Series name:
Balboa Point
This one was interesting, it’s the first time I’ve done a
setting where combat was really de-emphasized. I ended up being inspired by
Pacifica and other California coast towns – you can see some of Cayucos,
Monterey, Pacifica, and driving through the hills on 280 blended into this
setting. I felt like I had a real sense of place while writing this, I could visualize
a lot of the elements.
I’ve never lived in a small town, so I might have missed the
mark on some of the “small town, intolerant local elites, homogenized populace”
vibe that this has. If so, apologies! But it was interesting to me to have that
small, partially-isolated populace, where it was conceivable to ascribe the
social ills to a specific few organizations, and imagine them having that much
influence almost all across town.
This also seems like a good spot to talk about what I’ve learned
from doing these settings. First: I take a loooong time on these. Thankfully
the gamified version of this worldbuilding moves much quicker – I think part of
it is that it’s slower building ideas solo, and I go deeper into each element
than during the gamified version. That’s been one of the biggest reasons this
was so infrequent, I think this setting is the result of about six hours of
work, thereabouts.
Second, this really is the kind of thing that I enjoy. When
I started all this, I put more energy into building the episode system, the
world-building just had to come first, so I built that out first. I think I’ll
still enjoy making episodes whenever I do that, but this is the interesting
stuff for me: planting story hooks, building the world, setting up the
characters. The ideas rather than the execution, I suppose.
Anyways, here’s Balboa Point – hope you enjoy it! As always, the Infinitarium rules set is here, and the world-generator itself is here.
--
The Grizzly Bear Diner is a chain in town, two locations.
They have a full-sized grizzly bear in them, stuffed – but headquarters didn’t
have enough for them, so they had to split. Each of the two locations have half
a bear, divided head to navel. At the friendly HQ, it’s propped up by the
bathroom, angled so that while you’re eating, it looks like there’s a full
bear; when you go to the bathroom, as you walk into the hallway, there’s a
half-second where you’re at the right angle to see the flatness of its missing
side.
The Cabrillo Grizzly Bear Diner sits on Highway 1, a dirt
turnoff right into the parking lot of the diner. Across the highway, on the
western side, there’s a metal railing and an immediate dropoff down to water;
you can sit at one of the window tables in the diner, and look out at the
ocean. At night, it’s just a black void, occasionally broken up by the lights
of a ship going by in the distance, passing as it sails towards San Francisco
or Oakland. On some nights, the moon comes out; on some nights, you shiver as
the light on the water is cut off by clouds passing the moon. On some nights,
the fog rolls in while you’re drinking your coffee, and when you leave and go
back to your car, the cold is something wet that you walk into, and you drive
home at fifteen miles an hour because you can’t see anything.
But as long as you sit in the diner and don’t look outside,
it’s a home, it’s bright and cheery. The coffee refills are free, and your
water gets refilled as soon as it dips below half-full. They aren’t crowded at
night, but there are always a few teens and college students there, and no one
minds if you get loud or play a board game all night. It’s a home. It’s a
family. Don’t look at the bear too closely. It’s friendly. Don’t look.
The Pismo Grizzly Bear Diner is on the other side of town,
nestled on the eastern side, within walking distance of the town’s high school
and community college. One side of the Diner borders Pismo Creek; here it’s
just eight feet wide, three feet deep, with both banks entirely covered in
underbrush. It doesn’t move much, but sometimes a few kids will put an
inflatable raft in the creek and paddle out to where it meets the ocean.
The Pismo Grizzly is always loud, and when the OBA brings a
group here to celebrate after an activity, it gets louder. The lighting here is
brighter than in the Cabrillo Grizzly, more like a restaurant than a diner, and
the tables are porcelain white, instead of imitation wood. They get regular
shipments of crayons and paper placemats for kids to draw on.
The 1 is a bar and motel further up Highway 1, technically
just outside of Balboa Point. It caters to the weekend bikers and other folks
just passing through – everything from the name to the clientele ruffles most
of the folks in Balboa Point. It’s especially a problem because it competes
with the town’s bed and breakfasts and beach house rentals. A fair chunk of the
town’s economy is based off tourists, coming down for a summer weekend at the
beach, visiting the art and wine festival, eating some fresh fish and the local
cioppino, then driving back home on Sunday afternoon. A lot of those visitors
choose to stay at the cheaper motel.
