The Town of Ebon Eaves

This shall serve as a repository for all information, lore, and rumors regarding the strange town that our intrepid heroes will be exploring.

Local Color: Ground Down and Spit Back Up -- Ebon Eaves is a little known enclave located far off the beaten track. About fifty years ago, a lot of folks underwent secret government experiments. It made national headlines about five years ago, though the details of exactly what was done remain a mystery. In light of world events, the news faded rapidly. The residents settled for an undisclosed amount, but few have to work, though many carry on as they always have.

Town Lore: The Black Grove -- Before the Church of Inner Starlight became popular in town, it was viewed as a cult. Now the good Pastor Brown speaks before a full crowd every Saturday, preaching the evils of the Black Grove and how it is a metaphor for a corrupt heart. The Black Grove is an expansive clearing in a copse of oaks east of town. Within it stands a circle of seven reddish-black cut stones of unnatural origin, each about 3-4 feet tall. He says some of the town has not embraced the church and seek to find solace elsewhere. Usually, someone goes into hysterics and Pastor Brown saves them with his faith. Pastor Brown is a faith healer and folks from the city come to him with the sick, the crippled, and the old, with hope and donations aplenty. He is said to be able to do all, except make the blind see.

Pertinent Topics For Discussion:

Where is Ebon Eaves located?

In what time period does the story take place?

How are the characters connected to the town?

Implying Ebon Eaves is anywhere but Massachusetts.

I mean if anyone wants it set somewhere else I'm totally open to that -- personally, I would love to see a Lovecraft game set in an isolated part of the deep South -- but Massachusetts is the first place that comes to mind.

As for how my character is connected to the town, the Reagan ancestral home is there. It's in the fancy-schmancy western side of town where all the big pretty columned houses are. Amelia has lived here all her life, though she's vacationed elsewhere and spent a semester in France, supposedly studying.

And the time period...is everyone comfortable with the 20s? I'm good with either 20s or modern, but if anyone has other ideas I'd like to hear them.

Actually, a game in the isolated Deep South, like some rural part of Alabama, could be really cool But Massachusetts is the first thing that comes to mind, even though we seem to play there a lot

I like the concept of playing in the 20's in that's ok with everyone else


Claire is connected to the town because she was doing research for her next book. She had heard of the cult here, and the Black Grove, and thought it could be something new for her to explore and spark ideas. She doesn't have family anymore, and has earned enough from her books to travel and live comfortably as long as she's careful.

The south obviously. I mean, that's what this bus pass I have right here says. Ebon Eaves, Alabama. What, you're sayin' I shoulda caught the north line? Malarkey.

Yeah, the 20s otherwise me saying Malarkey is anachronistic.

Nash isn't connected to the town. He's visiting as part of a story he's working on. Just because there was a war on doesn't mean these people's story should get swept under the carpet. The people deserve to know what was science shenanigans were done in this town!

So, our story will take place in the town of Ebon Eaves, Alabam, circa 1920. Nash Anderson has come to rack some muck in the name of much ado about science gone wrong, while Claire Davis made her sojourn to these backwaters for some heady inspiration from alternative religions. Amelia Reagan is here because her family owns land here or something, correct? Why are you here Amelia?

Fun Facts About the Twenties:
Prohibition is in full swing! Have fun!
Women just got the right to vote! Don't abuse it, ladies, or your husbands will have a stern word and a sterner fist for ya!
Flappers! Gangsters! Fedoras not yet appropriated by bronies! Tommyguns! Cigarettes! The American Dream beginning to unravel! Automobiles! Speakeasies! Lynch mobs! The Fitzgeralds, both Scott and Zelda! Jazz! The Charleston! Gertrude Stein! John Dos Passos! The Great War is over! Antisemitism! Some hack named Lovecraft! Art Deco! The Harlem Renaissance! Langston Hughes! Zora Neale Hurston! It's okay to say Negro! Yes sir, the Roaring Twenties had it all!

I'm here because this is my home. Sure it's not the grandest place I've been, but it's always been home to me, and I'll always come back. My family's lived here since right after the Civil War. People still call my grandpapa a carpetbagger sometimes, but it was never to his face. They've got a lot of nerve speaking ill of the dead like that, and after all the good he did in this town. We built it up from practically nothing. It used to be a couple of farms around some stores and an inn on a Main Street, but look at it now.

I know my family history. Just because I like to have a good time doesn't mean I'm not proud of who I am and where I came from.

So, where is everyone staying in town?

The family home, of course. It's not the grandest house in town, but it's in the top five for sure. It's inside the town, but in the ritzy district with all the other high-ranking politician and millionaire houses. Think sloping lawns, double-doors, long driveways that curve around fountains, enormous windows, crystal chandeliers, rooms with no purpose except to house fancy furniture, everything.

You probably hate the Reagans a little. That's legit.

#dilettanteproblems

Sounds pretty swanky. Aren't your closest neighbors Taylor and Maximillian Rain, those kind of weird twins who're both attorneys? They have a pretty nice mansion too. I hear they got it with settlement money from the government after what happened.

