- The resident of the Town of Lost Hallow who has spent the most time in the “psych ward”, that is, Coraline Svendsen’s barn, is the town Banker, Shray Mati. He has an unusual grasp on reality. He believes all reality is an illusion, a simple enough premise, which is materialized by microscopic chemikal lifeforms who manifest as money. The flow of economics is what gives them the energy to exist and also to power the illusion, that is to say reality as we know it, which they beam around them. The illusion serves one primary purpose which is to move money thus feeding the chemikal lifeforms and allowing our temporary reality to exist. To this end he is but a simple servant of these great creatures, and perhaps owing to this rather strange theology, he is an excellent Banker, since he believes his very life depends upon healthy, balanced economic commerce. No one would think of replacing him as town Banker or of allowing him to be replaced, but on occasion the pressure, the horrible knowledge and the subtle messages encoded into reality that the little money creatures leave for him gets to be too much and he has a breakdown. Coraline keeps his stall at the barn always free and tidy for him, and takes care of him kindly and compassionately for however many days or weeks it takes him to recover this time around.
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- There is, technically, a Church Of Elysianism, which consists of three people who meet in Gable Carson’s tool shed on Thursday nights. They have a whole range of plans of where to take their organization, their Lodge if you will, should it manage to expand. They practice secret handshakes, have worked out a 23 level system of degrees and initiations, and otherwise have pages and pages written out in great detail. Their belief centers around the idea that the world is a spiritual asylum, and there is a larger, grander world beyond it which you can only reach if you achieve Spiritual Sanity before you die. Gable Carson is originally from a city some distance away called New Albion. However, any form of Voodoo is strictly prohibited.
- There is a coyote spirit who roams the area about the Town and who predates the town by a long, long time. The spirit tends to physically manifest randomly, several times during the summer months and does this by causing a townsperson to change into the coyote in a similar manner as to a werewolf. The catch is it is a different townsperson every time, and there is little warning or choice. You might be walking down the dirt street on 7PM on a lovely summer evening and the next thing you know you are a coyote until dawn the next day. It is thus a popular excuse young people use to blow off work the day after a particularly ribald party. (“Yeah, i know i didn’t come in yesterday, sorry about that but i was possessed by the coyote. You know how it is. Nothing i could do…”) The downside to this excuse, which does have to be taken seriously since it is a real occurrence, is that after large parties, several youths will all use it to excuse the same day, thus everyone negating each other.
- The Town of Lost Hallow is a frontier town, and since it’s not city sized, there tends to be one person who does each particular job. There is one banker, one blacksmith, one butcher, etc. There is thus one tailor. He is a lonely man who lives alone in a small room above his little storefront shop. He is a refugee of a far off city called Victoria, which was conquered by Faeries. While most residents of Victoria simply disappeared when the human city blinked out and the faerie city blinked in in its place, the Tailor and his family were just outside the city and watched it happen. The madness that transpired just following this event as faeries ran wild with triumph and wild magic drove his sister mad, but he took her, her husband, his wife and their 2 children with him and they all fled as far as they could get.The journey was long, arduous, and terrible. His sister killed herself and her husband during the journey, but her mad soul didn’t find peace, it stuck around to plague the tailor’s family for 3 weeks straight. Afterwards it never really left altogether and reappears occasionally.The trek across the desert though was the real killer. The tailor’s wife and 2 children died along the way, and the tailor was found by some homesteaders crawling his way through the desert towards Lost Hallow, half dead. He has since recovered and worked hard to stake out a decent enough business for himself. He is good at his work and liked well enough by his neighbors although he has a sadness about him that shows even in his smile. His mad sister shows up every spring to plague him from spring solstice to summer solstice. She beckons him to come join her and sometimes he wonders how long it will be until he takes his needles, stabs himself in the neck and lets his ghost fly free to join her.
- There are a number of interesting tales involving the wolves and how they came to be integrated into the town, the most poignant of which involves the Sheriff. However, i am not at liberty to disclose this story, much as i’d love to, since it is part of Miss Hannah’s Cabaret, and she has made clear anyone telling the stories told in her cabaret will be met with most dire consequences. Now, i’ve been whipped a few times by Miss Hannah and had a grand ol’ time doing it, but you do not want to be on the receiving end of that whip of hers when she’s not in playful mood, so i am keeping my mouth firmly shut and reminding you that performances are every Saturday night, and get there early cause seats fill up and the waitress gets real backed up with drink orders.
