The Seance

The character’s great aunt Frieda is a devotee of Mrs Beddowes, a self-proclaimed mystic. Frieda’s daughter, Charlotte, is certain that Mrs Beddowes is a fraud, and she wants the investigators to help her prove this. Mrs Beddowes regularly holds seances for her clients, and charges a hefty fee for the privilege. Investigators who attend one of these seances experience nothing beyond the stock devices of the psychic con-artist. Music, odd knockings and noises, but nothing extraordinary. However, half-way through the seance, Mrs Beddowes drops dead.

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Possibilities

1 Mrs Beddowes died of natural causes. Bad timing, but nothing more.

2 Mrs Beddowes was killed by a disappointed client. The client attended the same seance as the investigators. However, the client was more experienced in Mythos magic than Mrs. Beddowes, and when the client realised that Mrs Beddowes was a fraud he killed her with spells. The client thinks that he is a psychic phenomenon, and is desperate to find another psychic like himself. He had hoped that Mrs Beddowes was one. The client will keep looking, and keep killing any frauds that he finds.

3 Mrs Beddowes was never alive. The corpse is the host of a vampiric spirit entity who has several host bodies scattered about the city. The vampire entity activates whatever body it pleases, and keeps the others in cold storage until required. However, the vampire entity has a mortal enemy, and this Van Helsing-type found one of the vampire’s bodies and destroyed it. The shock to the entity was such that it lost control of the Beddowes-body for a few minutes. The Beddowes-body will get up again, confounding any investigators who pronounced Mrs Beddowes dead. The vampire entity wants revenge on its tormentor, and it will also want to kill any investigators who have discovered its secret.

© Adam Gauntlett