Pale Harvest

Dates assume a 90s setting, minimal modification can update to present-day.

Background: Not all K’n-Yani outposts are still connected to Deep K’n-Yan, and hundreds of years ago a small colony just below southern Kansas suffered a devastating famine, killing most of them and severing their connection with the Deep. The six survivors, having forgotten most of their kind’s secrets, barely live on, fertilizing their strange crops with the unspooled brains of captive humans.

In 1898, the Wagner, Patterson, Morrison, and Tucker families founded the tiny rural town of Hydrangea about a mile from the cave from which the K’n outpost is accessible. The town’s first harvest was catastrophic. 9 settlers starved and a dark bargain was struck: the K’n would make Hydrangea’s fields flourish in exchange for one human a year. In the proceeding century, they have upped their ask to one human every three months. To accommodate these needs of sacrifice, The First Baptist Church of Hydrangea holds the quad-annual “First Supper” program, which busses homeless people in to feed them and give them clothing from a charitable drive. They invite one of these people to work on some odd-job for the weekend, and then offer them up to the K’n under the night of the new moon.

Sara Gilmore, the conspiracy’s feeler in Wichita, was homeless due to various psychological complications related to her work as a field agent back in the 70s. Two months ago, she was convinced by a friend to come with to Hydrangea, where the K’n selected her for harvest and the town obliged.

Briefing:

The player’s handler calls them to a briefing delivered in an abandoned barn 2 miles outside Wichita. He tells them the following:

• The conspiracy’s feeler in Wichita hasn’t called in over two months.
• She is not responding to calls.
• This was her last known address.
• Find her, or more likely, find out what killed her.

The address is a P.O. Box located within St. Benedict’s House, a homeless shelter run by Deacon Gusta Torres of the United Methodist Church, Great Plains Annual Conference.

St. Benedict’s:

The shelter is a small church building with an adjoining annex that has 40 mattresses, a shower room, a small basement with rentable lockers, and a new vitamin d light.

The players can learn from the following people at the homeless shelter:

Torres: Torres will be hesitant to talk to the players, as she knows Gilmore had a rough past, but can be convinced to divulge the following:

• Gilmore has been in and out of the shelter for 18 months.
• She went to Kansas City to meet with some family two months ago.
• She was driven there by some folks in Hydrangea after working on the local church’s floors.
• She hasn’t heard from Gilmore since.

Grace Watson: Watson is a recently divorced 20 year old who left her newlywed husband and subsequently lost her home after discovering he had an affair. Her parents, considering divorce a sin, essentially disowned her. Gilmore served as a mentor figure for Watson, and Watson is worried about her. She is eager to talk and knows the following:

• Gilmore had opioid and alcohol problems.
• She always carried a switchblade on her against shelter policy.
• She rented a locker downstairs through the end of the year, and is very protective of it. Number 09.

Laura Holt: Holt is a 51 year old former-office worker who has become homeless as a result of a heroin addiction spawned at a gathering of friends in her mid-30s. She is still recovering, and it has been 13 months since her last relapse. She recently secured work at a local McDonalds. She  was a good friend of Gilmore’s through group therapy, and will share the following if she believes the players are here to help:

• Gilmore was always very adamant about staying in Wichita for good, but never clear why
• Took a lot of convincing to get her to go to Hydrangea for the free food even for a day
• The Hydrangea folks visit four cities a year with a school bus, usually rotating between Wichita, Dodge City, Topeka, and Omaha.
• They always offer someone a good paying gig for the weekend and drive them anywhere within reason
• They offered it to Sara, she refused at first, but eagerly accepted by the end of the day

Locker 09 contains a duffel bag with:

• 57 dollars
• An advert for the First Supper Program
• Miscellaneous notes
• A colt revolver
• A blanket
• A thermos

Hydrangea:

Basics of the town’s history, including the four families and the 1898 famine, can be found in any major library or by asking John Tucker/searching his computer.

Looking deeper into the town at any records/newspaper office, players can find out that there are two missing person cases regarding the town since 1933:

1. Louisa Harrison in 1933, a little girl from nearby Garrison, Kansas, vanished while biking to Hydrangea. No suspects were identified by then sheriff Lenny Patterson
2. Ben Snyder in 1958 a New Yorker who went missing on a road trip to Las Vegas, preacher Daniel Moirrison was a suspect until Deputy Pat Patterson’s detective work discovered Hal Greene of nearby Shed Hill to be responsible.

