Rosebriar: Appleton

Originally published December 16, 2014

This week I present a district in my setting for You Can't Go Home Again. Rosebriar is an old town but much of it is a product of the modern age.

Rosebriar: Appleton

They don’t live here anymore.

Description

Appleton presents itself as a small close-knit community where people move to get started in life, raise their children, and grow old. Neighborhoods consist of large blocks of developments where minor variations in building exteriors poorly hide the identical floor plans. The same green lawns and long stretches of mostly unused sidewalk line the winding streets and cul de sacs. If not for the street signs (named for trees and flowers) it would be the perfect maze.

But beneath the surface, Appelton is less than it appears. The suburb has been in a continuous state of renewal and construction since its incorporation into Rosebriar. The bursting of the housing bubble simply slowed it down. The area suffers a continuous influx and exodus as new families move into the area and then leave, either to Persimmon Hill or out of town to look for work.

The constant turnover of residents has erodes any community that Appleton once had, reducing it to a place people live but don’t interact. The residents instead work along Main Street and Ravel or the Works, shop at the big box stores on the edge of Heywood, and divert themselves in Old Town or farther afield. Few spend any time getting to know their neighbors who change on a monthly basis anyway.

Appleton continues on as a place without history or connections, where the landscape’s order contrasts with the fluidity of its inhabitants.

It’s a perfect place to get Lost.

Local Hedge

There is little place for brambles and riotous vegetation in this plastic paradise. The Hedge here is squeezed and crushed underground. Step through a door and you find yourself in an earthen basement, perhaps still studded with the farm tools of the community Appleton once was. An eerie underrealm rife with slugs and worms crawls beneath the surface, occasionally bursting into spaces between drywall or under the stairs. Rusty nails and inches long splinters replace thorns.

Rolls to navigate the Hedge suffer a -2 penalty while the darkness and confusing layout gives a +2 bonus to Stealth rolls.

Damnation City Stats:

Physical: Access -2, Safety 2
Mental: Information 2, Awareness 0
Social: Prestige 1, Stability 1

Appleton’s grid of streets should be easy to navigate but the numerous cul de sacs and uniformity can easily lead one astray. On the other hand people move here to be safe and the local law enforcement works to make that true. Information is easy to come by and everyone is willing to help but without a community, there is little transference of knowledge and few people share what is really going on. Appleton ranks higher than the eastern or southern parts of the city and remains fairly stable.

Vice: Forgetfulness. It’s not that they don’t care or don’t notice, but the residents of Appleton tend to forget and ignore the injustices and strange events around them. For many it is simply due to the fact that due to debt or opportunity, they soon move to a new area, leaving behind Appleton.
Virtue: Tolerance. It is true that Appleton is friendly to strangers. When no one knows anyone, it is hard for cliques to develop. As a relatively young community, there are few long-term residents to form a distinct subgroup.

Site: Appleton Community College

Type: Academic
History: Formerly an agricultural school, Applton Community College primarily teaches trades and prepares students poorly for more rigorous institutions. Decades of mismanagement have shrunk the student body and left the campus a shadow of its former self..

On area that has remained remarkably well-funded is the Humanities Department. Nestled in a small brick building overlooking the river, this department houses over a dozen faculty crammed into small offices, each walled with books. One in particular on the second floor is fuller than most: Dr. Petrov’s. Her course on Russian Literature is always well attended.

Story Seeds:

The Missing Street: a long-standing mystery is why the cross streets, laid out in alphabetical order with the names of trees, skips the letter G. The fae know that the truth is that the street was taken by the True Fae or perhaps the Hedge itself. Golden Larch Street still appears on the nights of the new moon. Wise Changelings know to avoid the area but some say certain secrets (which ones depend on the telling) can be learned by exploring the misshapen houses that line it. Who or what lived in these darkened structures is a mystery that has yet to be revealed.

The Other Tenant: the third house down on Birch Street is on the market every year. A family buys it cheap, moves in, and then the strangeness begins. Furniture rearranges themselves in the night. Books appear stacked in alphabetical order. Oddly labeled bottles appear in the spice rack. Things escalate and soon the family moves on. Some have tried exorcisms but to no avail. This house isn’t haunted. Instead it is the home of a lost brownie. Once it lived happily under the roof of simple farming family. When the development was built in its place, it took up residence here. Now it tries to help but is confused by the modern appliances and unfamiliar people/

The Phantom Realtor: people rarely see who puts up the signs for ‘Dream Realty’, those who do often have a hard time describing the well dressed woman in blue. They also have a hard time recalling who lived there. Calling the number gets an answering machine with a friendly female voice. Somehow they do get back promptly but the buyers are never sure how. Not that they stick around for very long. And then the Phantom Realtor put up another for sale sign.