I mean it's not close close. It's close as in "the edges of our lawns and the edges of their lawns are separated by a ten-foot hedge." But closest, yes. Sometimes stray baseballs go over the hedge when Cyrus plays with his friends, but we never ask for them back. I'm not really sure what happens to them. Maybe they throw them out. Maybe they keep them, in some kind of creepy collection.

Oh, I'm being unkind. The Rains aren't that strange. They do a brisk business in the law -- specializing in property disputes, if I'm remembering right. Maxmillian gets the high-profile ones, of course, but Taylor works as an attorney, too. She gets away with taking cases and wearing pants-suits to court because she's wealthy enough to be considered eccentric, rather than scandalous. Speaking of their money, I'm stunned neither one ever married. Taylor's past marriageable age, of course, nearly thirty! but I suppose if Mr. Maxmillian never settles down, he'll have her to keep him company. They're awfully close. It's rare you catch one of them without the other outside the courthouse.

But it's not their habits that give me the heebie-jeebies, it's their eyes. They have the same eyes -- all round and bulgy. Puffy-like, as though God stuck them there as an afterthought. They can't help the way they were born, but they needn't stare so.

By the by, does anyone know what happened with the government? I've been dying to find out, but the government kept it all hush-hush and their lips are sealed tight as tree bark.

I'm set up at a boarding house a little ways outside of town -- not too far, but I catch the bus to get down to the paper so it doesn't really matter. The Sleeping Dragon is the name. Has a storied history of conspiracy, let me tell you. Apparently, when the Civil War started, The Sleeping Dragon was used by certain persons of ill-repute to meet and plan their Rebel activities. All of that creepy business is gone now though, and instead it just hosts some out of towners, down-on-their-luck sorts, and a few jolly companions of Pastor Brown and the Church of Inner Starlight.

I've got a little cubby of a room on the second floor, end of the hall and by the window.

Oh yeah, I remember that place. Quince Rain lives there too, just down the hall from you. She's Taylor & Maximilian's estranged mother; they haven't spoken in a while, but no one knows why.

Tell me about your landlady.

Yeah, I'm not sure what's up with Mrs. Rain. Haven't asked, ya know -- haven't been here too long and I'm taking in my early retirement.

The landlady is all right. Maggie Hobbes. She's a squat character, deaf in one ear (she's got cauliflower ear from some school days accident) so she's always a bit too loud. She's a stickler about the rent, which hasn't been a problem so far, and is a little nebby. All I really know is she cooks very well, and she spends a lot of her time out in her garden behind the house. There's a little statuary there, maybe a Madonna or something? Haven't gotten a good look at it. I guess Ms. Hobbes is Catholic? Not too sure how the Church feels about that. Like I said, I could be wrong, haven't actually seen the statue up close.

I see, I see. Yeah, I guess you can guess that Ms. Hobbes is Catholic. You're working for the local paper now, right? You have a desk at the office and everything?

Correct, the Ebon Eaves Daily. I have my own desk and everything! Since most people in town don't need to work, it was pretty easy to get a position.

Of course, of course. What do you write about?

I have a slice of life, human interest column. So things like upcoming events, local history, colorful fluff pieces. Easy stuff. Nothing supposed to be hard-hitting by any stretch.

So for example, maybe I'll ask Pastor Brown if the Church has any events coming up that he'd like me to write about -- or I'll stick to my current plan which is write a follow-up piece on the government's settlement with the townsfolk. Get their stories, get it to print, and put it all in perspective and on public record.

Okay, good to know.

Hmm.

It seems that someone has created a dramatic re-enactment of a page from Ebon Eaves's history.

Lots of towns have dark history. It just doesn't get written about in slice-of-life columns. What can ya do, right?

Absolutely nothing probably. Unless what you found in that desk has anything to do with it, Mister Anderson.

That event is something the Reagans have a personal stake in keeping quiet. Back when Amelia's grandfather moved down to Ebon Eaves with his family, his sister-in-law didn't get on well with the locals. They said there was something strange about her, some devil's blood in her, that they didn't want in their town. One night, she disappeared. Some say she was drowned by a mob eager to take out their post-war grudges against anyone from the North; others say she vanished into thin air and the mob came back empty-handed. Maybe she just couldn't handle trying to make an unfamiliar, hostile place her home and either killed herself or ran away and died of exposure out in the wild. Officially, it was a tragic accident, and she was missing, presumed dead.

Whatever happened, Claudia was never seen again.

(oooh, spooooky!)

Why do the Reagans say they have a stake in keeping it quiet? Sounds like their kin was the victim.

Unless you're saying you guys are totally witch-blooded heathens.

Long story short, because Claudia was insane. She would wander onto other people's property and kill their chickens, eating parts of them sometimes. She could never give the family a satisfactory explanation for why she did what she did -- she'd just stare at them and say she did it because she had to. The main rumors at the time were that she was either possessed or not entirely human. In these days of science and reason, most guess that she had some kind of untreated mental illness.

The Reagans care very much about keeping up appearances -- they don't want anyone to remember that the family has a history of insanity. So they very carefully don't mention that bit of dirty laundry.