Mysteries have been brewing inside the town of Grange City. The city is mired in poverty, but the Emberdale neighborhood doesn't seem to mind. In contrast, the Downsville neighborhood is awash in frustration and despair. The Abbot of the St. Dominic's monastery, about fifty kilometers outside of Grange City on Highway 21, can tell that something strange is happening in the city, but can't tell exactly what. Other Tradition mages suspect that Technocracy operations are responsible for the anomalies, and have gathered together to investigate.
The strange deviations in spirit across the city are caused by the presence of the Elliston Crystal, an artifact created by the Hermetic mage Roger Elliston. The Crystal is a trap for a large number of malignant spirits of despair and sadness, including the spirit Gellzhen. Elliston entrusted the Crystal to his friend, Dr. Lester Thornfiddle. Thornfiddle, a Son of Ether, used the power emitted by the Crystal to create the Victorian Garden, his private Horizon Realm. The presence of the Victorian Garden has amplified the effects of the Crystal on the nearby area, and caused the Technocracy to choose the Downsville region for their Project Despair. They have been distilling the essence of Despair from the neighborhood's inhabitants.
However, the Technocratic efforts have not been without complications. The spirit Gellzhen has been slowly working to escape from the Elliston Crystal, and has managed to free enough power to influence several of the Technocrats. With their help, it will be able to destroy the Elliston Crystal and regain its full powers soon after the characters arrive on the scene.
Grange City is a city of about 40,000 primarily Hispanic inhabitants about 70 kilometers southeast of LA. The city made it's wealth from the Lee & Hanford Machine Tools plant that opened in the early 1950's. Now, the plant is closed and the city's major industry is welfare. Highways 21 and 380 both pass near Grange City, and a rail line between LA and Culverton to the East goes through the center of town.
Grange City contains two major neighborhoods, Emberdale and Downsville. They comprise about 70% of the city's population, and both are rife with poverty. Beyond that, the similarities end. Downsville is everything popular society fear about poverty and more. The streets are broken, the people are listless, and broken crack vials litter the sidewalks. The Downsville Middle School is nearly empty for lack of attendance, and Downsville High is burdened with teen pregnancy and dropout rates among the worst of the state. In contrast, Emberdale is a beacon of hope. Poverty is still endemic and few citizens are able to find work, but the neighborhood's spirit of community can almost be seen in the air. Those residents with jobs give what they can to their less-fortunate neighbors, and the Emberdale Citizens' League regularly attracts hundreds of volunteers for improvement projects and soup kitchens. Though the Emberdale schools are just as run-down as those in Downsville, the classrooms are full and the PTA is active.
The Grange City council and the Mayor can see the difference between Emberdale and Downsville, but they cannot understand why it exists. Economically, the two communities are almost the same. They have tried to inculcate the same kind of spirit that pervades Emberdale in Downsville, but their efforts have always met with failure. Community volunteer efforts have faltered for lack of hands. Improvement projects have been destroyed by hostile-faced youths with no future. The only part of their efforts that has met with some success is the Renden Street Water Treatment Plant, an ugly fortress of a building built in the early 80's to improve the city's water supply.
The true reason for the difference lies with the Hermetic mage Roger Elliston. Fifteen years ago, he embarked upon an great experiment. He constructed the Elliston Crystal, and used it to trap every significant spirit of sadness, despair and hopelessness in the Grange City area. He then gave the Crystal to a Son of Ether who lived in Downsville named Lester Thornfiddle and sat back to watch. Sure enough, the city's morale improved dramatically. Without the spirits to torment them, people just naturally became happier and more community-oriented. Unfortunately, the effect was not perfect. Even in the early days, Elliston could see that the area around Downsville was suffering some bleed-through from the Crystal. This effect has only gotten worse since the Gabriela Orocia, a New World Order researcher, arrived in the city to study (and, eventually distill) the strangely potent Despair available in the Downsville region.
