She Sees the Membrane

A scenario hook for The Esoterrorists

Another Ordo Veritatis team just wrapped up a case in the affluent Dallas suburb of Richardson, TX. The climactic firefight with an Esoterror cell made up of telecom contractors has left that group in need of convalescence time. So the Ordo now taps your team to follow up a clue found in the wreckage of their leader’s garage. Reconstruction of her hard drive, melted in the gas line explosion they set off when their capture seemed otherwise inevitable, turns up a name and address: Maria Flores, in Chapel Hill, NC. It appears that just before cell leader Whitney Powers set off the final explosion, she uploaded Flores’ photo and address to a shared Dropbox folder available to other suspected Esoterror cells.

When the team arrives at the address, it finds a horrific scene: someone has killed nearly every member of the Pearson family. Investigation reveals that they just moved into the house. Whoever beat the team to the scene to ask about Flores didn’t take kindly to the discovery that their information on Flores was out of date. The sole survivor didn’t see much, but they seemed to be members of an outlaw biker gang.

Better detectives than the killers, the team can discover that Flores, a pediatric nurse, has moved to her small home town in Virginia, where her father owned a chicken farm. They find her barricaded in her now disused family house, terrified. She has started to see strange things, demonic things, and thinks she’s succumbing to delusions. Maria would have sought treatment, but there were people—absolutely real people, not hallucinations—following her around Chapel Hill. Spooked, Maria bolted for the one place she knew she could hide.

When they win her trust, the team can work out that Maria receives visual flashes whenever she looks at a place where the membrane between the world and the Outer Dark has thinned. Her field of vision goes red and jumpy and silhouetted.

This makes her a target for any Esoterror cell seeking an ideal spot to attack the barrier between realities. Whitney Powers intended to grab Maria as part of her now-defunct scheme. When she knew that was finished, she let others pick up the trail.

Then the sounds of motorcycles roar in the distance. Whoever killed the Pearsons has arrived to take Maria Flores. Can the team get her to an Ordo safe house in one piece, then turn around and neutralize her murderous hunters?

The Esoterrorists are occult terrorists intent on tearing the fabric of the world – and you play elite investigators out to stop them. This is the game that revolutionized investigative RPGs by ensuring that players are never deprived of the crucial clues they need to move the story forward. Purchase The Esoterrorists in print and PDF at the Pelgrane Shop.