Weird Little Western Town 2

Not all the prospectrs came to Desolation for gold.

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What are you going for with Mount Deception, and what direction do you want to take with the town itself?

The store all too frequently for it's owners liking gets illegal coinage.

Coins from nations that never existed or with the heads of presidents that never were.

It's damned annoying.

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>there's an old house just on the outskirts of town, abandoned for about forty odd years now ever since the whole family seemed to up and take ill all one after another. These days the house is silly with scorpions. So many you can see them crawling over the porch and windowsills from the road.
>The motel's pool water doesn't come from the town's supply, owner couldn't afford it. Instead he dug his own well and pumps it up himself. That's why they say he has to fish out those strange salamanders every now and again.
>the waitress at the town's diner is a pretty thing, even now going into her late forties. She's never been married, but about twenty years ago now she got pregnant and had a baby. Never would admit who the daddy was, though people gossiped endlessly about it. The little boy was seen about with his mum, coming to church and all that, till he was about 6 or 7. Then, nothing. No one ever saw him again and she acts like she doesn't know what people are talking about when he gets brought up.

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>There are some caves near by that the Indians call "The Caves of the Starving Men". Tale is that long ago, in a time of great hardship, the tribe that lived in those caves turned to cannibalism and inbreeding in a time of great hardship. For this, the spirits gods cursed them with blindness so they would forever become lost and never be able to find their way out of the caves.
>There's a critter out in the desert that no one has ever seen. We reckon it must be a might fierce beast though, on account of it leaving its carcasses all the way on the top of the power lines that lead into town.
>Now, there's a rest stop not far out of town. Not much more than a patch of bare dirt and some rusting barbecues now. You absolutely must not stop to sleep there at night.

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I'm trying to keep it simple. The town has weird and sometimes spooky stuff happen relatively frequently, but otherwise the townspeople have adapted and live as normally as can be under the circumstances. I want it to be more grounded than something like Urban Unease or the Village CYOA. A place that isn't entirely out of place in the real world, but you could easily make it more magical if you were running a game in it.

These are the categories I have set up currently. Each row has 6 choices in it.
>Home type
Single row of options that I'm pretty set on. Two motel rooms based off the two motels in town, a cabin, a trailer, a midsize house, and a manor.

>furnishings
This is the "choose your equipment" part of most CYOAs. I think this is part that I need the most suggestions for.

>Neighbors
I've got a fair amount from the last thread, but could use more to round it out with another row or two of options. I also try to keep characters like Sarge that are mentioned in other sections out of the neighbors section to avoid redundancy.

>Employment
I have a single row of places mapped out. I don't think there'd be many places hiring in such a small town.

>Businesses
I'm leaning towards these being more odd or mysterious rather than outright fantastical. I have around 10 or so ideas and could use a few more suggestions. Don't want to have too many though because again, it's a small town and I don't think that many places would be open.

>Weird Stuff
This section is more for flavor than anything. Some options have benefits, some have drawbacks, some are just there because they're odd.

>Spooky/dangerous stuff
This category is the standard "dangerous choices that lets you choose more options." If you were running a quest, these would be the major plot hooks. Mount Deception, Bliss, Old Route 8, etc.

A lot of the other choices revolve around Mt. Deception, but I'm thinking about keeping Mt. Deception itself as a single choice. Could use a couple more options.

The stars are usually right. It's only sometimes that strange constellations are visible.

Don't let that general store give you change in none of that funny money neither. They occasionally try it with new comers, to get rid of any coins they take on.

Why? Well money is power my boy, and you don't want power from some other place setting in your pocket do you?

It’s not just coins.
Weird paper money, too. The faces watch you, sometimes, but it’s real hard to catch them doing it.

You boys are just scaredy cats.

You know Wilbur Matthews over on second street? His veggies win every prize at the local fair every single year. Word is that he used some of that funny money to pay the weather to rain in his backyard more often. Seen it myself, happens every tuesday. I swear!