The Technocracy presence in Grange City is completely based around the Despair Project, an effort run by Gabriela Orocia, a New World Order researcher. The original intention of the project was to identify the reason for the strange antisymmetry between Downsville and Emberdale. This part of the project is still not a success, but in the process Orocia and her assistants have learned a great deal about the chemical nature of despair. Their current efforts are twofold. First, to extract the chemical essence of Despair from the townsfolk (currently done by the equipment in the Renden Street Water Treatment Plant) for use in other Technocracy operations. Second, to use the Downsville and Emberdale as subjects in a series of experiments with the essence of Despair.
Gabriela Orocia maintains her base of operations at the Renden Street Water Treatment Plant on the edge of Downsville. The entire plant was constructed on the Technocracy's behalf, using the Grange City politicians as tools. She is the Systems Engineering Manager of the plant, and essentially runs the place. Her chief Awakened aide is Luke Sandberg, another New World Order member.
Allways Trucking is a Technocratic front operation. The Syndicate operates it, using it as a way to move Technocracy equipment and personnel around the country without overly resorting to vulgar Teknology. The local manager is Samson Burrell, a thickset man with little patience for Gabriela Orocia's problems. He is in charge of taking her shipments of distilled Despair and routing them to appropriate Technocracy facilities across the world. He is also in charge of watching over the Renden Street operation, and making certain that it remains under control. To aid him, he has five mundane employees (none of whom suspect that they are working for anything other than a normal trucking company) and three Superiors. If trouble starts to arrive, he will immediately resort to the Superiors.
David and Hernan Ramos are the biggest drug traffickers in Grange City. They operate out of an abandoned house on Arbor Street, along with a gang of about twenty young violent men. They work for Orocia, mixing the experimental treatments she prepares into the wares they peddle, but they have long been subverted by Luke Sandberg and the spirit Gellzhen. Sandberg's approach was to tell them that they are living in the middle of a huge zone of despair created by the water treatment plant. He then offered to protect them by providing them with an antidote to the despair effect (actually a placebo).
Even without Sandberg's influence, the Ramos brothers are becoming tired of obeying Orocia's constant orders. They think that though she is clearly the biggest operator around (which is true), she is also using them as little more than glorified errand boys (which is also true).
Lester Thornfiddle built the connection to his miniature Horizon realm in a dilapidated bungalow on Candle Way, right in the middle of the Downsville neighborhood. Access to the Victorian Garden is through an armoire in the spare bedroom. From the outside, the armoire looks like a finely detailed piece of period cabinetmaking. When the door is opened, it still looks like normal furniture. Only after the catch activating Dr. Thornfiddle's Transdimensionary Superaxial Transformer is pulled (Perception + Alertness @ target 6 to spot; 3 successes needed) does the back of the armoire fade away to reveal a paved stone walk leading to a beautiful Victorian mansion.
The power source for this wonder is hidden down in the basement. A series of twisted cables connect the underside of the armoire with a bizarre assortment of vacuum chambers, bell jars and other gadgetry, all arranged around a misshapen object made from at least three different types of gemstone. This object is the Elliston Crystal. It holds literally every despair-inducing spirit that once dwelt in all of Grange City, including the spirit Gellzhen. Any mage with the Prime sphere will be able to determine that the crystal is an object invested with an incredible amount of reality. Just in itself, it serves as a Node generating 5 Quintessence per week. At present, every bit of that flow is going in to maintaining the Victorian Garden.
The Victorian Garden proper is a fairly small Horizon Realm, barely 500 meters across. The center is dominated by the main house, which is surrounded on three sides by classic English gardens. The borders of the Realm look like nothing so much as endless blue sky. This can be a bit disconcerting near the edges, but the effect is diminished by a double row of carefully-manicured trees.
The interior of the main house is furnished in fine style, and is clearly big enough to house upwards of a dozen people in comfort. One jarring touch: down in the basement, a huge bulbous airlock occupies one wall. The other side leads straight out into the Deep Umbra, where the other side of the lock appears to be jutting from an asteroid. Two Umbrasuits, very reminiscent of archaic deep-sea diving suits, are stored in racks alongside the airlock.
In happier times, the spirit Gellzhen held the entire community of Grange City as his personal fief. He and his minions flitted from mind to mind, crushing hope and spreading despair. Much of the city's early problems can be traced directly to the influences of Gellzhen and his legions. When the Hermetic mage Elliston successfully bound him into the Elliston Crystal, Gellzhen vowed that he would regain his onetime greatness, in the process gaining vengeance upon Elliston.
