The Village That Eats Its Dead

Premise

Professor Amos Whitfield, a folklorist from Miskatonic, died of heart failure while surveying burial customs in Harrow's Bend, Vermont. The village wired the university asking where to send his effects — but not his body, which they say was 'already seen to.' The investigators are sent to retrieve both, and discover a village with no graves, no undertaker, and a startling number of sprightly ninety-year-olds.

Scenes

1. 1

   Where to Send His Things

   The Whitfield boarding room above Pell's General Store, Harrow's Bend

   The village is polite, prosperous, and wrong: no church graveyard, no headstones in family plots, and the store sells no mourning goods. Whitfield's room has been tidied by someone who missed his field notebook, taped under the washstand. It records interviews about a custom called 'the keeping' and ends mid-sentence: 'They do not bury. They render. The fat goes to—'. Storekeeper Ephraim Pell offers the investigators supper and watches which of them reads the notebook.

   Decision point: Confront Pell about the notebook now and lose the village's cooperation, or play the grieving colleagues and accept supper — food prepared, they may later realize, with the village's own particular lard.

   If they go sideways: If the players immediately demand the body or call the county sheriff, Pell produces a signed cremation affidavit — forged, and a Hard Law or Accounting roll spots the wrong county seal, giving them a legal thread instead of a stealth one.

   Spot Hidden — Regular success finds the notebook; Hard success also notices the room smells faintly of woodsmoke and rendered fat
2. 2

   The Healthiest Old People in the County

   Harrow's Bend grange hall, evening whist night

   The whole village turns out, including four residents past ninety who move like fifty-year-olds. Talk is warm until anyone mentions Whitfield; then the room performs grief in unison, a half-beat late, like a rehearsed hymn. Widow Constance Harrow, the village's oldest resident at 106, invites the investigators to sit with her and asks — pleasantly, precisely — how much of the professor's writing survived him.

   Decision point: Constance offers a trade: the professor's effects, shipped tomorrow with no further questions, if the investigators hand over the notebook tonight. Taking the deal ends the danger to them — and to no one else.

   If they go sideways: If the players antagonize the whole hall, the village doesn't turn violent — it turns hospitable. Rooms are arranged, roads wash out, the mechanic finds something wrong with their motorcar. The trap is comfort.

   Psychology — Regular success reads the rehearsed grief; Hard success catches Constance glance at the smokehouse chimney when Whitfield's body is mentioned
3. 3

   The Smokehouse Ledger

   The Harrow family smokehouse, a windowless fieldstone building behind the grange

   The smokehouse is a rendering house. Inside: copper kettles, a century of tallow candles in neat rows each labeled with a name and a date of death, and a ledger pairing every villager who ever died with the villager who 'received the keeping.' The arithmetic is the horror — each candle burned adds years to its recipient. The newest entry is prepared but blank: a kettle scrubbed, a wick cut, and Ruth Cutter's name pencilled in the margin awaiting a date.

   Decision point: Ruth's mother Delia is in the smokehouse when they enter, cutting the wick herself. She begs them to understand: the keeping is consented to, always — except Ruth hasn't consented, and Delia is preparing it anyway. Do they take Delia out of the smokehouse, or take Ruth out of the village?

   If they go sideways: If the players burn the smokehouse, the candles go up together — every current 'recipient' in the village ages their borrowed decades in minutes, and the finale becomes a village of collapsing elders and one unfed thing beneath the foundation stone.

   Sanity roll — 1/1d6 loss on grasping what the ledger arithmetic means
4. 4

   The New Moon Keeping

   The foundation stone beneath the grange hall, midnight

   The keeping is not just thrift — the rendering's residue is poured through a bronze grate under the grange to something that has been small, patient, and adequately fed since 1687. Tonight the village gathers because the investigators have disrupted the schedule, and Constance proposes an accelerated keeping: Ruth, or a volunteer, or — if the investigators have made themselves troublesome — a guest. The thing below is audible now, a slow wet settling, like a cellar full of tongues.

   Decision point: Constance makes the real offer: one investigator's willing consent buys Ruth's life and the village's silence forever. The creature only accepts the consenting. Refuse, and the village must fall back on Ruth — through force, for the first time in its history, which even the villagers flinch from.

   If they go sideways: If the players stall past moonset, the thing comes up through the grate itself — weak, starving, and small enough to fight, which is the one mercy of an interrupted feeding schedule. Run it as a desperate brawl, not a doom.

   Sanity roll — 1d4/1d10 loss on seeing what comes through the grate; POW roll (Hard) to resist the calm that settles over anyone it addresses by name

NPCs

Endings