everything’s dying slowly,
waiting for the spirit to give
up the ghost.
The Road to Stepford: Lonesome Forest and volunteers keep the whole place neat and tidy. The
same building houses the Lonesome Forest Library, and the archives hold a copy of every edition of the Lonesome Forest Informer, the local newspaper. As stores give way to homes, every lawn is mowed, every flowerbed is well tended and every car is parked in its driveway. Every- thing’s just perfect. Doesn’t matter who you pass on your way into town, they smile and say “hello.” Even in the center of town, people leave their doors open and cars unlocked. Despite cell phone coverage and modern cars, the town feels like an idyllic utopia circa 1963.
Only one road leads in to Lonesome Forest. That wasn’t always true. In 1954, the state paid for the Lone- some Bridge, an alternate route for heavy goods vehicles to come into town. The governor hoped to exploit the forests near town, and knew that the current road couldn’t support a larger lumber mill than the town already had. The mayor’s office strangled the idea in red tape for three years. When that finally looked like it was going to fail, the bridge collapsed. Five people died, but nobody was held responsible. Every attempt to rebuild the bridge has met with failure.
The residents of Lonesome Forest seem happy that way. The town wants to remain unspoiled, to draw in increasingly eco-conscious tourists. Most folks in town are employed by the lumber mill 10 miles downriver, a mill that welcomes new people in town looking for work. One tourist brochure claims that the only people who drive away from town are delivery drivers, because every visitor comes back to stay.
t
hem
yth ofs
elfEveryone in Lonesome Forest is just a little too normal. Anyone who walks through some of the residen- tial streets on a Sunday evening will see all the townsfolk mowing their lawns at the same time. Everyone mows the same pattern at the same time, so precise and regular that they each finish when the clock strikes six. That air of pre- cision permeates the town; it separates people who live in Lonesome Forest from tourists and new arrivals. Anyone who lives there long enough for the town to accept them starts to keep time to an alien clock. Not all at once, but over time, everyone becomes what the town considers normal.
People who like to go digging for the truth soon discover that the lawn-mowing is the least of the town’s weird synchronicities. Everyone who works at the mill shows up at the same time. Nobody who doesn’t work there gets to look around; the safety inspector receives hefty bribes and the doors are barred to anyone who isn’t on the payroll. Whatever’s really going on inside the mill is a mystery — certainly it doesn’t bring in machinery or send out planks of wood, yet everyone still shows up in the morning, ready to work.
The sheriff’s office doesn’t offer open access to its paperwork. When questioned, whoever’s on duty points
out that “folks in Lonesome Forest believe in little things like decency and privacy.”
Anyone who wants to find out more has to go digging through the records of the Lonesome Forest Informer, in the library’s basement. The paper’s almost depressingly boring. Only a truly dedicated researcher would notice the same stories being repeated, always with a different byline. The stories are years apart, never appearing on the same date — an element of chaos introduced to stop people noticing the pattern — but they’re pretty much identical, apart from the names. Worse, they’re all inconsequential. Academic chaff to blank out the real story: Lonesome Forest has no serious crime. Sure, people get arrested for causing a disturbance after they have one too many drinks. Some of the tourists get locked up for theft or drug offences or beating the crap out of each other, but the only time the locals get involved is as victims.
piCking throUgh the detailS
Characters who want to do the legwork to discover Lonesome Forest’s odd crime statistics will need to spend a lot of time in the library archives. All they have are paper copies of the
Lonesome Forest Informer, not even on micro- fiche. The player rolls Intelligence + Academics as an extended action. Each roll takes two hours, and to discover the truth about the lack of crime requires 10 successes. After rolling five successes, the character learns that stories have been dupli- cated. On an exceptional success, she learns that none of the tourists charged with crimes ever seems to be prosecuted; or at least, there’s never been a follow-up.
A few details stand in a character’s way. The library’s open nine through five every weekday, nine to one on Saturday and closed on Sundays. A character who spends more than one day in the archives will find the locals encouraging her to get out into the fresh air and partake in some of the wholesome activities on offer. While nobody will physically bar her from continuing her research, the social pressure brought to bear is great indeed.
A wary character might notice other details that set her on edge. Sometimes, people know things when they really shouldn’t. If she mentions she’s taking her family off on a hike along one of the forest trails, then her husband — who’s been talking with Buck at the outdoor supply store — is told the best rest spots on the trail, without ever know- ing why. Most people who first notice how nothing’s really hidden in town just assume that information spreads fast in a gossipy small town. Occasionally, as with the example of Buck and the tourists, the residents in question have no way
of communicating, yet both people seem to be in on both conversations at once. It’s almost like the whole town has lots of eyes and lots of ears, but only one memory.
a s
traNges
hadowTo werewolves, the Shadow of Lonesome Forest is a singularly disturbing place. Normally, the spirit world is teeming with inhabitants, though most slumber until some- thing causes them to wake. Not
so in this town. Lonesome Forest is empty in a way that no place on Earth has any right to be. The trees have no spirits, nor does the forest. The cars and homes and appliances of the townsfolk don’t have spirits, either.