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Paying the weather? That's a fool's tale. I heard he took some of the dirt that came down from mt deception back whrn they had that landslide, and that's why those veggies of his grow so strong.

Come to think of it, what does he grow anyway? It's on the tip of my tongue, I'd know one if I saw one....

And for that matter, what "fairs" is he winning with them?

>there's a spittoon nearly as old as the town itself
>legend has it that it got knocked over once during an argument
>amidst all the spit and tobacco was something that shouldn't be there
>it's since become a town custom to hock a big spit into the spittoon every time you pass by it to keep whatever might be in it submerged

Matthews is a laying cunt and you're a gullible fool. Those veggies are grown in well rotted shit and soil down by the river.

Don't drink water straight from the river. Boil it first.

bump

The ants native to the area tend to form geometric patterns with their lines. People think it's something to do with magnetism. Stands to reason; compasses in the area point to the mountain so something is off magnetically in the area.

Nobody is stupid enough to try living on or too close to the mountain. The mountain is not uninhabited

m.youtube.com/watch?v=I1hUf4qYwbM

>not filtering the water too
It's like you want heavy metal poisoning from the old mine wastewater that spilled in the river decades ago

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>Mount Deception has its own microclimate
>clouds that go past Mount Deception tend to be ominously shaped

captcha: select all mountains or hills

There are migratory birds.

Not sure where they are going to or coming from but they aren't staying.

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Sometimes there is tumbleweed without wind. At least it looks like tumbleweed.

It's a matter of which minerals.

Roughly how many people should be resident to Desolation?

>There is a road out of town , long since abandoned.
>It is known that if one actually tries to move down the path however, they will see odd shapes in far distance, beyond the horizon and obscured by a thick haze, swaying and moving in bizarre patterns

>The Shapes have been slowly moving towards the town for the past five or so years.

Who knows? Sometimes there's less than there should be for such a town, and other times, the place is filled with people, seemingly from all over.

>The local DNR ranger, Dan, decorates his office with bird photos taken with his 1970s-era Polaroid and has them developed at Randy's liquor store
>Most photos are of local birds like vultures, quail, roadrunners MEEP MEEP, etc.
>Every now and then, there's some oddities
>Like an Egyptian vulture (foreign) soaring, an ivory-billed woodpecker (non-local and generally considered extinct) pecking on a saguaro, a slender-billed grackle (non-local and definitely extinct) perching on a dead tree, etc.
>Dan labels them "migrants" or "occasional visitors"

How far from Mt Deception is the town?

Might be a couple miles away from the town at the very least. Maybe even more.

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Not as far as it should be.

an hour away, no matter how you get there.

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What should Bliss, the sister town, be like?

Even worse, but it has it behind a thin veneer of "genuine happiness" and "joy".

People have tried to see what the shapes are. Nobody is sure what happens to them as they typically wake up in town with confused recollections. This usually necessitates another trip out to retrieve the vehicle they went out in.

Due to a lack of Native American presence in the region surrounding Mount Deception, the "Cowboys and Indians" kids game is known by different names in town. Some local variants include:

>Cowboys and Skinwalkers
>Miners and Dinosaurs
>Scarecrows and Graverobbers

>To the North of the town, there is a large structure that vaguely resembles an impossibly large 'heart'.
>Not much is known of the structure other than it constantly beats, and that to try and enter it is highly ill-advised.

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If you are daring and slightly stupid and go to the mountain there is one of the old mine shafts where the echoes don't won't work right. They come back distorted, the timing is inconsistent, the tone gets twisted and all manner of wrong. On several occasions the echoes come before the shout.

But given the other shit that can go wrong near that blighted rock you would be a moron to go and check on this.

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Please check out both
Tales of the Callamo Mountains
by Larry Blamire
And Dead man's road
By Joe.R.Landsdale

They both are Weird West as all get out.

