goodbyemoon | SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PLOTTING POST

SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PLOTTING POST

The town is bleak. While there’s no indication that this was ever a metropolis, once upon a time it was thriving enough to be capable of sustaining cute college town boutiques like haberdasheries and crystal shops. By now, most of those small mom-and-pops are out of business, and those that aren’t are barely surviving the death by a thousand cuts of trumped-up citations and ever-increasing rent payments. The population is about two thousand, so while not everybody knows everybody, almost everybody is two degrees of separation from each other and gossip travels quickly.

It’s Appalachia. It’s rural, it’s run-down, it’s creepy. The ditches along the sides of the roads are filled with trash and old, abandoned cars that have been reclaimed by the overgrown plant life. There are caves and abandoned mineshafts littering the undeveloped land. There’s farmland, but for the most part it’s fallow or used exclusively to raise the pigs and sheep for the slaughterhouse. Most socializing seems to be done at bars and churches, and the general vibe is one of depression, hopelessness and resentment as the locals see their wages worth less and less and their prospects for improving their lives remain just out of reach.

The main sources of industry in this town are coal mining and mutton, but as demand for both of those products has gone down over the years, the town’s wealth has concentrated in the hands of Ms. Cygne, the slaughterhouse owner and town matriarch, and Mr. Goluboy, a tech bro millionaire who owns MineCorp, which continues extracting minerals. Ms. Cygne and Mr. Goluboy also compose the entirety of the town council, as everyone else quit or was bullied out.

Nobody new has come to the town for years and no one seems to have left or even attempted to leave for years. Animal maulings and accidents in the mines are an occasional cause of death. Because of these maulings, a strict sundown curfew is enforced by the sheriff; those caught violating the curfew are immediately jailed for their own safety, and fined for the use of police resources.

MECHANICS

MEMORY LOSS
THIS IS A MEMORY-LOSS PLOT. The myths are, for mysterious reasons, being brainwashed and forced to forget their roles, their relationships, and their backstories; while the myths don’t have to believe that they’ve lived in this town forever, they shouldn’t remember each other as myths or becoming a Guardian at all. The myths will believe themselves to be a resident of the town and may be an established person with a business or social circle. They may feel a general sense of dysphoria or unease with their new role, even if they can’t articulate why it feels “off.” Their background is likely to be something that loosely matches their canon background, but with the magic or sci-fi space future removed. Non-human characters are human for the duration of this plot.

TOWNSFOLK
These townsfolk aren’t necessarily bad people, but they’re worn down by the economic stress of their situation and have developed a culture of judgment, gossip, insularity, nosiness and close-mindedness. It’s alarmingly easy to become a social pariah based on nothing but rumors. They have a virulent case of Tall Poppy Syndrome and resent those with more than them – more money, more education, more life experience, so on. They frequently look for outsiders to feel better than. Typically, their topics of conversation are gossiping about others, tales of drunken escapades, and tough-guy posturing about how they would rid the town of undesirables if they were in charge. They don’t seem terribly interested in talking about the maulings or what’s in the woods, but some will speculate if pushed. They will report any deviance they see to the sheriff with haste, pausing only to inform their entire social circle first.

NPCS

MS. NOIRE CYGNE
Ms. Cygne is the owner of the slaughterhouse, which has been in her family for generations. Positioned as the town philanthropist and matriarch, Ms. Cygne’s special program is to identify promising youngsters and setting them up for a free ride at a prestigious boarding school out of town. The youths she selects are sent off to school and are only heard from in the form of bland, happy letters home a few times a year. Each year, she hosts a debut ball where she meets all the youths. She owns all the subsistence businesses, the hospital, and the grocery and convenience stores. She has a benevolent, motherly image. Her daughter, Odette Mallard, is the sheriff.

MR. KYAN GOLUBOY
Mr. Goluboy is a womanizing, hipster millionaire heir who owns MineCorp, the company that manages the coal mines. He owns almost all the residential property and is a very aggressive landlord who targets small business owners violating minor business codes. His ex-girlfriend was sent to prison – and never heard from again – after Mr. Goluboy’s wife was found murdered. Mr. Goluboy wants to buy up the undeveloped land and farmland, including Warren Family Farms, to turn into a series of McMansions, which he says will help drive business in the downtown. Let him tell you about crypto.

SHERIFF ODETTE MALLARD
Ms. Cygne’s daughter Odette is very letter-of-the-law and claims to never play favorites; she will refer constantly to whatever ordinance she’s enforcing and claim her hands are tied. Effectively, this means that she’s the council’s attack dog, because she’s tasked with ticketing and shuttering businesses over extremely minor violations (receipts signed in blue ink instead of black! Liquor license not displayed prominently enough!) at Goluboy and Cygne’s behest. She and her deputies enforce the curfew very strictly.

LOCATIONS
NOG'S BAR
Nog’s bar is the preferred haunt of most of the miners and slaughterhouse workers in this town, who meet to drink their woes away, complain about their supervisors and speculate on the personal lives of the people around them. Despite Mr. Goluboy’s constant harassment, Nog has managed to keep his liquor license, and as such is one of the few successful businesses in town on account of all the stress-induced alcoholism. While one won’t find fancy cocktails here, if they’re just looking for a beer and some scuttlebutt, this is the place.

THE DINER
“Auntie’s” is the name of the old-school, 1950’s-esque, 24-hour diner in the middle of downtown, with big red pleather booths, checkerboard floors and a jukebox. Typically, the only difference in clientele between Auntie’s and Nog’s is that the people at Auntie’s wanted a burger or a stack of pancakes alongside their beer – but unlike Nog’s, Auntie’s is only barely hanging on, constantly getting ticketed for waterspots on the silverware and not having enough napkins. Thankfully, one can get a full breakfast meal at Auntie’s any time of day for a few dollars.