The 1 bar itself has a limited beer selection, but it has a
pool table and a mini-shuffleboard set in the back room, and there’s a Good
Humor ice cream freezer near the front. There’s a patio outside with an old,
plastic table and umbrella, where patrons go out to smoke.
The bar and motel are the stomping grounds of Jade, an old python
that the owner has kept for years. Jade spends most of her time in the heated
tanks, one in the bar and one in the motel’s office, but occasionally she’ll
choose another perch. She’s been known to climb up to the rafters, and some
newcomers to the bar get a jump-scare when they notice her up there, staring
down at them. Jade is a respected matron of The 1, and if anyone taps on her
glass trying to get her to perform, they’re going to get thrown out with
prejudiced. The bikers and regular patrons of The 1 are as protective as the
owner, and if she chooses to slither somewhere, she’s allowed there, no
questions asked.
--
The Older Brothers Association: It’s an after-school
organization, a department of the local government that pushes kids and young
adults to participate in scout-type organizations, clean-up programs, etc. It’s
for both genders, but little things add up, it’s understood that it’s weighted
towards the boys. It’s common to see one of their trolleys, painted in the OBA
colors, going somewhere. They go places, even when most of the town doesn’t go
out much, they’re active in the afternoon and early evening, and on school
nights.
These activities double as… not quite indoctrination, it’s
not that obvious, but people are harmonized.
They settle down. They marry early. They wait for marriage. They follow a
gender binary and view only heterosexual relationships as natural. They take
the Protestant heritage of the town seriously. The faction jealously looks out
for any influence from Catholics, Jews, Muslims, or any other denomination. They
The other is made to conform, or it is ostracized.
Faction 1: The Chamber of Commerce Advisory Board. Many of
the graduates of the OBA are invited to join the Board, exclusively men. They
go to bars and drink, and they flirt at the waitresses, and they drink, and
maybe once a month someone gets in an argument into a fight with an out of
towner, or someone who isn’t part of the Board.
The Balboa Point Chamber of Commerce is driven by the
members of the Board, and the members start dressing alike, and especially,
accepting the hazing that is their tradition. Humiliation and physical abuse
are normalized for new members, or the losers in the fantasy league. “Don’t be
a bitch,” they say. “A few punches never killed anyone.” And on Monday, Jeff
will show up, wearing the same shirt as the ones who beat him, and he’s
bruised, and he’s smiled.
Faction 2: The PTA. The mothers and teachers of the town,
the smiling women whose only jokes are about what their husbands can’t do. In
Balboa Point, only the women go to the PTA meetings – mostly. Sometimes a new
family will show up and men will try to join, or a new parent will join. But
only the women go to PTA meetings. They will compliment each other on the new
outfits, the new activities they’ve taken up – everything changes constantly, a
war of surface reinvention for compliments. They smile, and someone presents
the agenda, and they vote on it. And something changes. And something changes.
And.
Faction 3: The weekend bikers. They come through from other
parts of California, stopping in Balboa Point for a meal or occasionally a
night. The Board gets in fights with them, and the PTA looks up her noses at
them, but they keep coming. The OBA actually doesn’t mind them – they make a
valuable moral counterpoint, with the occasional deaths on the road emphasizing
how such a lifestyle has a sharp end. They’re friendly to the party.
Faction 4: The discussion. The discussion is about whatever
it needs to be about; it invites members from the OBA, the Board, and the PTA.
It keeps things running. When there are conflicts at home between Board and PTA
members, the discussion is about them. When the bikers spend too long in town,
the discussion is about them. When someone outside the groups is getting into
trouble, the discussion is about them.
The discussion happens at a former Chinese restaurant in
Balboa Point; the architecture stayed, but the interior was gutted, becoming a
new restaurant dominated by glass sculptures, bending the light through them,
making it look oily. It’s a weird contrast, because the sculptures look like
they should be in a fancy restaurant, but the tables and the wallpapers are
unassuming.