Gellzhen has two major powers. The first is the Sea of Misery, which creates a zone of hopelessness all around his person. This zone reduces the die pools of all inside, unless they are shielded from Mind effects or spend Willpower points (see his description in Appendix A for details). The second is the Touch of False Hope, which allows him to influence other's minds by causing them to believe that if only they possessed some thing, they would be truly happy. This is never the case: when their object of desire is finally achieved, victims either fall into a deeper depression than the one they felt before, or they fixate upon another, more difficult goal as the key to happiness.
Ever since Dr. Thornfiddle started draining the power away from the Elliston Crystal to stabilize the Victorian Garden, Gellzhen has become able to use these powers upon those around the Crystal. He found Dr. Thornfiddle first, and tried to get him to reveal where his prison was. Unable to force Thornfiddle to tell him anything, he drove him into a demoralized coma to remove him from the picture. He then proceeded to locate and influence Luke Sandberg (the second-in-command at the water treatment plant) and the local drug traffickers.
Gellzhen is limited because he does not know exactly where the Elliston Crystal is kept. He knows that it must be somewhere in Downsville, as he can sense that he has no influence outside its borders, but he has no physical senses. His essential plan is to subvert and influence those he can reach in Downsville until he finds one who knows where (and what) the Elliston Crystal is, or until one of his pawns locates the Crystal. He will then have that pawn shatter the Crystal (incidentally killing the pawn), granting him his freedom.
The characters will all meet at the Grange City Greyhound station. Along the way, they will have had an opportunity to see both of the city's neighborhoods, and should already recognize that there are strange differences between them. Children laugh and play in Emberdale, but sit glumly on steps in Downsville. People repair broken windows in Emberdale, while boarded-up bungalows fester in Downsville. The differences should be obvious, but the cause should not.
At the Greyhound station, the characters' arrival is noted by CR-73.2, one of the Superiors assigned to Samson Burrell. The creature will watch them for a few moments, then drive off in a nondescript beige sedan. Perceptive characters (Alertness + Perception @ target 6, one success to realize someone is watching, three to get a good look at him) will be able to spot the Superior before he leaves. Technocracy Lore or Awareness (among characters who spotted the creature) could be used to recognize that something isn't quite right.
Soon after the characters start wandering around Downsville, they will meet with the Ramos brothers and their varied minions. Most likely, the brothers will try and catch the characters in a side street. They will use junker cars to block either end of the street, then approach on foot in a mass.
The brothers aren't really sure why they're threatening the characters (unless the characters have previously given them a reason), but they'll give a good show as long as they can. They will be accompanied by eight of their gangsters, all armed with a variety of pistols, baseball bats and submachineguns. If the characters aren't particularly clever, but not too violent, they should be able to escape with a broken windshield, a bit less cash, and some understanding of who thinks they're in charge in Downsville. If the characters become violent, the Ramos brothers will allow the confrontation to escalate until it becomes clear that they're dealing with something they can't handle, at which point they will run.
There are a couple of ways to find the Victorian Garden. Several of the characters have significant numbers of dots in the Spirit and Prime spheres, either of which should be capable of producing effects that will detect the presence of a Horizon Realm (like the Victorian Garden). Alternatively, at least one character should remember that Lester Thornfiddle was once a resident of Grange City. With this information, Streetwise (target 6, cumulative task requiring four successes, rolling once every three hours) will be able to get an address on Candle Way where Thornfiddle seems to have lived up until about a month ago.
When the characters enter the bungalow on Candle Way, they should quickly recognize that nobody has been living there for some time. The electricity is shut down (though the lights in the basement still work), and the food in the refrigerator is well on it's way to developing mobility. They should also be able to find the armoire that leads to the Victorian Garden, leading to Scene Four.
