Singer Lake, part three

Table of Contents

The Hounds of God know who killed Jimmy Thiess: seventeen-year-old Charlie Palmer, who was recently relocated from Portland to Singer Lake. Despite her youth, the Hounds are certain they have their murderer, and are ready to enact their revenge as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Detective Rezai is trying to persuade them not to, and to focus instead on the problem of a huge tear in the fabric of reality and the thing that crawled out of it. We find our player characters in the middle of this mess.

(As usual, this is a fan-made module, and I am in no way associated with Onyx Path Publishing, White Wolf Games, or the creators of World of Darkness or the Chronicles of Darkness storytelling system. Content notes for this chapter: murder, threatened murder, police, moral panic, gun violence, poverty, haunting, child endangerment, hospitals.)

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The Spirit of Fear in Singer Lake

Spirits do not belong in the physical world. In order to stay there, they need to find ways to replenish their Essence. The spirit that escaped from the college quad maintains its Essence by seeking out and generating sources of fear, particularly that brought about by ignorance; fortunately for it, this kind of fear tends to be self-perpetuating if it is not countered by truth.

The Storyteller has complete freedom to move the spirit about as they see fit , but keep in mind that it is primarily a tool to further the narrative. It should help propel the player characters to investigate and also keep their investigation from being too easy.

• A general sense of mistrust permeates the town. People who never locked their doors at night have started to do so, and children are being kept at home and pulled out of daycare. Gun sales begin to increase. Singer Lake’s nightlife experiences a downturn. Those who trust the Hounds of God and see them in a positive light are worried about more murders; those who distrust the Hounds are worried about an increase in gang violence and being caught in the crossfire between the Hounds and their enemies.
• The Hounds and the police, uneasy allies in the best of times, find themselves at odds as they work toward the same goal of finding Jimmy’s killer. The Hounds do not believe the police are working toward justice for their murdered brother, and do not trust them to prevent additional murders. The police believe that the Hounds are more interested in vengeance than justice and will get in the way of their investigation. Neither are exactly wrong. When the two groups meet, all present are noticeably on edge. Whether violence erupts is up to the Storyteller’s discretion, but the tension should be felt.
• Answers about the murder are hard to come by. The Hounds name the murderer as Charlie Palmer, but there are few outside their circles who would believe them. The PCs have heard that she is hiding in Thompson Park, but the police have the area locked down, keeping the Hounds out and information in.
  • Theories abound as to the circumstances of the murder. A few the PCs may encounter include:
    • A rival gang is moving in to Singer Lake, and killed Jimmy Thiess to send a message to the Hounds.
    • The Hounds killed Jimmy themselves to prevent him from revealing their secrets, which are speculated to include everything from a drug trafficking operation to connections to the Illuminati.
    • A serial killer targeting young men has moved to Singer Lake, and will strike again.
    • The police killed Jimmy and staged the grisly murder scene to cover it up.
    • The murder was committed by a cult of Satanists. The tiny local Church of Satan protests that ritual murder is not among their practices, but few people are listening. A small group pickets their church daily, holding signs urging repentance and promising divine retribution.
• This last theory has been taken up, though unofficially, by Life & Family Ministries and its member churches and organizations. Prayer vigils take place throughout the town, especially near the technical college. Warnings against the occult are plastered on bus stops and telephone poles. Local libraries and bookstores are petitioned to remove certain titles (including Harry Potter, Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks, heavy metal albums, and nonfiction titles related to Wicca, historical paganism, LaVeyan Satanism, and so on) from their shelves.
  • Player characters who attend church services in the following weeks will hear sermons concerning the importance of prayer and the “Armor of God” (Ephesians 6:11-18) to defend against the occult and the evils of the world.
  • At least one street preacher, unaffiliated with the larger churches in Singer Lake, will take to proclaiming warnings against “witches and warlocks,” the Devil, and the wickedness of the world to anyone who will listen.
• The fear culminates in a shooting in the outskirts of Singer Lake, where houses are farther apart and the area is less well-lit. A homeowner mistakes a neighbor for an intruder and shoots him, wounding him severely.
  • If the PCs are nearby when this happens, they can overhear Detective Rezai on the phone with Samson Kaltenbrun, the leader of the Hounds of God. “You need to put that thing back where it came from,” she says. “This is only going to get worse.”

A Conversation with Samara

Samara Rezai has found herself in over her head.