Got to ask the question

Why does anyone still live in Desolation

Because once you have settled into the place it's actually quite hard to leave. The weirdness is not, for the most part, malevolent and actually is less hostile than rattlesnakes and the other residents are mostly friendly. Also most of the residents are members of families that go back generation in the town.

Now ask how the towns economy survives and you will struggle to find a sensible answer.

It's not all bad.

Sometimes you get a New Roman Republic coin that are still minted with gold.

The town veterinarian is an eccentric woman who doubles as the town pet psychic. Her veterinary skills are undeniable and her bedside manner for animals is top notch, but her ability to talk to animals is dubious.

The Pterodactylus sighting has not been confirmed.

>A new addition to Desolation has been noted, specifically, what looks to be a store of some kind, fully stocked, with it's lights and doors open at all times.
>From those who have actually entered the store, they have noted that it's interior is far larger than it's exterior would suggest, and that the internals are disturbingly well furbished.
>The objects that line it's shelves are also worthy of note, with most being either wholely immoral, nightmarishly addictive in their use, or straight-up impossible in every sense of the term.
>Repeat customers of the Store are known to completely disappear after a time, presumably swallowed up by their addictions to it's wares and snatched away.

The Hermetic Orthodox preacher recognises him, the man behind the counter, and has warned away his congregation but won't say from where he knows him

bump

Someone did once try to grow mushrooms for recreational purposes.

After what was seen nobody takes them anymore.

>Inquiring the Preacher as to the nature of the man behind the counter of the Store, as well as what relationship he may have with him just leads to the Preacher muttering something about "Its eyes are in the walls, its teeth are the whispering lights, it's smile the fall".

I'm pretty tired of "it's way bigger on the inside than the outside" trope desu senpai

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Objectively correct answer.

Are the people welcoming or wary of outsiders

We know that there is a tunnel leading to town through the hills. What happens if you try walking it?

It's quite normal to see faces in the clouds. It is not normal to see geometric patterns centred around that fucking mountain.

The phenomenon is usually chalked up to "magnetic anomaly in the mountain caused by iron and nickel deposits". Or at least that's what the men who are stationed at the army base are told and that's what they tell the locals although they don't believe it any more than the locals do but good look trying to find any more sensible answer.

You might find yourself walking for a lot longer than you think you should. And when you do find your way outta that tunnel, you might find yourself someplace unexpected. Best not to worry yourself about it though - you'll get back to town eventually.

Ol' Remy from the gas station said he was gonna walk it one day. Well, a guy came back outta that tunnel lookin' just like him - same face even down to that goofy smile Remy always had - 'cept this guy didn't speak a word of English, and the guy in the general store's the only one who seemed to recognise the money in his pocket.

>It's not unusual to see concentric circles or rings of stones out in the high desert, far from any roads.

Rather welcoming for the most part I imagine, but sometimes so wary and paranoid that it's almost to an utterly unhealthy degree. It really depends on what Ol' Deception has cooked up for them recently.

I'd agree that they're pretty welcoming. They're not bitter about the state of their town or resentful about other more successful places around the country, but they may be resigned to it.

>Some daring folk have ventured into the depths of that accursed place, and have realized that everything within The Store is made out of 'dog'.

>All of it.

>What should Bliss, the sister town, be like?

Desolation and Bliss are opposites. While our little town is run down and dilapidated but is still populated and somewhat lively, its twin appears to be prosperous and almost new (if still dated and old-fashioned), but is completely deserted and stalked by an evil that you can't see.

I like to think of Bliss as something almost like a horrible mirage that you wander into by accident.

I like the idea that Bliss looks all shiny and new like everything is the very day after everything got a new coat of paint. The streets are well marked and cleanly paved, the shops are well stocked and clean, the lawns are all trimmed and the houses are neat and tidy. You get the impression that even the dogs excuse them selves before having a shit. The people are friendly and polite but then you look into their sunken eyes and notice how fixed those smiles are. The people look tired, tired like a month of Mondays. They have the special type of tired like they've been scared for so long that they horror doesn't touch them anymore. They look you in the eye and their voice is making pleasant small talk and exchanging chatter and gossip and trying telling you about how relaxing and peaceful it is out her but the eyes are silently screaming "run, run away".