Each of the 98 people in Hydrangea knows something sinister is keeping their fields blooming, but only about a dozen know the true nature of the bargain. The four heads of the founding families and their heirs-apparent are actively participants:

1. Lucile Wagner, 61, the mayor of Hydrangea since 1962. Wagner organizes the First Supper Program every three months, and her father Jacob spearheaded the first program in 1959.
2. Henry J. Morrison, 38, the preacher at First Baptist whose ancestor Jebediah founded the town. Has been taught the ritual “Infallible Suggestion” as passed down from Jebediah, who learned it from the K’n to hypnotize homeless and outsiders when necessary.
3. John Tucker, patriarch of the Tucker family, the only other one to remain after the 1898 harvest, and the owner of just under 1500 acres of the farmland surrounding Hydrangea incorporated under The “Tucker-Hydrangea Farms Partnership.” The Tucker family is fairly wealthy relative to the rest of Barber county, and the main branch (John Tucker, his wife Martha, and his 7 children), lives in Hydrangea, occupying the largest home in town (a substantial two-story affair with a double-garage).
4. Sheriff Patrick “Pat” Patterson, Of the last 6 barber county sheriffs, 4 have been Pattersons. Hydrangea scored an ally in the county seat, Medicine Lodge, when Patterson won the election in 1981. He’s been sheriff ever since.

Poking around Hydrangea:

1. The Church: Below the desk in the preacher’s office conceals a hidden trap door, the key to which is on his person at all times. This leads to a small basement where victims who need to be held longer can be gagged and chained while awaiting sacrifice.
2. The Cave: tire tracks lead from behind the church about a mile and a half out of town to a rocky patch in the middle of a Tucker farm cornfield, a cave goes down and in about 100 feet before it terminates in a perfectly flat impassible rock wall with a symbol of Deep K’n-Yan on it. This field is surrounded by a barbed wire chain link fence,  the tire tracks pass through a gate and terminate on a dirt road that stretches a quarter mile into the farm. It’s a quarter mile walk further to the cave. A Tucker man sits in the corn every night watching for intruders.
3. Trouble with the Sheriff: Patterson may be called to arrest the players, they get taken away to the dungeon below the church to be this quarter’s sacrifice.
4. Persuading Wagner: Lucile Wagner feels awful about the program, and may be convinced to turn on the other three leaders. She can also inform them of their benefactors’ weakness to sunlight.
5. The players might wait a month and return, maybe to watch from afar and maybe undercover as homeless, as Topeka residents are brought in for their First Supper. If they are undercover, a player is selected as a sacrifice and suggestion will be used on them if they step away. This will only make them certain they want to accept a job offer from the town. Elsewise, they can wait until nightfall and watch the sacrifice be led to the cave from afar. All six K’n wait outside, burning in the moonlight, to take the captive below.

Endings:

The players may do one of the following:

• Kill the four familial heads (and/or turn Wagner). These are the only ones who know the terms of the bargain, without them it is forgotten. +1d3 san
• Kill the K’n-Yani, who are weak and sensitive due to the loss of connection to the deep +1d6 san
• Fail, the sacrifices continue. -1d4 san.

If they defeat the cult, describe as the people of Hydrangea realize in horror that their next harvest is just as bountiful as always. The K’n were doing nothing for them.

Stats:

The K’n Yani use the stat block from the Handlers guide, with the following modifications which result from their loss of connection to Deep K’n-Yan:

Out-of-Phase: Can only go half-immaterial

Mother Earth: No longer has this ability

Scale control: At most 4 meters tall

Sunlight sensitivity: New stat, being in direct light of any kind deals 1 damage per round, moonlight deals 1 damage every 10 minutes, sunlight deals 3d10 damage per round, a moderately powerful vitamin d lamp can deal 1d10-3d10 per round depending on size and intensity.

Handouts:

Credits

Pale Harvest was written by nelog for the 2025 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17MB68mHSjKncZKTPIj4bt6X5_2KScSar5I4JCCcemzU/edit