She has in her possession an amulet that allows her to see through glamours and illusions, and witness Singer Lake as it truly is. Because of this, she is among the very few who know the truth about the Hounds of God, she is on polite terms with the vampire Master of the City, and she knows that there is an enormous tear in the veil over the college quad, which has allowed a moderately powerful spirit to enter the material world. Normally, the Hounds would be responsible for spirit world breaches, but they are preoccupied with finding Charlie Palmer and refuse to do anything about the fear spirit until she is dead or otherwise prevented from killing more of their number. Between keeping the Hounds away from Charlie and dealing with the spirit and its effects, Samara barely has time to sleep. She needs help, and she doesn’t want to ask the vampire clans.

So, she turns now to the player characters. She suspects they saw something unusual at the crime scene, and she is aware of their efforts to investigate the murder (they may even have been investigating her). However, she knows that awareness of the World of Darkness is a door that can’t be closed once it’s opened, and wants to offer them the choice before bringing them in.

Samara will seek out the PCs and explain that she needs their help. She explains their options: turn back and leave this case alone, or come with her and see what she sees.

This is the means of getting non-supernatural PCs involved in the supernatural aspects of the plot. If the player characters are already involved, Samara will simply explain the situation: Jimmy Thiess was murdered by a rogue mage who wanted to create a portal into the spirit world, and while she succeeded, such a huge display of vulgar magic resulted in backlash from consensual reality, and Charlie Palmer is probably comatose in an abandoned shopfront near Thompson Park.

If the PCs choose to, Samara will take them back to the college quad and show them the rift. She can share the vision her amulet grants her by touch. For a group of PCs, the Storyteller can increase the range, resulting in a line of people holding hands around the edge of the churning void, or have them pass the amulet between them.

Once everyone is on the same page, it’s time to go to Thompson Park.

Thompson Park

The area surrounding Thompson Park has been depressed for some time. Many of the shop fronts are empty and dark, and apartments stand unoccupied in moldering complexes. The park itself, is mowed semi-regularly by the city, but its facilities (soccer goals, a basketball court, and two single-occupant public restrooms) are overgrown and crumbling. There is only one bus station within reasonable walking distance.

Neither Detective Rezai nor the Hounds know exactly where Charlie Palmer is hiding, though they do know she is in this area. Other police officers do not know that this is Charlie’s suspected location, and have locked down the area to prevent the Hounds from entering it at Samara’s request, and are preoccupied with that task as more and more Hounds stake out the park. Paranormal activity, including strange sounds, objects moving on their own, and visible apparitions, is clustered around the north side of the park on Philips Street and the empty buildings facing it. The area had no signs of being haunted before Jimmy’s murder, so Samara suspects that the phenomena are caused by the presence of a mage in the throes of severe Paradox.

Samara will allow the PCs into the area, and they can begin their search. Clues they find that will lead them to the abandoned bookshop where Charlie is hiding can include:

• Bloody handprints (the blood on her shoes would have worn off long before she arrived here)
• Bits of grass from the quad
• A broken door or window where Charlie entered
• A dropped bus ticket that states the bearer boarded at Prairie Ave. near the Youth Housing Ministry, or at the college
• Bits of clothing caught in broken glass
• The “haunting” activity concentrating around a particular spot

Charlie herself will be unconscious and unresponsive at the back of shop, behind some empty shelves.

Charlie Palmer, rogue mage
Virtue: Determined Vice: Ruthless

Intelligence 2
Wits 3
Resolve 3
Strength 1
Dexterity 3
Stamina 2
Presence 2
Manipulation 3
Composure 3

Skills:
Computer 2
Crafts 2
Investigation 3
Occult (spirit world) 4
Athletics 2
Brawl 1
Larceny (breaking and entering) 3
Stealth 2
Weaponry 1
Intimidation (unsettling demeanor) 3
Subterfuge 1

Merits: Eye for the Strange 2, Tolerance for Biology 1, Small-Framed 2, Sympathetic 2

Path: Thyrsos
Arcana: Life 2, Mind 1, Spirit 3

Size 4
Health 6 (she has taken 6 points of Bashing damage)
Speed 9
Willpower 6
Wisdom 4
Defense 5
Armor 0/0
Initiative Mod 6

In order to overpower Jimmy Thiess and open the rift to the spirit world, Charlie had to defy consensual reality in a truly staggering way. Reality does not accept such defiance lightly. Charlie is feeling the physical effects of Paradox, and her mind has been quarantined inside a small pocket of the dream world. She will stay there until she resolves her Paradox, if indeed she is able and willing to do so.