MS. CYGNE'S MANSION
Ms. Cygne’s mansion is the largest, most opulent house in the town, with a dozen bedrooms and a ballroom. A gorgeous balcony overlooks the lake. Ms. Cygne hosts her debut ball in her ballroom once a year, and frequently invites youths that she thinks may be eligible for her scholarship to tour her grounds and see what a life of “proper upbringing” could give them. Her land includes a topiary maze and a pond full of swans, and the gate at the end of her long driveway has a crest of a swan in wrought iron.

THE DOCKS
The town is alongside a lake, and once upon a time there was enough fish to sustain a modest fishing economy and a river that allowed for trade by boat with other nearby towns. However, with the mines’ pollution, fish are no longer considered safe to eat, and only the water immediately adjacent to the springhead on the Warren Family Farm is safe to swim in. Draining from the mines has lowered the level of the river enough that it’s no longer navigable. Residents will still occasionally use the lake for boating recreation, but fees at the marina keep going up (into Goluboy’s pocket) and mothers are increasingly worried about letting their children get wet in that water.

MINECORPS HEADQUARTERS
One of the two major employers in this town, owned by Mr. Goluboy. Mr. Goluboy goes out of his way to recruit talented scientific minds in the town to work on designing new mining techniques and equipment to try and extract the last bits of coal from the mines, or potentially discover a new source of product. Mr. Goluboy promises more interesting secret projects to those that serve the company well. People who particularly impress him with a scientific invention or business idea may be sponsored to leave town to initiate those adventures, at which point they will only ever communicate by sending blithe, content-free letters home every few months.

THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE
The other major employer, owned by Ms. Cygne. Most of the locals who don’t work at the mines work at the slaughterhouse, where the work is disgusting, dreary and grueling. Sometimes people get promoted out of the trenches and into admin. Yay.

BIG TOP CIRCUS
Dick’s Coffeeshop, Big Top Circus, is in the bottom floor of an apartment building, and many locals have no idea how it hasn’t been shut down yet, given that the owner is famously generous with his resources in a way that clearly irritates the city council. Dick offers jobs to those who Goluboy and Cygne won’t hire at the mines or slaughterhouse and frequently sneaks day-old pastries to the hungry. The coffeeshop is one of the few areas where artists tend to converge, usually at the weekly open mic night; however, whatever one expresses at the coffeeshop is likely to be picked up by the town gossips, mocked relentlessly, distorted and spread around.

WARREN FAMILY FARMS AND FLORIST
The majority of farmland in town belongs to the old Warren Family farm, a sprawling acreage that includes the best producing fields in town, and much of the surrounding hills and undeveloped forest, including the spring that feeds the river. The Warren family, now almost entirely deceased, were never stingy about visitors to their property, and use of the woods for subsistence hunting and stealing from the fields is a source of food for many low-income families. The only hunting permitted in town is in the Warren hills, protected by private property rights against intrusion by the City Council and the Sheriff’s department, as the sole living owner refuses to press charges against trespassers. The property would make a wonderful subdivision of mansions to attract new town residents, or so Mr. Goluboy insists, whether or not he’s been asked, if only the owner would quit being so stingy and sell. The farm provides flowers for the only florist in town, where the owner is forbidden due to health code violations from selling produce, but where for a $5 daisy you can also get a free dozen eggs and produce basket, with a bar of the best chocolate you’ve ever tasted thrown in.

THE FARMER'S MARKET
Because Mr. Goluboy’s malicious prosecution of small businesses has essentially shut down any legal avenue for a farmer’s market, a few of the residents of the town have established a black market for homegrown fruits and vegetables, small-batch soaps and candles, and other small products. Words gets out through a whisper network, and a few times a month everyone in the know meets in a parking lot, opens their trunk, and does some bartering and selling with each other until they get found out. Sheriff Mallard and her deputies have arrested many people at these pop-ups and confiscated their products. By now, these pop-ups have around forty people trading and selling at a time, and the city council has announced that out of concerns for food safety the sentence for being caught vending homegrown produce will be increased to a misdemeanor with jail time.

THE LIBRARY
The library, once well-stocked and indulgently funded, is now kept alive sheerly by the passion of the one paid librarian, Aziraphale, and the volunteers who work there. There is no interlibrary loan program and there have been no new books in years. The library is reduced to loaning damaged copies missing pages, and story hours or public events are difficult to organize due to the complete lack of resources. The city council has also forced Aziraphale to put up a sign against loitering or using the library “for any purposes besides the borrowing of books.” An organization of local busybodies drops in frequently to comb through the stacks for “objectionable material”, which is then destroyed at Ms. Cygne’s behest.

THE SPOOKY WOODS
Outside the town, there are foggy, dense woods, difficult to navigate by foot due to thickets and brambles that come up to a grown man’s waist. The city council has done what they can to ban people from going into the woods, and the gruesome animal maulings are a compelling disincentive. Let the mods know when your characters are going into the spooky woods.

CHARACTER FORM

The comments can be used for players to post about their character's background for the plot, to figured out relationships in the AU, and plot with each other.

Character name:
Player:
Contact Info:
Character backstory (what do they think their role is?):
Business (if they own one):
Currently living at:
Ways that a character might have a pre-existing relationship with them?:
Notes/Opt-outs:

SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PLOTTING POST

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