KlifThe party meets a salesman. During his pitch, he tells the party of the town he came from most recently, how the majority of the townsfolk seemed muted while the 10% who ran the town and its shops seemed very outgoing and loud, personality-wise. Says he's been to that town dozens of times over the last decade, but only in the past few visits has he seen this trend.
He describes one specific person, the mayor of the town. Says from what he's heard, the mayor-to-be came to town, was around for three days or so, and then the former mayor abruptly stepped down and gave the role to the new guy. The salesman describes the new mayor as a short guy, nearly albino, huge nose, wears a sash and a crown of laurel leaves, tends to stutter. (Describing the Little Caesars mascot).
If pressed, the salesman could also describe any number of other newcomers to the town, each holding some sort of power in government or in social status:
* The tavern is run by somebody matching the description of Wendy from Wendy's. (Dave's Ales is the local watering-hole. Cute little girl behind the bar, bright red hair, always in pigtails. Serves the best Beef Squares you'll ever eat.)
* The local busker is a take on chester cheetah, of cheetos. (A tabaxi on the street corner, dark sunglasses to hide his apparent blindness, stark-white goatee and matching thinning, patchy coat. Plays a bass flute for money.)
* The jailer/sheriff is a thin veil over McGruff the crime dog. (A tall, well-postured gnoll-person always seen wearing a light tan overcoat. He doesn't seem to investigate crime or put anybody behind bars, but he is often seen out in public warning people to be more aware of their surroundings.)
If the party chooses to go to the town to investigate, they'll see shops and townsfolk all slightly reminiscent of real-world mascots:
* The captain of the police force looks like Cap'n Crunch
* The town drunk is known to tricking people into asking for some punch to drink, and then hitting them.
* The sewers have been overrun with a singing, dancing mouse and his friends. (Chuck E Cheese)
* The fields to the north have been taken over by a Jolly Green Giant
* Mr Clean is a janitor
...and so on.
As the party investigates, they discover that some of the original townsfolk have been run off by the changes, and those that remain have been hoodwinked into believing it's always been this way; even though these newcomers came in slowly and kicked out legitimate business owners, put them out of business or scared them off, that they've been here the whole time; they've been psychologically conditioned to accept the mascot ruling class via a magic artifact or a summoning gone wrong. (I haven't decided the mechanism yet, but something is making the townspeople believe this is normal, and finding and breaking it is the core of the resolution.)
The players can fix the problem in one or a combination of ways:
* reclaim the institutions one by one (city hall, sheriff, water supply, etc)
* Deprogramming residents by finding the source and destroying/fixing it.
* finding the original deeds and voiding contracts and exposing fraud to restore original ownership of businesses and political offices.
* Outright buying back properties from the mascots.
Like many other "Is This Anything" posts, this isn't a completed story, but I'll probably come back to it to flesh it out a little bit at some point.
Thoughts?
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