While she is there, the effects of her magic are still manifesting in the form of illusory spirits. This gives a clue as to her motivation in all of this: she wanted to destroy the barrier between the physical world and the spiritual one, allowing material beings and spirits to move freely between them. The empty shelves rattle around her in the unusually cold room, spectral figures pass through the walls in one’s peripheral vision, and the sounds of distant screams and indistinct speech are just barely explainable by the wind and the old building settling.

Decisions

Samara insists on taking Charlie to a hospital. Once there, the young mage will need to be kept under guard to prevent the Hounds from enacting their vengeance. Samara is prepared to do this herself, at least until she comes up with a better plan, but asks the PCs to help as much as they are able. She hopes that through the use of her amulet, she will be able to reach Charlie and help her out of her Paradox-induced coma, or at least communicate with her and understand her motivations.

If the PCs agree to help her, an ambulance will take Charlie to St. Francis Hospital, past the watchful and accusatory eyes of the Hounds of God. It will take two days for Samara to come up with a means of contacting her. During this time, the PCs can either use any prior knowledge of the supernatural to help, or just take shifts keeping watch at the hospital.

How contacting Charlie works depends on the Storyteller and the way the players decide to go about it. An easy idea is to use the communicable properties of Samara’s amulet: to join hands with Charlie and be able to see what she sees.

Charlie is currently experiencing a facsimile of the world she has been trying to create; a place where spirits and the living denizens of the physical world coexist in terrible, glorious chaos. She observes this world from the vantage point of a tree with writhing, wormlike roots visible through the earth and branches hung with stars. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she says to her visitors. “Everything is as it should be.”

Forcing her to realize that she is inside an illusion created by Paradox will be difficult, requiring multiple social checks over a period of days or perhaps weeks. Alternatively, the player characters can simply wait for her Paradox to burn off and her to wake up on her own, a process that could take even longer, if she is even able to do it. Meanwhile, the Fear spirit is still terrorizing Singer Lake, and the Hounds still want their revenge.

If the PCs agree to keep watch over Charlie until she wakes up, with Samara’s help, the Hounds can be persuaded to banish the spirit and close the rift in the quad. The PCs will then owe the Hounds a favor, to be called in at a later date. They will also have Samara as an ally.

There is another way to deal with this conundrum: to allow the Hounds to kill Charlie, or for the PCs to kill her themselves. Detective Rezai will immediately arrest them.

After spending a few days in jail, the PCs and any involved Hounds will be released with little explanation. Some investigation will reveal that all the evidence–from the murder weapon to the tapes of their interviews–has disappeared, and there is no record of it ever existing. If they dig deeper, the PCs will find that a Dr. Dennis Cleary signed off on Charlie’s death certificate, listing heart failure as cause of death. Of the police force, only Samara has any knowledge of what happened. She quickly realizes that something supernatural has taken place and knows better than to insist that the murder happened against all apparent evidence. Still, she will be keeping a close eye on the PCs. Even though Charlie wasn’t innocent, Samara still believes in justice over vengeance.

Threads for the Future

The Hounds perform a ritual to send the Fear spirit back where it came from and seal the tear in teh veil, but Jimmy’s murder will not soon be forgotten by the people of Singer Lake. The “Satanist cult” explanation gains more and more ground, and a general fear of the occult mirroring the Satanic Panic of the 1980s begins to take root in the town. Filtering out the real supernatural occurrences from the paranoia will become a full-time job for the player characters.

Depending on how they dealt with Charlie Palmer, the PCs have made either a friend or an enemy of Samara Rezai. As a friend, she can help them navigate the World of Darkness as it exists in Singer Lake. As an enemy, she will mistrust them and try to thwart anything they do that involves taking the law into their own hands. The Storyteller has some freedom in how they handle her character; someone like Samara who values true justice over law and property would not last long in a real-life American police force, so her tenure in Singer Lake’s police department may be short-lived, especially if her knowledge of the supernatural leads others to believe she is mentally unwell. As this is a fictional medium, the Storyteller can keep her on the force to either aid or hinder the PCs with legal authority, or have her removed and acting as an independent agent.

If the PCs are watching over Charlie, they owe the Hounds a favor. My suggestion is that it has to do with the PCs acting as a neutral liaison between the Hounds and the vampires in Singer Lake, but the Storyteller has complete freedom if they choose to continue the campaign.

If the PCs aided instead in Charlie’s death, the Hounds will owe them a favor to be called in at a later date. They have also attracted attention from Life & Family Ministries–Dennis Cleary, the doctor who helped cover up Charlie’s murder, is the same doctor who approved her relocation to Singer Lake.

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Back to Part Two

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Edited September 15, 2021 to update some names.