A werewolf looking at Lone- some Forest in the Shadow is in for a shock. There’s nowhere quite like it. It’s like a human going out one night and coming back to find his whole town just gone, with no real sign of what’s happened. The very fabric of the land bears scars, as if a giant had dragged claws through the world.
The nearest spirit who re- members anything is Tzarum Kur, the spirit of the hill on the other side of the river valley. Tzarum Kur remembers when he was a powerful spirit, before time and tide wore him down to a mere hill. He remembers a fight in the spirit world, between a fledgling who wouldn’t back down and a powerful creature of Shadow who had lain trapped below what would become Lonesome Forest. He doesn’t know when it happened, or even who won. The spirit has long since stopped being a reliable witness.
For a while, a pack of Predator Kings claimed territory that included Lonesome Forest. Whether they ever bothered visiting the town is a mystery to other werewolves; certainly, no- body ever mentioned their pres- ence, and nobody in town will admit to encountering so much as a large wolf that attacked people. Whenever the Ninna Farakh left, they did so without ever setting foot in the town. Likewise, the
Shadow has no sign they’d ever passed through. Only something major could scare off the Pure.
Since the Predator Kings left, no pack has claimed Lonesome Forest in anything but name. Those Forsaken close to the town always want to investigate, but have too much going wrong in their own territories to spare any time for the small town. As long as it remains harmless, they figure that leaving well enough alone is a good strategy.
The Road to Stepford: Lonesome Forest
descript ioN
The first thing everyone notices about folks in Lone- some Forest is how nice they are. Everyone’s ready with an easy smile and a funny story about life in town. The whole place can feel like it’s on a charm offensive at times, with people reaching just that little bit too far to convince people to stay. Nobody gets too pushy, but the idea that people should stay on is a running theme. On its own, it’s nothing — people who live in Lonesome Forest are damn proud of it, and happy to have new faces around. Visitors who stray off the beaten track, or who stay long enough to see some of the weirder behavior, may realize just how creepy the suggestion really is.
Everyone who lives in the town is a little weird. That’s the main thing that separates tourists from the locals. In addition to whole streets practicing synchronized lawn- mowing, people will sometimes respond to events that they seemingly don’t notice. (If Bobby across town accidentally gets his foot caught in the mower, Carol manning the gen- eral store might suddenly act as if it had happened to her, crying out in pain and then forgetting it ever happened.) Nobody in town notices this happening, and anyone com- menting on it faces blank stares, at best. Pressing the matter — indeed, pressing anything about the odd goings-on in town — is the one true way to earn the residents’ ire.
While everyone in town looks different, some com- mon threads tie people together. Everyone’s healthy, even when they shouldn’t be; a trick knee is more a conversa- tion piece than a disability, and even the fattest people in town are portly or husky rather than outright obese. Lonesome Forest has more than its fair share of redheads, thanks to one of the founding families, widower Daniel Archer and his son, Jack.
This trend toward fitness carries over to those who move to Lonesome Forest later in life. George Buchanan, owner of the bar for the last 10 years, lost his right arm at the elbow in action in Iraq during the first Gulf War. Since he relocated, he’s found his false arm easier to use.
secre t s
Everything’s connected. In Lonesome Forest, those connections are just a little bit closer than anywhere else. A hundred years ago, the spirit of the town awoke. No- body alive knows how or why, but Lonesome Forest wasn’t content to lie back and absorb Essence. It wanted to grow. And so the spirit did what spirits do when they want to grow — it ate those spirits it considered to be inferior. The slumbering reflections of buildings, the ephemeral shimmers of roads, the spirits of fire that danced in every hearth and the spirit slumbering within every tree: everything fell to the one that werewolves know as Enzuk Umada.
Most magath never grow too powerful. Another spirit or a pack of werewolves puts them in their place. Somehow, Enzuk Umada avoided that fate. When another spirit found him, the two fought and the town won. Possibly alone
amongst magath, he retained his original drive. The spirit of Lonesome Forest wanted to be the only spirit of Lonesome Forest, and every single consumed spirit was a step on that journey. After nearly 70 years, Enzuk Umada had absorbed every spirit in the town, a truly incredible feat.
