synodiporia_ooc | UNQUIET DEAD: Jaunt Info

THE UNQUIET DEAD
An Eldritch Ghost Story Jaunt In the City of Harrogate
August 7th–September 16th

Harrogate is a little British resort town with a dark past. A little over one hundred and twenty years ago, a large portion of the town died when a fire consumed a theater in the middle of a performance. But time passed, the dead were forgotten, and everyone rebuilt.

But in death, as in taxes, forgetting something doesn’t always make it go away. Harrogate has been dying of the same forces that kill towns everywhere: a sluggish economy, a stagnant middle class, corrupt management, being a tourist town in a decade when nobody can afford to be a tourist in England. It’s a slow, grim death, but a mundane one. Ignorable. The sort of thing that starts a clawing existential dread in your heart, but you push it down and get on with your day because that’s life, after all. That pain and uncertainty? That is normal.

What is happening now is anything but normal. People have been seeing ghosts. Not diaphanous white figures. Just - people. People they lost. Reflected in windshields, mirrors, still water - just for a moment. Hearing their voice on the wind, or in the creaking of a settling house at night. Probably just the power of suggestion. Probably, except that it’s happened to almost everyone, even people who didn’t know that this was going around like a rumor, or the flu.

Artie Grove has just died. A local celebrity, a philanthropist and former child actor, Artie was always considered the luck of the town, almost like a mascot, and their sweet, too-public romance with a stranded tourist was the stuff of gossip right up to their star-spangled wedding last month. Now Artie’s gone, car wrapped around a bridge abutment in one of those accidents that looks like a deliberate and unhappy act. Shocked, devastated, the town - and an all-too-cynically welcome flood of tourists - have come into Harrogate to pay their respects. But when wild, undismissable supernatural events plague the funeral - what will everyone think? Is it a public health crisis? Mass hallucination? Publicity stunt? Cover-up?

Of course, it can’t really be the spirits of the dead. Can it?

Travelers are struck with a worse problem. Mundane circumstances, fewer people here than expected—it must be a Walkabout, mustn’t it? Only—Harrogate’s a horror story among Travelers, one of those where almost everyone dying was actually the best available end to the Jaunt. Is this really the same town?

And some Travelers—investigators and infiltrators alike—will be waking up in an empty, mist-wracked city full of dark memories that echo. Ghosts, knowing and unknowing, will slowly discover that there are no revivals here—but possession of the living is far too easy… whatever that portends.

It’s coming. Soon. And death, or the dead, and the twists and turns of wicked history may be the only way to stop it, if the living cannot be made to see the truth.

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If you’d like to sign up for a plot role, pop over here and let us know which one. Casting will be done during the day on the 2nd.

The Widowed Lover: Artie Grove’s spouse, a traveler with no roots in the town thrust into an uncomfortable public life, and now into public grief, suspicion, and inheritance of a shocking fortune - 85 million pounds. The terrifying forces of public pressure are the least of what this isolated, mourning figure will face in the coming days.
The Innkeeper’s Heir: Your family has operated the local bed-and-breakfast for generations, though the player’s choice if your family inherited the inn before or after the 1897 Harrogate Theater Fire (that is, you can be connected to a previous infiltration, but do not have to be). You grew up on sinister ghost stories in this town, and are the first person to believe the nature of the dreadful events currently unfolding - but you know that to openly confess a belief in the supernatural would only cement the family reputation for madness. The horror of this part is seeing the oncoming train, but not knowing (yet) if anything you do can stop it, or even warn others of its coming.
The Museum Curator: The busybody would-be amateur detective who operates the Harrogate Historical Society, you have access to a great many obviously exaggerated and unreliable old records, and enjoy (seriously enjoy) a reputation as a meddler, gossip, and matchmaker. Straight out of a tea cozy mystery, in a less dark Jaunt, this would be a comedy role. Here, it’s a chance to get in way over your head while suffering from a case of genre confusion.
The Doubting Exorcist: this Benedictine nun or monk is a prior or prioress - the head, and only remaining member, of a dwindling religious community in Harrogate. With a reputation for wisdom and a large library, they are visited frequently by the spiritually troubled in town, and have a vocation to care for those in spiritual distress. But being alone in this life for years has made the once-steady figure doubt their vocation and religion, and they remember all too keenly the horrors they saw as a young exorcist which made them seek the cloistered life.
The Queen’s Agent: an impeccable, amoral, cold-eyed, well-mannered secret agent in the service of MI6, here to investigate rumors of troubling hallucinations on the off chance this is another terrorist bio-attack, like the sarin scare in York last year. A jaded figure, the Queen’s Agent has extraordinary legal powers to act as needed for the preservation of England, but is also under orders to be as discreet as possible, and inquire under the guise of a public health inspector.

The Sundered Lover: Artemis or Arthur Grove, philanthropist, local celebrity, former child actor, darling of the town. Led a charmed and seemingly innocent life right up to their shocking death. But everyone has secrets. There are no charmed lives, not really.
The Troubled Ancestor: an experienced ghost whose unfinished business has kept them around since their death in the theater fire of 1897. Looking out for their living relatives, staying human in the face of disembodied life and tempting powers, this role would be a natural fit for Infiltrators from last Jaunt, but is equally open to new players. Not everyone who died in the theater fire and left family behind is someone we “knew” at the time.
The Evil Spirit: A cultist from the 1890s, the knowledge you acquired before death has served you well after it. The architect of Harrogate’s current woes, you are a figure of depthless malice and sadism, whose exact powers and affiliations are secret, and whose timing is governed by rules that may or may not have meaning outside your own mad mind.
The Mad Minions: An unspecified number of ghosts awakened by the Evil Spirit and willing to use their powers of haunting and possession for their own gain, or that of their master. This role can be approached with a wide variety of powers, motivations, and backgrounds.