Science Fiction Horror Thriller OPEN The Truth is Out There

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October 15th, 2020, Derry, Maine

I have been here for almost a week now, no luck so far. I have written tons of pages in my journal, trying to put an order to what I have found. At first it started as a fun project, go to places where there were paranormal sightings in order to find material for my science fiction horror book that I have been trying to finish. Most of these places were duds, full of attention seeking crazies. There have been several potential leads that were worth investigating.

So far I have not witnessed anything supernatural, but there was a gnawing feeling that there was something wrong. Maybe I am starting to buy into the BS. But when I get back to my old notes I started to notice repeating patterns. I even noticed familiar looking vehicles in several of the places that I visited. Maybe I am getting paranoid, but if the people in the conspiracy subreddit that I started to frequent were to be believed, it meant that I must have attracted the attention of Them.

The users did not seem to agree who They were though, some thought it was the government in league with the greys, others believed that they were aliens in disguise, or even the Illuminati Lizard People hiding under the Denver Airport. Either way it is spooky enough. That got me all jittery and made me check on the back mirror to see whether I was being trailed...

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Melissa Smith had to step away from the desk where her laptop was sitting. There was a weird brownout, that seemed to be affecting her computer. Given what was happening recently it spooked her mightily. She moved towards the window of the hotel room. It gave her a nice view of the forest surrounding this small town.

She had gone there to chase a lead. Her fictional scifi-horror book was turning into an investigation. She had heard that some paranormal activities had been going on in Derry. Hopefully this trip would not have been for naught. She also hoped that she would get something bigger this time, not just some random scrap.

The sky was dark, even the stars looked dim. Then something caught her attention. There it was! Some light was moving at random over the trees. She reached for her phone and managed to take a short clip as the light suddenly sped up into the sky and disappeared. "What the...!?" she muttered to herself and started uploading the video so that she could share it in the r/UFOWatchers subreddit, where her Internet buddies hung out...

About the Game

This is a small group game, centred around people who are interested in conspiracy theories, urban myths and so on. They can come from different backgrounds, a journalist, an Internet conspiracy theorist, law enforcement, even a potential whistleblower, etc. It is inspired by the X-files, Fringe, Project Blue Book series.

Their first case can be a UFO sighting in a small town, so when starting to investigate pieces from a bigger picture start to emerge. Pieces indicating that not all the wakos and tin-foil hatters on the Internet are wrong.

Genre-wise: horror, thriller, scifi


Here is a CS template:

Name:
Age:
Gender:
Physical Description:
Appearance:
Personality:
Likes:
Dislikes:
Profession:
Bio:

Rules:

1. Please PM me your Character Sheets first for approval
2. No God-modding
   
3. Obey the Boards’ rules
   
4. The GM’s word is law
5. If you have to pause your participation or would like to withdraw please notify beforehand so that I can accommodate
6. Have fun

 

[Approved by @TheAdmiral thank you!]

Name: Saori Nishimura
Age: 27
Gender: female
Appearance:




Personality: Intelligent, articulate, professional, tenacious and curious. Saori is driven by her need to solve mysteries. She can turn on the charm when she needs to talk her way into places.
Likes: strong coffee, fresh croissants, discoveries, tennis and yoga
Dislikes: knowing she is being deceived or missing something important, junk food, injustice
Profession: freelance investigative journalist
Bio:

Saori was attracted to journalism from a young age. With a flair for languages, she studied Journalism and International Affairs for five years in Montreal and speaks English and French fluently. She returned to Japan and broke a story for a national newspaper busting a ring of “psychics” scamming the elderly with miracle cures for cancer. She also tackled a Chinese gang trafficking North Korean women and running illegal brothels out of massage parlours. Her senior colleague stole the credit for that, so Saori quit and went freelance. Her anonymity worked in her favour as she sought to investigate international stories. She worked in Northern Iraq and Syria, exposing the Assad government and IS atrocities, using aliases for bylines to Reuters, the BBC and CNN. This endeared her to the US government – who were looking for international consensus for a regime change – until a change of administration brought a more pro-Russian stance and the decision to leave this region to its fate under Russian influence. Saori was forced to sneak and bluff her way out of trouble several times before reaching Greece.

She is armed with her international press pass. She also has a discarded CIA ID she recovered from a warzone in Iraq (with her picture and alias “Sara Nishima” carefully grafted on). She is unsure if the previous owner is dead. These get her past most doors – the clandestine nature of the CIA usefully means no-one, not even other agents, challenge it, though she is aware eventually a red flag will be raised and the Americans may catch up with her.

Finally she once “liberated” a small microchip code scanning and cloning device while searching the offices of a criminal gang in Tokyo that she was investigating, before she called in the police. This neatly fits inside the case of a beeper device she carries and she can use it to bust security locks.

In another life Saori perhaps would have been a spy, and she deploys this arsenal, along with charm when necessary, in her insatiable quest for the truth.

 

Name: Melissa Smith
Age: 31
Gender: Female
Physical Description: Slim, not very tall (1.73 m), shortsighted, long light brown hair, blue eyes
Appearance: usually wears "boring" clothes, shirts, pants or jeans, comfortable sneakers or low heel shoes, turtlenecks, thick rimmed glasses
Personality: Bookish, nerdy, introverted, curious, observant, socially awkward and a bit shy
Likes: Books, writing, the Internet, nerdy stuff, video games, mysteries, junk food, music, her phone
Dislikes: Insects, tight spaces, ignorance, stupidity, aggression, insolence
Profession: relatively successful sci-fi, fantasy and horror writer
Bio: born in Boston in a middle class artistic family that introduced her to the world of books and fantasy. She devoured every book she could get her hands on. She especially loved pulp fiction, then moved to sci-fi (Asimov, Clarke, Simak, Bradbury, the like). Mel had always been the weird girl at school, walking around with a book and scribbling notes in a notebook. She published a story collection in her late teens, that brought her some success and also set her off on the career path of being a writer. Her urban fantasy novel series The Calm Before the Storm made her famous. Now she is working on a horror novel about alien abductions, the research for which had brought her to some interesting places, and raised a lot of questions and suspicions. Her last stop is Derry, Maine, where she observed some strange lights and her gut feeling was telling her there was more to that...