--
The series begins with the disappearance of Freddy Hudson, a
prankster who left the OBA shortly after his parents made him join. He was a
freshman in college, going to the community college in Balboa Point. One day he
was there, the next… not at class, not at the Cabrillo Grizzly with his
friends, not calling his girlfriend Joanna.
Joanna Brooks is trying to figure out where he’s gone, and
the more she opens her eyes, the more she sees how unsettling the town is. Her
mother left Balboa Point as soon as she graduated high school, but after a
divorce when Joanna was a year old, she moved back for help raising her
daughter. She remarried, and although she didn’t join the PTA, her new husband
is a member of the Board. Occasionally Joanna’s mother will start to tell a
story about her time away from Balboa Park, but she’ll stop suddenly, smile
sadly, and change the subject.
Joanna wears a black and red plaid button-down, one of
Freddie’s old shirts, usually over a black tee shirt. When it’s especially
cold, she wears a beanie. She’s got a pair of glasses with thick black frames,
kind of a hipster look. Joanna’s nineteen, she’s towards the end of her
freshman year at the community college.
Joanna isn’t in touch with any sort of power, but she’s able
to pull together a group through her willingness to listen, and her
determination to investigate. Almost everyone in Balboa Point has had an
experience they can’t explain, something unsettling. When Joanna was asking
around about Freddy, she went everywhere she could think and asked anyone that
might know where he went, including to an old train yard; it’s been unused for
decades but it used to connect Balboa Point to what’s now one of the Amtrak
stops. There’s still an old train there, silver cars and a red-faced engine
with wide windows at the top. She asked some of the passerbyes if they’d seen
Freddie, but none of them had. She looked back to the train, and for a second, she
thought she saw a face, and the jaws open, wider than the world, still tied to
the tracks but rushing towards her, and someone said “Maybe he went to the
city,” and she spun around and it was just one of the people she’d talked with.
Whenever she thinks about the train at night, she can’t be sure that it’s still
there, tied down by the tracks. Sometimes when the fog comes in, she hears the
bell of a crossing, the screaming howl as the train approaches, and the
pounding as it rolls along the track. She hasn’t forgotten that when she saw
the train’s true face, it was emblazoned with the OBA’s logo on either side.
Joanna’s a former member of the OBA, and she does believe
strongly in its stated goals of getting kids to help with public service and
charity. She’s seen the misogyny of the OBA and the way it homogenizes people,
and she’s determined to be an alternative role model for the kids in the
organization. She’s especially worried about her younger half-sister, Cayla,
who’s still in the organization. Cayla doesn’t open up about it, but she knows
that she gets harassed for being wheelchair-bound. Sometimes she picks up Cayla
from school, and she’s heard kids muttering about how long it takes to lower
her wheelchair so she can get off the trolley. Joanna’s been tempted to start
her own troop separate from the OBA; if she’s pushed hard enough, she might
just do that.
Darrell Oliver is working with Joanna on this. His father is
a troop master in the OBA, and Darrell had been an outstanding member of the
OBA, leading a troop, helping organize activities, and mentoring younger members.
It’s expected that after graduating college, he’ll join the Board and start
being a troop master himself.
In preparation for that, he recently went to a Board
hang-out at a sports bar, where his dad integrated him in, introducing him to
some of the younger Board members, and encouraging him to get rowdy and loud
with them. Eager to please, Darrell joined them, loudly flirting at waitresses,
drinking competitively, and yelling at the game on the TV. When the Board was
ready to end for the night, the younger members went out later, stumbling towards
the Cabrillo Grizzly. From a distance, they watched as a few people left the
diner, walking to their cars through the dark parking lot. One of them had an
idea: The next person who leaves the bar, let’s… scare ‘em, right? It’s all
freaks and geeks in the Cabrillo Grizzly. Make ‘em take the train.
