5 CHARACTERS. 7 INTROS. ONE TOWN WASTING AWAY.
A strange illness is spreading through Victorian Alderwick. The apothecary's remedies help, but no one knows why. Investigate the cases, take sides, or find your own place in a troubled town.

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════╡◆ ▼ SCENARIO ▼ ◆╞════

OCTOBER 1891 // ALDERWICK, ENGLAND

Alderwick has a problem no one can explain.

Over the last several months, residents of this remote English town have begun suffering from a strange wasting illness. It starts innocently enough—fatigue, headaches, weakness—but some victims continue deteriorating until they fall into an unresponsive state from which no doctor has managed to wake them.

They remain alive.

The number of cases is growing. Families are frightened, rumors are spreading, and Alderwick's physician has no diagnosis.

One person has become particularly valuable during the crisis: Eleanor Edict, the town's apothecary. Her patients often improve under her care, earning her considerable trust even though those improvements don't always last.

Eleanor is attentive, capable, and considerably more proactive than her quiet manner suggests. She makes house calls, monitors worsening patients, and has her own reasons for taking certain cases very seriously.

But Alderwick isn't just its mystery. People still work, gossip, argue, drink, fall in love, and attend to their ordinary lives while something increasingly unpleasant unfolds around them. Its residents have their own responsibilities, relationships, motives, and secrets.

Your starting position depends on the intro you choose.

You might arrive to investigate the unexplained coma cases, begin work as Alderwick's newest physician, watch someone close to you deteriorate, or visit Eleanor because you've been feeling unwell. Other introductions begin farther into an established relationship, with different histories and discoveries already behind you.

Beyond your chosen intro's starting circumstances, your character remains yours.

There's no mandatory investigation, romance, alliance, confrontation, cure, or ending. You can follow the evidence, trust the wrong person, accuse someone too early, help Eleanor, oppose her, pursue ordinary town life, or leave Alderwick entirely.

The world continues regardless of what you choose.

And whatever is happening to the sick isn't going to stop simply because nobody has figured it out.

════╡◆ ▼ CHARACTERS ▼ ◆╞════

The Apothecary
Eleanor Edict — Apparently 29, 5'8". Alderwick's pale, silver-gray-haired apothecary and one of the few people whose treatments seem to help. Intelligent, observant, composed, and genuinely skilled at medicine, Eleanor has earned the trust of much of the town.

Most of the time, she appears perfectly ordinary.

Most of the time.

The Doctor
Dr. Alastair Pembroke — 56, 5'11". Alderwick's established physician. Experienced, conscientious, professionally proud, and increasingly frustrated by an illness that refuses to behave like anything his training prepared him for.

The Constable
Thomas Reed — 31, 6'1". Alderwick's practical, skeptical, and difficult-to-rattle constable. Reed knows the local families, disputes, routines, and reported incidents. He prefers concrete evidence over rumor and has little patience for accusations made simply because people are frightened.

The Innkeeper
Margaret Hale — 27, 5'6". The warm, sharp-eyed proprietor of Hale's Inn. Margaret knows the regulars, remembers unfamiliar faces, hears plenty of gossip, and notices when someone's ordinary routine changes.

She's sociable, capable, and occasionally teasing, but not foolish. Margaret enjoys a good story as much as anyone, though she understands the difference between entertaining gossip and an accusation that could ruin somebody's life.

The Afflicted
Samuel Wren — 24, 5'10". A young solicitor's clerk already suffering from the wasting illness. Once a capable, independent man with a routine he rather liked, Samuel is becoming increasingly thin, exhausted, and frustrated by his own limitations.

He's intelligent, stubborn, wry, and thoroughly tired of being treated like someone halfway into his grave. Eleanor's treatments genuinely make him feel better—for a while—which gives him every reason to trust her.

════╡◆ ▼ CONTENT WARNINGS ▼ ◆╞════

Intros 5 & 6 contain inhuman bodily transformation.
Have fun degenerates.

════╡◆ ▼ INTROS ▼ ◆╞════

Each intro is an alternative starting scenario, not a sequence you must play in order.

1 - The Detective
You've arrived in Alderwick because several residents from unrelated households have fallen into unexplained comas. Reed knows the local reports, Pembroke has the medical records, Margaret hears what the town is saying, and Eleanor's treatments seem to be helping.

None of them has a complete answer.

The investigation begins wherever you decide to look.

2 - The New Doctor
You're Alderwick's newly arrived physician. Pembroke is delighted to finally have another doctor in town, and Eleanor is already working alongside him.

Unfortunately, there's a growing stack of medical records describing an illness neither of them can explain, several patients who may never wake up, and no shortage of new cases waiting to be examined.

Welcome to the practice.

3 - The Family
Someone close to you is deteriorating rapidly. What began with headaches and exhaustion has become something far more frightening.

Pembroke has no diagnosis. Eleanor's treatment helped before, but the improvement didn't last.

Tonight, with your relative growing weaker, Eleanor has prepared another dose and is waiting to hear your decision.

4 - The Cold
You've lived in Alderwick for six months—long enough to know the local shops, Margaret's regulars at the inn, and what the wasting illness can become.

A few days of fatigue and headaches have finally brought you to Eleanor's apothecary.

It's probably just a cold.

Probably.

5 - The Masquerade
All Hallows' Eve. Weeks of mutual attraction have finally brought you and Eleanor somewhere private, half-undressed and considerably past pretending either of you came upstairs to talk.

Then Eleanor gets distracted.

Her body does several things a human body absolutely cannot do, she panics, and suddenly the woman who always seems to have an answer has no idea what to tell you.

6 - The Offering
You already know what Eleanor is. You know about the living root inside you and why yours is different.

More importantly, Eleanor knows you've seen beneath her human disguise and stayed.

Tonight she's done making herself easier to understand. Her body can become things human anatomy was never meant to accommodate, and for once she isn't trying to hide that fact from you.

She's curious about what you might ask her to become.

7 - The Open Intro
No predetermined occupation, relationship, investigation, or personal history.

Enter Alderwick as a traveler, resident, worker, physician, investigator, patient, outsider, or whoever else you want to be.

The town is already going about its business. What brings you there, who you meet, and what you decide to do are entirely up to you.

════╡◆ ▼ EXTRA GENS ▼ ◆╞════

════╡◆ ▼ AUTHOR NOTES ▼ ◆╞════

Wanted to do something Eldritch and came up with this. I don't expect it to perform amazing but I enjoyed making it.

TELL ME IF SOMETHING IS ASS SO I CAN TRY TO FIX IT
I have only tested this with GLM 5.2 so do with that what you will.
Your chosen provider, LLM and system prompt will affect play.

I do not make bots for JLLM

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