NPCs:

The Lost Boy: this Beast was born in Appleton. Unfortunately he’s was only 6 when the True Fae took him. While he found his way back to the playground, his mother took him from, he can’t remember the way home. Worse it’s been 5 years since he was taken and his family may have moved on. Can they find them? Will they even recognize him?

The Bogeyman: this Darkling has learned the keys to a large number of hedge portals in Appleton, specifically closets. Combined with a large hollow with many doors of its own, he can quickly traverse Appleton. To what ends does he put this resource to? Is he harvesting the nightmares of children or protecting them from worse threats? It is said that this master of doors can get into any place in Rosebriar. Can you learn his secret before the Bridgeburners get him?

Dr. Lada Petrov

Description: Lada still clings to her youth, dying her hair black and using heavy eyeliner to hide a lifetime of late nights, looking for...something. Now in her 70s, she carries an amulet and a well-worn notebook, hoping to find that element of the fantastic that somehow she feels was stolen from her.

Biography: Lada Petrov was born in 1938 to Russian intelligentsia fleeing Stalin’s purges. Her father obtained a professorship at Appleton College and worked in their Agriculture department from 1948 to 1965.

Lada has always known something wasn’t right with her life. It began the summer after her junior year at high school. Somehow she felt like she wasn’t meant to be here. That there was someplace more wondrous where she should be.

Lada received her Bachelor’s degree at Columbia and then took a trip to Europe. She searched for the fantastic and supernatural and though she made many friends along the way who were well versed in it, somehow she never encountered anything herself. She resigned herself to getting a doctorate in Russian Literature from Glasgow before returning home. She has taught at Appleton since 1976 and continues to do so as professor emeritus in the Humanities department.

She has ties to several occultist groups around the world, especially the Null Mysteriis. She consults for them, referencing her vast knowledge of folklore and myth, especially Russian myth. But she seemed fated never to encounter the supernatural herself.

Except one. In 2011, she noticed that one of her students, Alice Ruby, resembles one she had before. The young woman refused to discuss the matter which just caused Lada to dig deeper. She has discovered picture and references to someone matching her description going back for over a century. She will learn her secret.

GM Only: Lada’s quest to research the supernatural has been thwarted by a friend she never had. A mad Changeling named Hedge made a deal with the ‘woman’ called Alice Ruby, a fallen True Fae. History was rewritten. As part of the deal Hedge made sure his ‘friends’ were never taken. Lada should have been a Changeling, an Elemental known as Lada Nada.

She knows she is protected but not how to counter it. Now in her twilight years, she desperately seeks to capture the magic and extend her life. She has noticed Alice Ruby’s repetitions in the town and has an extensive dossier on her. She wants her youth.

Now the magic that keeps her from the supernatural is fading. As Fate steps aside, her own efforts are bearing fruit.

Virtue: Fortitude, Lada believes in herself and believes she will persevere, That surety has kept her seeking for the occult even after decades of failure and frustration.
Vice: Wrath. Deep down the fact that so many have found the supernatural, even to their detriment, irks her. Though she keeps it tamped down, she is willing to take extreme measures to get what she wants. If others get hurt that is the price she will pay.

Aspirations: learn a way to stave off death, finish a novel of her own to assure her literary immortality

Mental Attributes: Intelligence 4, Wits 3, Resolve 4
Physical Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Stamina 2
Social Attributes: Presence 3, Manipulation 3, Composure 3
Mental Skills: Academics (folklore) 4, Crafts 1, Investigation 3, Occult (fae) 4, Politics 2
Physical Skills: Athletics 1, Firearms (pistol) 1, Stealth 2, Survival 1, Weaponry 1
Social Skills: Empathy 2, Expression 3, Intimidation 3, Persuasion 3, Socialize 2, Subterfuge 2
Merits: Danger Sense 2, Resources 4, Language (Russian, French, Arabic, Hebrew), Professional Training 4 (Academics, Expression, Occult)
Willpower: 7