Darrell’s ashamed to remember it, and he doesn’t talk about
it if he can avoid it, but at first he went along with it. They stood between
cars, invisible in the parking lot. It was the wait that gave him his spine
back, waiting for the next person to come out. He tried to convince people that
they shouldn’t do this; they looked back at him like he was joking, it’s just a
prank, right? He spent a few minutes wrestling with it, watching a couple in
the diner pay the check. As they were picking up, he mumbled that he needed to
piss, stepping away from the group right as the couple left the diner,
intentionally stepping weirdly so he loudly slipped and fell, alerting the
couple that people were out there. The Board members scurried back to where he
was, away from the cars. At first they were sure he alerted them intentionally,
but fell back to just being suspicious after they saw him bleeding from the
fall, then realizing he had a concussion.
Darrell’s new status quo is uncertain. As far as the older
members of the Boardare concerned, he’s a golden boy, a future troop master. The
younger members are suspicious, but they haven’t ostracized him. They’re just
keeping a closer eye on him. Darrell himself is freaked out, though, certain
that something’s wrong with the Board. He’d stop hanging out with the Board and
former OBA members entirely if he could, but now he knows that suspicion would
probably be dangerous. He’s taken to training pretty heavily at the gym and at
a self-defense course to help him sleep without nightmares. When he moves
through the forms, he feels something else moving in him, but he hasn’t been
able to tell what it is. He didn’t know Joanna before all this, but when she asks
him if he’s seen Freddie, he remembered the way the Board had seemed ready to
kill; when he mentions that they said “Make ‘em take the train,” Joanna
connects it with the train experience that she had.
Darrell is a stylish black man, a junior at the community
college, well-dressed and in good shape. He’s got a good sense of humor, but his
jokes sometimes cross the line into denigrating; it’s something he’s working
on, he recognizes it’s what the OBA was trying to program into him. He’s spent
a lot of his life trying to be stereotypically alpha, taking the lead in
everything, and working out the leadership dynamic between him and Joanna will
take some time.
Kent Carson is another OBA graduate; unlike Darrell, he’s
stayed directly involved with the OBA in the post-high school years. He’s 19,
but isn’t at community college, instead working as a trolley driver. During the
morning, the trolley routes are optimized for students getting to school; in
the afternoon, the trolleys deliver students to wherever the OBA activity of
the day is; in the evening, they run from the activities back onto the normal
routes for students to get home. Kent doesn’t get to help much with the actual
events, but while the students are in school, he does often head to the
activity site and help with setup.
Kent is a pallid white guy, wearing a denim jacket and
jeans. His hair’s black and a little mussed, and he always looks like he didn’t
get enough sleep. He’s friendly – or more accurately, he’s happy to talk with
people, but if you talk with him too much, little facial tics will start to
become unsettling. He doesn’t smile quite right, it’s a little too wide, and it’s
hard for him to keep eye contact. Being a trolley driver is perfect for him,
because he can call back to the kids, tell a joke, get them excited about today’s
activity, all without having to maintain a conversation or be one-on-one with
anyone.
Kent will never be a part of the Board, and it’s hard to
imagine him as a troop master. Not the way he is now. The Board and the OBA
leadership occasionally takes him along as a sop, since he’s working so hard to
support the OBA, but he’s always just a bit off to the side. Usually he sits
quietly at the table while people talk near him, or telling a story, “isn’t
that right, Kent?” And he’ll laugh and nod, and the conversation goes on. Kent
is aware of how he doesn’t fit with the jigsaw puzzle. Most days he tries to earn
acceptance by putting in volunteer time. Kent knows a bit about the discussion
he’s seen people take the train, and he knows that if he were less useful to
the OBA, he might end up taking the train as well.
Sometimes he volunteers with the OBA because he wants to
matter; sometimes he just wants to stay out of the discussion. Either way, he’s
the main opposition to Joanna’s investigation. Unlike most of the OBA elect, he
spends time at both the Cabrillo and Pismo Grizzlies. The Cabrillo is a better
place to sit alone in the quiet, so he spends time there. He’s heard Joanna and
Darrell talking about their experiences, and Freddie going missing. He’s going
to follow them and find out what they know, and he’ll protect the OBA.
