contains convincing details about a dark secret of another Serenity Falls resident, some with pictures. So far, Boles isn't sure if he can't trust his mysterious informant, and hasn't acted on any of the tip-offs...but he keeps it all secure, just in case.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by ajardoor

Detective Quentin Boles of the Major Case Squad is a grouchy, bitter, rough-looking cop. At 37 years old, he's had a lot of happiness wrung out of him by both his failing marriage and his turbulent career investigating the most serious crimes in Serenity Falls. He is a good at his job, but he never misses a chance to grumble about how demoralising he finds it. His previous partner got thrown off a rooftop to his death, and the murder remains unsolved with no clues.

His dark secret is that he knows other people's dark secrets - he gets anonymous e-mails from an unknown address every few weeks or so. Each e-mail contains convincing details about a dark secret of another Serenity Falls resident, some with pictures. So far, Boles isn't sure if he can't trust his mysterious informant, and hasn't acted on any of the tip-offs...but he keeps it all secure, just in case.

Small towns don't have "Major Case Squads". Even though Serenity Falls has a dizzying number of murders and rapes for a town its size, some of which are even reported, and does have a police force with detectives on it they aren't divided up into separate squads.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Small towns don't have "Major Case Squads". Even though Serenity Falls has a dizzying number of murders and rapes for a town its size, some of which are even reported, and does have a police force with detectives on it they aren't divided up into separate squads.

Right. A small town police force probably just has one senior and one junior detective that handle the "occasional" murder, arson, missing person, and missing pet reports. They'll have the support of a contracted off-site CSI team rather than their own, so the contracted CSI means a slow response time for major crimes. The rest of the force - probably ten officers at most - are the police chief/captain, his lieutenant (who may be the senior detective), and a bunch of beat cops who may or may not be in patrol cars (depends on how much rural area they cover). Many of them will also be county sheriff department deputies for operating in the surrounding county outside the town limits.

A really busy town like Serenity Falls may have two or three pairs of detectives, but not more than that.

[ajardoor]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Small towns don't have "Major Case Squads". Even though Serenity Falls has a dizzying number of murders and rapes for a town its size, some of which are even reported, and does have a police force with detectives on it they aren't divided up into separate squads.

Very well. Edited.
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Tony Chang is the manager and owner of a small nightclub (if you got The Harrowed Hearts Club supplement, you can use that). He is a well-groomed and glad-handling Chinese-American with a bright white smile. In his late teens, he robbed houses at night, until he got caught red-handed and did serious time for burglary. Since he got out, he's been on the straight and narrow, as far as the cops know.

His dark secret is that he is neck-deep in underground gambling. He is a bookie, runs several floating poker games, quietly manages a hole-in-the-wall make-shift illegal casino in the basement of his establishment, and has set up some dark web online gambling sites that don't meet state regulations.

[AlexanderHowl]

The Sharmeen Family is a Bangladeshi-American family who bought the local Red Roof Inn a decade ago. Anyone who stays at the hotel always notices the cleanliness of the rooms, the kindness of the staff, and the tastings of the food delivered by room service. In addition to the hotel, the Sharmeen Family owns a laundry service for the hotel and a restaurant that makes the food for room service.

The Sharmeen Family consists of seven sisters whose American husbands took their last name when they married into the Sharmeen Family. The sisters have each born an average of three daughters, ranging in age from 14 to 28, with each daughter an exotic beauty in the eyes of the men of Serenity Falls. The daughters have no lack of male interest and the older daughters have married into local families, though the daughters still follow a liberal form of Islam even if their husbands follow a different religion.

Secret: The Sharmeen Family is descended from the last Mughal Emperor and stole away with the treasures of the Mughal Empire before the British conquest. In the 1960s, their parents came to the USA and secretly transported the treasures. While the treasures include a 2,000 carat emerald and a 1,500 carat diamond, the Sharmeen Family would rather die than sell off their inheritance.

Dark Secret: The Sharmeen Family is involved in a 'dating service' that helps Bangladeshi women find American husbands. In exchange for ten percent of the couple's income for ten years, the Sharmeen Family helps secure an identity and a background for the girls, many of whom come from object poverty. The majority of the girls are beautiful but young, 14-18 years old, but the vast majority of Americans cannot tell the difference, so the girls get by with their fake documents. The American husbands just know that their wives are sending money back home. Over the past ten years, the Sharmeen Family has helped over one thousand girls, and earns a total of $5,000,000 a year from their clients.

[ajardoor]

Billy Lime used to be a poor wandering hobo on the streets, but is now currently committed to the miniature mental asylum a mile outside town. He suffers from severe paranoid delusions, a conversation with him can only last ten minutes at best before he devolves into ranting and raving about the visions in his nightmares. These "visions", he claims, are psychic insights into the secret crimes of the townspeople and the horrible future that will come to past. He is the pet project for the private mental health researchers working out of the asylum, as they find his insanity fascinating. The generous grants from corporations keep the asylum running and the patients well-cared for - mental patients from all the state come to be interned here.

Billy claims that his nightmares have revealed to him that the plants in Serenity Falls cause madness, a teacher had an affair with her student, a cop is running a drug ring with high school students, an owner of the bed and breakfast is dead and buried in the walls of her own place, an old man living in the town killed JFK, several serial killers live in Serenity Falls, and a doctor working in the asylum will go on a shooting spree.

Billy's dark secret is that he is a perfectly sane con artist. Everything he claims about his nightmares and psychic powers are pure lies he made up so he could get free room and meals at the asylum. When he gets tired of this, or gets close to being found out, he'll pretend to be "cured" and then move on to another scam.

---

Dr. Andrew Zimmer is a stern, bald, austere mental health professional who lives in Serenity Falls, but does all his work at the asylum outside town. He has no real bedside manner, rarely dumbing down his jargon or sugar-coating his observations. He leads the research team, but his subordinates do most of the face-to-face work while Dr. Zimmer stands silently in the corner writing down brutally honest notes. At age 63, he looks ready to die, especially considering his wife has done so just two weeks earlier.

His dark secret is that he has recently gone murderously insane. He has discreetly acquired body armour, a fully automatic rifle and hollow point ammunition in preparation for a shooting spree right in the middle of Serenity Falls.