Lets Make A Twisted Small Town

[ajardoor]

The brothers Joshua and Hugo McDade are two minor local celebrities, brothers who got into writing novels together and experienced a decent level of success. They're both 30-something reclusive intellectuals with rich, deep voices and friendly smiles. Josh writes noir mysteries, Hugo writes heartwarming but tragic romances.

Dark secret? Two possibilities;
A) Joshua is really God in human guise, and Hugo is really The Devil in human guise. They're keeping an eye on Serenity Falls for a bit, for whatever reason.

OR

B) They both lust after the same woman/girl - one of the female NPCs already detailed in this thread. Their mutual interest will soon turn into bitter rivalry and an obsession, followed by stalking and other behaviour that will go far beyond what could be considered sane or moral.

[Dr. Beckenstein]

Damn, I am supposed to do other stuff ...

Fort Serenity / Depot 279

To the locals, it is just "the old army base", ten miles south of the town. In WW 1 and 2, it served as a base for basic infantry and tank training. It faded into obscurity during the 60s and was finally closed in 1970. it is still property of the federal government, who has simply forgotten it. Nobody was ever interested into buying the old, musty buildings behind the rusted barbed wire.

Secret: During the cold war, parts of Fort Serenity were made to secret cache of usefull things for the army, in case that the nukes should really fly. In a large shelter under an overgrown hill, you can find the 1960s state-of-art armament (think Jeeps and M48 Patton tanks). They are all neatly preserved and in mint condition. With a little tinkering, one could make them run again ...
The people who knew of this depot are mostly dead are very old and demented. There is a vast collection of documents about the depot, but they are all on paper, and the files are rotting in a cellar of the Pentagon.

[Kromm]

Timmy is a tricolor rough collie, about eight years old. For a dog, Timmy is unusually intelligent (IQ 5 instead of IQ 4); this is due to natural variation, not the result of anything weird. While Timmy doesn't belong to anyone, he hasn't been rounded up – everybody loves Timmy, and Timmy is extraordinarily friendly and well-behaved (treat as Charisma 2). Over the four years Timmy has lived in Serenity Falls, dozens of townsfolk have made sure that Timmy has enough to eat, is well-groomed, and even gets his shots. Timmy is both nobody's dog and everybody's dog. Anybody who tries to hurt Timmy is in trouble!

Timmy's secret? He knows where all the bodies are buried – literally. This isn't a matter of genetic engineering or supernatural gifts, but just what happens when a really smart dog is allowed to roam around a town full of murderers. It's also the result of another secret: Timmy is a highly trained "cadaver dog" – not a runaway but rather misplaced by a police task force that conducted a very boring missing persons search a few towns away. His handler was a drunk who outright messed up. This suggests a third secret: Somebody removed Timmy's collar and tags, and knows about Timmy's old job.

After four years, the odds that Timmy's old owners will ever come looking are almost nil. But eventually, Timmy is going to lead somebody to a corpse. Or maybe a cop passing through town will recognize his markings and stay a little too long, be a little too nosy. Perhaps the mysterious person who turned Timmy into an undercover cop is banking on this.

[ajardoor]

The manager of the town's local bank is Alexander Niles, a sturdy and laid back man in his mid-forties. Niles runs his bank with practised ease and canny forethought, his staff love him for making their jobs so stress free. He is getting married towards the end of the financial year to a cool and sensual high-society woman.

His dark secret is that he basically acts as financial go-between for various criminals and intelligence agents, committing white collar crimes with every breath. The safety desposit boxes, in particular, have some pretty damning contents. He has helped fund at least one major terrorist attack.

[JanMikal]

Wanda DeLorca is Serenity Falls' most popular veterinarian. She is the one responsible for making sure Timmy the Wonder Dog gets his shots, takes care of hairballs, fleas, neutering and vaccines. She's /amazing/ with animals (Animal Empathy and probably a level or two of Animal Friend and Animal Handling skill) - she's waded into fights between tomcats and Rottweilers and broken them up without a scratch. However, she's not so good with people - she doesn't have much bedside manner, and she clearly prefers her furry friends, often being rude or abrupt with humans. She owns several animals herself, and these animals roam around the vet office freely and openly.

First off, there is 'Vilhelm', an extremly intelligent German Shepherd who approaches (but doesn't surpass, or even quite match) the intelligence of Timmy - he's simply been trained to take full advantage of a dog's native sort of intelligence, and knows an entire slew of tricks and commands.

Second off, there are 'Blink' and 'Dodger', a pair of cats that meander aimlessly around the vet office, touching noses with other cats, helping to comfort and calm the patients. They're very friendly, nearly as smart as Vilhelm. They live up to their names - Blink is a master of the 'cat-teleport' - that talents all cats have to simply be there without having been seen coming into the room. Dodger is almost impossible to catch - the times he's been seen sitting in someone's lap when he didn't want to be - well, no one ever remembers being able to catch him or pick him up when he wasn't having it.