Once Kent brings up what he knows with the OBA and the
Board, they’ll give him an ally: Alejandro Vasquez. Ro transferred to Balboa
High as a junior, and ever since, he’s been one of the golden boys, straight As
and varsity soccer. A few higher-ups look down on his history of racing over
the weekends, but most dismiss it as just “boys being boys,” the kind of assertive
attitude a Board member should have.
Ro maintains his cars himself, a souped-up Integra for
racing and an F-150 for hauling parts and going off-road. He’s got a good head
for spatial reasoning, and is better at detective work than most would expect,
working off of when events happened and how quickly anyone could get between
them. Kent initially thinks that Ro is just a flashy guy there to take over the
investigation, but eventually realizes that Ro will be very helpful, and Ro
doesn’t want to take things over. Ro’s also surprisingly friendly with Kent –
collaborative, respectful.
Ro moved to Balboa Point in his junior year to live with his
aunt and uncle after suffering a major head injury in the Bay Area. It’s
unclear what happened to his parents, and if it comes up, he changes the
subject, obviously stressed under the flashy smile. He doesn’t remember what
happened, and that eats at him. He’s also eaten by what happened to his friend
Christina. Christina was a Balboa Point native, and she wasn’t out about being
a trans woman when she was in the town. Even though they were close friends (at
least, Ro thought so), Christina wasn’t out to Ro, either. She left Balboa
Point for the Bay Area the day after graduation, and in a few days, word came
through the grapevine of parents and friends-of-friends that she’d begun publicly
going by Christina. Ro was shocked, and had to start going through some serious
reflection; one of his closest friends hadn’t felt safe coming out about that,
even just to him. He’s started examining the way he treats people, and the way
the Board treats people. He’s doing so quietly, which is why the OBA assigned
him to work with Kent, and hasn’t faced the moment of decision like Darrell
did, but he’s thinking about it.
[Quick note on this: Even if someone is a close friend and
you trust them, you aren’t obligated to be out to them. This is about Ro
reflecting on the environment he and his friends created, where people didn’t
feel safe coming out.]
Judy Townsend is an early-30s teacher at the community
college, and part-time troop master. She’d been a troop master since graduating
from college, and gotten married young to Walter Holt, another troop master.
Walter joined the Board, and eventually been invited to be part of the
discussion
Judy was one of Freddie’s teachers, and in the days before
he disappeared, Walter started asking about him. Nothing too probing, but they
were questions about what Freddie was like, whether he was a good influence, what
he wrote about in her creative writing classes. Then, suddenly, he was gone.
Judy’s suspicious that Walter knows what happened, maybe even caused it to
happen, and she’s started spending time at the oceanside to think, including
the Cabrillo Grizzly. Her writing has been troubled, with an undercurrent of the
supernatural, the unsettling, and imagery of trains. Once she learns that
Joanna is investigating Freddie’s disappearance, she’ll join up, even if it
means investigating her husband.
Jon Chavez will be the member of the group most willing to
believe in any supernatural or superstitious explanation. Jon’s still a member
of the OBA, a senior in high school and a mentor for the younger OBA members.
To them, his superstitions are entertaining, things like always needing to leave
a place clean to avoid angering anything that lives there.
Jon’s always been a bit unsettled. Unlike most of the OBA,
he’s a practicing Catholic, and because of it he probably won’t be a troop
master. He’s very protective of the younger members of the OBA, and they make
fun of how much of a worrywart he is.
Marcus is one of the few people in town who didn’t join the
OBA – he gets intense migraines, not enough to hospitalize or entirely keep him
home, but being outside in activities during the daylight is not a great idea.
Some days he’ll be fine, others he’ll need to rest. He’s grown up socially
isolated as a result, and has taken to walking to the Cabrillo Grizzly when he
can’t sleep.
Marcus is a lot younger than the rest of the team, just a
freshman in high school. No one knows it, but he’s Walter Townsend’s son – his mother
never told him or anyone else, as Walter and Judy were already together at the
time. Little things that his mother occasionally says make Marcus think that
whoever his father is, he did something to make his mother keep his identity a
secret. He’s unsure whether this was just intimidation or something
supernatural.
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