#City23 Update: February Week 3

I’ve written about my #City23 projects here and on Tumblr. Check out my last post.

I’m working on two #City23 projects: a fantastical version of medieval Nottingham and a contemporary fictional city in Maine called Cape Crescent. The first is best suited to my game Sherwood, while the second might be a good alternate setting for Moonlight on Roseville Beach or another paranormal sleuths game.

Cape Crescent

This week I’ve been working to dig into The Ghost Bay Foundation, the ominous NGO research org with several weird Cape Crescent facilities. In January, I talked about their use of the Cliffop Motor Lodge and the caves beneath it. Yes, I stole that from The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.

Last week I dug into the real estate office they use as an administrative front and the local boat rental they’ve lured into an exclusive contract, and I still need to determine how they launder money. But this past week, I looked at their non-profit research facility, Jones-Clark Laboratories.

If you’re an old WoD fan and pointing at the screen right now, it’s probably because GBF sounds a lot like a baby Pentex with an ostensibly charitable mission, and Jones-Clark is probably starting to sound like Pentex subsidiary in the “St. Claire Contract” adventure from Project Twilight. That’s the salubrious effect of the 90s-lovin’ WoD fans in my life.

I’m still pinpointing what kinds of trouble Jones-Clark is getting into, but I’ve got a few big researchers identified: * The magically unified entity sometimes known as Dr. Skylar Hancock and/or Dr. Harley Clayton. They were two individual alchemists before allowing themselves to be ritually merged into a single person in an alchemical marriage. Their current work is in psychedelics, attempting to merge more individuals into their own unified conscience. * Dr. Jordan Garcia is a geneticist and occultist obsessed with unleashing “human potential” through magical manipulation and transformation of a person’s DNA. * Psychiatric pharmacist Viktor Kranis has overlapping interests with the Drs. Hancock-Clayton, but is more interested in taming, shaping, and manipulating human emotions and perceptions through alchemy. For the good of society, of course.

These are creepy assholes — I’ve got no intention of making Ghost Bay a sympathetic faction or one the PCs should cooperate with.

Nottingham

I’m still tinkering with Nottingham Castle’s Outer Bailey - the outermost portion that would still be regarded as within the walls. This week, I went back and poked at the kennels and stables some more, fabricated a brief bit of backstory for the sheriff’s guards, and replaced the planned bathhouse in the outer bailey with a “stewhouse,” an old slang term for a brothel suggesting their connection to bathhouses. In this case, it’s a makeshift tavern/bathhouse/brothel for the guard (and ostensibly other castle residents, though the guards get all the attention there).

The Stables and Kennel: Over in the stables, I added a younger stableboy named “Davin.” Everyone remembers Davin as the youngest of the stableboys, but he’s been around almost as long as Kado (introduced in prior posts). Davin’s perpetual youth and strange way of evading anyone’s attention are your first hints of his fey nature. He’s hoping to use his innate necromantic talents to insinuate himself deeper into the sheriff’s service, but he’s under a geas not to touch a dead body. He knows the sheriff’s ring is on the old stablemaster’s body and knows where Kado left the body, but he’s unable to recover it (and enslave the old stablemaster’s ghost) without assistance.

The Stewhouse: Some time ago, one of the sheriff’s favorite guard lieutenants was killed in a local brothel. The sheriff had the building burned, and the proprietor executed with the accused culprits. Since then, the sheriff has maintained his own facilities for entertaining his guard within the castle. The proprietor of the sheriff’s stewhouse, Madame Morvan, knows more about the guards than anyone and has used her own occult skills to ensure she can provide every guard member with whatever they most desire. She knows their secrets and is possibly even more popular with the guard than the sheriff is. Accompanying Mother Morvan is a familiar known as Epiphany. Once a mortal, Epiphany has become a shapeshifting immortal spirit increasingly interested in escaping Morvan’s control.