A few werewolves who discover the truth wonder if the spirit of Lonesome Forest was drunk with power, while others believe that what happened next was the only plau- sible next step for an unstable magath that had lived for so long without intervention. In either case, Enzuk Umada wanted to exert direct control over his physical reflec- tion. He couldn’t possess just one person or one building — by that point, his sheer power would have destroyed it. Instead, the spirit slowly infused its Essence into every- one and everything in town, Fettering the objects and Claiming the people until it had merged with everything. Lonesome Forest allows people to retain basic shards of their personality, but by this point, the whole thing’s a bit of a sick joke — he only allows people to be individuals for as long as it takes for them to attract new people for the terrible spirit to have as his own.
griSt For the mill
So what’s really going on in the lumber mill? Enzuk Umada knows of an ancient and powerful spirit bound in the earth below Lonesome Forest. Everyone in the mill is part of a very long-term ritual to allow the Spirit of Lonesome Forest to consume the ancient horror while it slumbers. Perhaps fortunately, the ritual isn’t complete even after nearly a hundred years, but surely it will end soon.
Some Storytellers may prefer to have the lumber mill play a different role in the story of the town. These suggestions are intended as starting points to create a unique mystery behind the town.
Thralls: Inside the main building stand a series of massive furnaces. As Enzuk Umada continues to expand, symbols of his dominion are burned as chiminage. Every time it takes over another stretch of forest, the people burn one of the trees. A new resident has some of her per- sonal ID sacrificed without her consent. A car or delivery truck loses its license plate to the spirit’s mad quest for expansion.
Freedom: Destroying the bridge put a stop to Enzuk Umada’s plans to expand beyond the town. The lumber mill, which would have been connected to that road, now acts as a place of sanctuary. Inside, people can loosen the spirit’s hold over them for long enough to retain some personality — and sanity — before the spirit saps their will once they leave.
rumors
“Remember ol’ Doc Jennings? He moved on a few years back, out to a place called Lonesome Forest. Funny thing is, we ain’t heard from him almost since he moved, and him with so many friends here. His last letter was a bit weird, but we never thought much of it.”
Lonesome Forest entices people to stay, partly through good old-fashioned charm and partly by less wholesome means. Most people notice something weird before the town Claims them, and many tell people back home, but few have enough friends that anyone would come investi- gate (and in fact, those who investigate sometimes come and stay). Finding out what actually happened to people who go to Lonesome Forest is one of the main things that drives werewolves to the town. Everyone stays friendly, at least for a while, but when the spirit works out what the Uratha are, they start feeling its displeasure. People stop talking to the pack, and someone vandalizes their vehicles, though nobody actually sees anything. People start watching the pack all the time, making it hard for them to change forms without provoking an outcry. The town remains passive-aggressive, though it will defend itself against any attack.
“Enzuk Umada is too powerful to live, but as a spirit, it is young. When it Claimed the town, part of its Essence remained in the Shadow. Trapped forever between two worlds, only in the Hisil is it vulnerable. Only in the Shadow can it truly die.”
As it is a vastly powerful spirit, no one person can contain the primal force of the monstrous entity. Hell, the whole town can’t hold the spirit’s power. Enzuk Umada had to leave part of itself in the spirit world, lest it destroy the very thing it sought to embody. Finding the shard is a tricky one — it’s hiding in a locus in the basement of the museum and library. Getting access to the locus in the physical world is no easy task, as it’s the one place in town to sport modern security systems and at least two people on watch all the time. In the Hisil, the locus is surrounded by thick concrete and brick walls molded into a cocoon around the spirit’s weak point.
“We were hunting the spirit of an earthquake that was ready to level a whole chunk of forest. Just as the quake was about to flatten us, this twisted thing joined in. It looked like a town would look if it had legs and teeth. It saved our asses, but looked like it was about to turn on us if we followed it.”
Enzuk Umada is concerned with one thing and one thing only: Lonesome Forest. Anything that threatens the town and the spirit’s host bodies threatens the spirit. Werewolves who hold territory near the town may find the spirit to be an unwitting ally against a powerful foe. Some packs may investigate their mysterious ally, leading them to the dead-zone in the Shadow around the town. Others may foolishly attempt to ally with the spirit, but Enzuk Umada can only think about things in terms of the town, and were- wolves who pry too closely threaten its precious stability.
Story hookS
• A massive pack of Predator Kings wants to take Lonesome Forest as its territory, defeat- ing the spirit in the process. The characters must decide: what’s healthier for the Shadow and the material world? To help these werewolves sacrifice this town and its people for the good of the balance? Or to help Enzuk Umada and its “residents” push back the massive pack of brutal Pure wolves?
• A friend of one of the pack members spends a couple of weeks in Lonesome Forest on vacation. Six months later, he goes back for another vacation. Three months after that, he’s finished arranging his move to town. His letters seem fine to start with, but they soon start to hint at a sinister side to the town, then they stop entirely. When the characters investigate, he’s not quite sure why he’s never written, but he sure does love living in Lonesome Forest.
• Enzuk Umada knows something. Maybe it’s the location of an ancient evil, trapped in the Shadow but too powerful to destroy, or one of the spirits it consumed is the last one to know a ritual that the pack needs to save their