I mean it. Don't read on if you're in the game in Asheville, NC. Especially you, Kevin.
I'm working out my first 3 plotlines or so, as to appropriately seed foreshadowing. A big thing for me is local flavor, so I try to work in local legends (or at least ones that seem local) to all of my stories. One local monster I really want to see is the Shonokin, from several stories by Manly Wade Wellman. They're an ancient race of proto-humans who ruled North America before the Indians ever crossed the land bridge. They were once powerful in both magic and technology, but there were no surviving females of their species. This wasn't a problem when they were immortal and pretty careful about things. Then a bunch of savages with bone spears and strange gods entered their territory. They weren't too worried then either, but these newcomers had one advantage they did not: They could replace their numbers. In the following war of attrition, the Shonokin lost badly, their civilization was wiped out, their cities ground to dust, and thousands of years later no one even remembers them.
But the Shonokin remember. Towards the end, they grew desperate and latched on to the power of some very bad things. They've remained in hiding, biding their time and constantly thinking of ways to return that don't involve themselves ever raising a finger, because any plan that could result in the death of a single Shonokin is too risky. They're one of the sides of the Oblivion War now, remembering old gods that the world would be better off forgetting, but hiding because of a well-earned fear of utter extinction.
Here's where the PCs come in. One of the characters has as part of his backstory a run-in with the Men in Black. I decided the black hats and mirrorshades he ran into were Shonokin hiding their inhuman features (perfectly bald scalp, inhumanly old and catlike eyes) from obvious notice. They can't hide their extra-long ring fingers, but that's a more subtly disturbing feature.
Their latest and possibly most ambitious plan involves an attempted resurrection of their entire species. They've stolen cutting-edge biotech and used faked government credentials to run experiments in cloning and genetic engineering. Their goal is nothing less than trying to create females of their species. They have Dominated women to use as incubators and so far have met with nothing but failure, but they're getting close.
The most successful lab so far is in Asheville. There, they've met with some limited success due to the lab's unique location. In the 1940s, there was an insane asylum for women where a deranged orderly locked all the doors, barred the fire escapes, and burned it to the ground with all patients inside. This is actual history, and Zelda Fitzgerald (F. Scott's wife) died in that fire. The lingering specters of that disaster have been channeled using Outsider-fueled sponsored magic into some viable embryos, though none of the women have survived to term.
I ask, is this too scifi? It fits with some of the things we know. It's not using technology that doesn't exist in the real world. It ties in to existing things in the world and is good for my characters, but I'm wary of bringing cloning and other concepts often relegated to scifi into the world of the Dresden Files.