It's best not to spend the night in Bliss. People who do tend to move in and join the ranks of hollow eyed smilers. Nobody in Desolation knows what happened to Bliss. It started back in the early 50s. Before then it was pretty much the same as Desolation.

That sort of reminds me of the "ghost town" from Spirited Away.

>Folk find their way to Bliss accidentally, taking a wrong turn on the interstate or stumbling across it while out on a hike.

>The town is perfectly picturesque, in a almost artificial way, and seems to have been abandoned just moments earlier.

>Doors are unlocked, lights are on, food is cooking and music is playing, but the town appears to be completely deserted.

>If you're thirsty or hungry or just a bit of a hoodlum, you may be tempted to take something or cause a little mischief there.

>Unfortunately, the more you change in Bliss the more Bliss changes in you, and the less hospitable the town becomes.

Sometimes Bliss is populated, sometimes it isn't, but the town goes on perfect and unchanging all the same, as if the people living there or not living there didn't matter.

As if they didn't matter at all.

I see the town as having four main "eras," each with their own mysteries.

Before everyone else, the Native Americans decided that the place was bad and steered clear of it except for the odd lone wanderer. A group of Spaniards tries to settle here but met with an unknown end. There are ruins and tunnels on and in the sides of Mt. Deception, but no one is sure who built them.

Most of the more impressive buildings in Desolation, like the town hall, the hotel, the train station, the bank and the school were built in the late 19th or early 20th century when one or more of the mines were open and people thought that the town was going to be a big deal and someplace to be proud of.

Then you have a period of time from the early forties to the late seventies or eighties where the airforce base, the motel, the supermarket and the sheriff's station were built, when the town failed to live up to its dreams but it's residents were still determined to keep the place presentable and respectable.

Now, after a long decline, the populace just want to keep the roofs over their heads, food on their tables and the town running as best they can.

I dont know what stats youre going to give these, but here goes:
>lucky horseshoe
>10 gallon hat
>'snake' skin shoes
>dream catcher

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Nobody is quite sure how deep Ted's basement is. There seems to be no end to increasingly sub sub-basements.

>Someone or something is building cairns out in the woods on the slope of Mount Deception.

>Residents sometimes catch sight of an unknown television broadcast while changing channels.

>Whatever got locked in the town's bank vault in the seventies has just gotten out and is angry.

>Cars have been stolen recently to be found with their doors open, left running out in the desert.

>The time capsule buried in front of the school was just dug up, and it holds a dire warning.

>One of the old mines has just been reopened, and the town is plagued by anomalous earthquakes.

>A barrage of gunfire is heard coming from the old airforce base, but investigation turns up nothing.

He makes a little cash on the side letting his neighbors toss junk they don't want anymore down into the darkness below.

> someone tuning a town radio to the max FM range can sometimes catch a faint signal, popular songs sung in navajo with accurate weather reports, and inaccurate news.

What's the sheriff's department like in Desolation? From the last thread, they seem like genuinely good, reasonably intelligent men and woman dealing with all this weirdness.

They do what they can with what they have. They are good people and pillars of the community, just a shame that their job gets weird so fast.

The old Spanish fort isn't completely abandoned

>Out of the many, many wells that seem to haunt the town (quite literally), one amongst them is perhaps the most infamous. The "Gazing Well".

>The Gazing Well is a clustered mass of eyes of every shape and size, from any animal, in the rough shape of a well. Attempting to approach the well will result in near-immediate onset of weakness all throughout one's body and spontaneous rash-like growth across the skin.

>It is said that something is trying to crawl upwards from the bottom of the well.

The graffiti in the bar outhouse is actually incantations and ritual instructions written in Latin. Nobody has realized this yet.