The Secret - Wanda has trained her animals to a much, much higher degree than most, working with them almost constantly when the office is closed. Blink and Dodger are accomplished pick-pockets - have you ever set your purse on the floor at a doctor's office? Yeah...that's when they sneak a wallet or coinpurse or other items out of the owner's possession and make a beeline for a little cat-flap in the counter that drops into a safe underneath. Each night, Wanda checks the safe and rakes in her ill-gotten gains. The cats are trained to take any loose cash, first, and then go after other items, like jewelry or wallets. It doesn't net Wanda a LOT of money - but it does allow her the occasional nice vacation or upgrade to her car or office.

The Dark Secret - German Shepherds are strong, loyal, fierce and, in Vilhelm's case, VERY intelligent. It is possible that Wanda, having a MUCH closer connection to animals than humans, has hired the dog out as an assassin. A large, highly trained German Shepherd, equipped with a spiked collar and perhaps a light, flexible version of horse-barding armor could kill a human in reasonably quick time, especially if he has any 'augmentation' from any of the shady-actors in town. He might be the source of some of the 'animal attack' reports that have happened around town.

[TGLS]

Irving Adair has been running the local florist for a few months now. His brown hair is already thinning, despite his best efforts. He prefers sweater vests and short sleeves. In his late twenties, he moved to Serenity Falls to start over, after burning bridges with most of his family and friends. He lives above his shop in a tiny apartment, more because of bad credit related to gambling debts more than anything else.

His secret is that, unbeknownst to him, he is completely immune to the effects of the personality changing pollen. Unfortunately, this also has the side effect of causing him to not emit a pheromone that the rest of the town emits, and so everyone in town is slightly suspicious of him, but they don't know why. When someone eventually shows up to investigate the unusual happenings, they will probably end up being directed to Adair at some point.

[Dr. Beckenstein]

Damn, I should be in bed already ...

Jonathan Sturgeon
A Caucasian man in his late 30s, with sand coloured hair, slightly overweight. The sole heir of the old Sturgeon Brewery lives in the old family mansion, that he seldom leaves. He never invites or accepts visitors. His only companion is his live-in maid Teresa, a Latin American woman in her 40s.

There are some rumors and jokes running around town what is going on in the old Sturgeon mansion. They range from "Sturgeon runs a meth lab in his basement" to "Sturgeon is stashing up guns and supplies when the black helicopters come for us".

Jonathan's secret: He devoted all of his time, money and energy in building a huge model railroad. Over the years, it spread from the basement across the ground floor and is now growing up to the first floor. Jonathan build a lovingly detailed model of Serenity Falls that shows every detail of the town and its surroundings. If you look closer, you can spot some disturbing things like a monster on the football field or a skeleton in the wall of a hotel.

Teresa's secet: She is simply an illegal immigrant who felt in love with her eccentric employer. After years of loving care, her feelings are now returned.

[adm]

Friedrich Kressenstein
He was a Catholic Priest who was sent to a concentration camp in the last few months of World War II, he was very young, only 22 in 1945, and was sent there for helping Allied airmen shot down over Bavaria escape to Allied controlled territory. After a harrowing escape from Poland where both the Gestapo, and the NKVD were trying to shoot him. He made it to Allied occupied Berlin in 1946, and eventually emigrated to the U.S. and Serenity Falls, where he became the local Priest, and confessor of the towns Catholic population.

Secret;
As a 94 year old Priest, he knows a LOT of the towns secrets, many lost to time.

Dark Secret;
Dietrich Mier grew up a good Catholic in Bamberg, he had a talent for languages and knew Latin, among others. His language talent got him noticed by the SS and he was sent Gross-Rosen concentration camp to help spy on inmates. Where a Priest had been sent, that looked like they could be twins. Seeing the writing on the wall, he burned off his SS tattoo, and added Father Kressenstein's arm tattoo, killed the Priest, and walked west till he made it to Berlin. Given Father Kressenstein's short period of incarceration, and the refugee conditions he escaped under, no one questioned his identity. He has spent his life trying to make up for the horrors he was part of in World War II. Also, he's only 89.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by ajardoor

The brothers Joshua and Hugo McDade are two minor local celebrities, brothers who got into writing novels together and experienced a decent level of success. They're both 30-something reclusive intellectuals with rich, deep voices and friendly smiles. Josh writes noir mysteries, Hugo writes heartwarming but tragic romances.

Dark secret? Two possibilities;
...

I'm surprised you resisted the obvious secret: they're really the same man... with multiple personality disorder now called some name I forget.
Or maybe that one's a pseudonym created to try out a new genre. But that he's getting too into the whole masquerade.

[ajardoor]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I'm surprised you resisted the obvious secret: they're really the same man... with multiple personality disorder now called some name I forget.
Or maybe that one's a pseudonym created to try out a new genre. But that he's getting too into the whole masquerade.

Man, I didn't even think of that...