Ever since Gellzhen inflicted crushing despair on Dr. Thornfiddle, he has been hiding in the main house of the Victorian Garden, only occasionally emerging to steal fruit from the apple and orange trees in the back garden. Soon after the characters enter the Victorian Garden, they will realize that there is someone else there. Perceptive characters (Alertness + Perception, Target 6) will notice recent footprints in the dirt. Characters with the Mind sphere (Mind 1+) will be able to sense another living creature.
When the characters actually start to search, Dr. Thornfiddle will not be able to hide from them long. They will find him hiding in an upstairs bedroom, desperately clutching several esoteric-looking pieces of teknology. He may attempt to ward them off by creating a secure cocoon around himself (Matter 2, Prime 2), or by brandishing his Heat Ray at them (Forces 4, Prime 2). No matter what he tries, his attempts will be less than successful due to the -3 die penalty he suffers from.
After he is subdued, the characters will be easily able to determine that Thornfiddle is an emotional wreck. He blames himself for the impending release of Gellzhen, in terms almost self-destructive in their strength. Any investigation with Mind or Spirit spheres will demonstrate that Thornfiddle is under the influence of an external power. Even so, he will be able to provide the characters with some details on what is going on. Specifically:
Once Dr. Thornfiddle has told the characters this much (whether they have cured his problems or not), the Superiors will attack (see below).
Ever since CR-73.2 spotted the characters arriving at the Greyhound terminal, Samson Burrell and his Superiors have been trying to figure out what the characters are up to. They have been using a standard-issue Technocracy Life Sensor to monitor the characters' whereabouts, and haven't been learning much. However, as soon as the characters enter the Victorian Garden, their traces will disappear from the Life Sensor's screen and Burrell will leap into action.
Burrell and the three Superiors will proceed immediately to the characters' last known location (the bungalow on Candle Way). From there, it won't take them long to find the entrance to the Victorian Garden. Once inside the Horizon Realm, they will stalk about, guns blazing.
This will provide the characters a fine opportunity to use magickal effects as vulgar as they want, as paradox has virtually no force within the Victorian Garden's confines. Burrell and his Superiors will stand to the last man, as Burrell is desperate to be the one to both find and capture the source of the Grange City anomaly (which he is convinced the Victorian Garden is).
This scene should be used only if things fall way out of control. For example, if someone decides to destroy the Elliston Crystal (or draw a large amount of Quintessence from it using the Prime sphere).
With the Crystal sundered, Gellzhen will rapidly take shape before the characters. He will be functionally unassailable to anyone without either the Prime or the Spirit spheres to power their attacks, and will use his various Charms (Touch of False Hope and Flame Blast in particular) liberally. It is quite likely the characters will be forced to flee.
Once the Crystal is destroyed, the Victorian Garden will start to disintegrate. Within 20 minutes after it's loss of power, the Horizon realm will completely collapse, stranding anyone inside in the Deep Umbra. Up until the end, those trapped inside will still be able to see the gateway out, and should be able to make a dramatic and daring escape (unless the armoire has been deliberately blocked up or destroyed).
The eventual effect of Gellzhen's release will be the descent of all of Grange City into the depths that Downsville now occupies. As time goes on, the situation will become worse and worse as city officials lose even the inclination to try and solve their community's problems.
There are a number of possible options to restoring the Crystal and putting Gellzhen back in his place. The simplest is to shut down the Victorian Garden, removing the energy drain from the Crystal and restoring it's strength. Suitable work with Spirit, Prime and Mind could also restructure the Crystal to allow the Victorian Garden to continue while still restricting Gellzhen. Either of these choices would also alleviate the misery suffered by the residents of Downsville. The characters could also direct their energies towards the Renden Street Water Treatment Plant. Shutting the plant down would end the Technocracy's involvement in Grange City, and would eliminate the flow of Despair from the Crystal to the citizens to Orocia's distillation vats. This would also reduce the strain upon the Crystal to the point where Gellzhen would be trapped, though it would not do anything for the folk of Downsville. Finally, the characters could follow the path of Scene Six (above), let Gellzhen go free, destroy everything, and wash their hands of the whole matter. Of course, if they also did nothing to the Renden Street plant, the Technocracy's Despair distillation operation would suddenly become much more effective (though the Technocracy, truly speaking, would not really be in control of the operation anymore).