- In a town such as Lost Hallow, where there are folks who turn into wolves, coyotes and even birds (we’ll get to that some other time) you can imagine one tricky profession to be is the town butcher.Well, this might have once been so, but the situation is currently quite amendable what with the butcher being a ghoul.Now, a ghoul typically denotes someone who has returned from the dead, which is of course a ludicrous suggestion. And even though Gable Carson sometimes drunkenly declares down at the saloon that this is exactly what happened in that city he comes from, no one is fool enough to believe his drunken ramblings. I mean could you imagine? Even if it were possible, that would be one guaranteed ticket to sending the whole place to hell in a handbasket.
Of course you cannot bring back the dead and that’s not what happened with the butcher here. It’s actually a hair more complicated.
The butcher was Bobby Diaz, brother of the Mayor, Carmen. Most folks round here know a bit of his checkered past, but all you need to know right now is that damn fool or not, he was a hell of a gunslinger. Well one day he was drinking his face off in town when who should be right there drinking their face off next to him, other than Salle Awn Mbutu, herself one of the most notorious gunslingers round these parts, although not actually from Lost Hallow. Anyways, she was passing by, came to town, was drinking up a storm and of course within a matter of time the place was not big enough to hold them two egos.
So drunker ‘n that worm at the bottom of a tequila bottle, off they go into the street to have themselves a duel. To their credit, they really, really were great shots, because even though they couldn’t walk a straight line, they managed to shoot each other right on target.
As they lay there dying, folks were running around trying to get help and of course someone went and got the mayor. The mayor wanted to save her brother of course, but Doc Svendsen was out delivering a baby at the Razor’s Edge Ranch. Sophia Suarez, the herbalist, had a bed above her herbal shop she slept in sometimes and fortunately she was there. So they brought Bobby to her and she tried a whole heap of tricks to help him and that Salle woman. After a spell, she told those standing around that she simply could not keep both of them from slipping into death and that honestly, her brother’s best chance was to get a witch.
Now there is a witch who lives on the mountain behind town, but everyone is poop your drawers scared of her and absolutely no one wanted to go there and seek her out. Not to mention it would take an enormous amount of time that Bobby didn’t have. (Or Salle for that matter, but she wasn’t quite at the top of the priority line). So someone ran and got Feena O’Kelly, the town tarot reader, who arrived, assessed the situation and promptly asked what the hell anybody thought a gawdamn tarot card reader could do to help.
The next suggestion was to get the Queen of Crime here in Lost Hallow, Han-Mi, who it is rumored knows a bunch of ancient and arcane oriental black magic. Now Han-Mi and the law don’t see eye to eye all the time, but in she came, and when she heard the bit about how she’s supposed to know said ancient and arcane oriental black magic proceeded to call Dawson Calico a half brained racist numbnut. She did however proceed to outline what might the best plan Bobby was likely to have if we were indeed down to requiring occultish type aid.
Thus did Han-Mi bring everybody to the library in the middle of the night. The librarian is always there and while not particularly pleased to see so many visitors after hours, was courteous enough to let them in, dragging the bodies of Bobby and Salle. They carried them down to the basement where the librarian fetched a few books that were then turned over to Feena and Sophia, who despite having made clear they were utterly unqualified for this type of thing, proceeded to track down a spell and try to perform it.
The issue was that Bobby did not have enough life force to keep him going. However, they decided that although Salle was a lovely girl and truth be told they preferred her company to that of Bobby, Bobby was after all a local and the mayor’s blood to boot, so they would use Salle’s remaining life force to kick start Bobby’s.
Dawson Calico, who was there for the whole thing from the saloon to the library, assured me that the spell, although taking a real long time to cast, was really, really impressive once it got going. He says it got whistles of awe from just about everyone, ‘cept the mayor of course, and Han-Mi who is just not the “whistle of awe” kind. When it was all said and done, the spell did have an effect, just not quite the one they were going for.
Bobby was kicked back to life and Salle croacked deader ‘n a sack of roadkill that’s been ground up into a doorknob and thrown in a casket and buried for a week, but… but they had indeed given Salle’s life essence to Bobby. Hell, they actually put Salle into Bobby.
So best anybody figures is Bobby got put into Salle’s now thoroughly dead body, so she/he was buried with all proper props and Bobby, who now is actually Salle in Bobby’s body, stuck around and became the town butcher. Salle never really got the hang of working Bobby’s body completely, or she’s just stuck in there a little too loosely, cause Bobby just doesn’t move about quite right and talks a bit funny too, but Salle as Bobby is a way more enjoyable drinking partner than ol’ Bobby ever was so all’s well that ends well i guess.
