Brood of Vipers

 

The Set-Up

The Church of God With Signs Following is a local Pentecostal church. Most of the people who go there don’t come into town much. Like to keep to themselves. Not too friendly, but not mean. Insular.

Most people think they’re a bit strange anyway. They think God tells them to pick up snakes and talk in funny languages. Maybe God should tell them to pay their bills.

The repo team is handed a pink slip. The church elders bought a tractor but defaulted on the payments. The bank uses your company to repossess all property in default. Go get the tractor.

The Church

Down State Route 43, about 10 miles out of town, across from the Land O Honey Trailer Park and a quarter mile down from the Quik Stop, is Akeldama Rd, a heavily forested gravel roadway.

About half a mile down Akeldama Rd there is a fork. To the right the road curves around to a locked livestock gate with a NO TRESPASSING sign. The gate is on a fence that extends into the trees on each side. It is reinforced with bollards that can be lowered by a switch. Beyond the gate is a pole with a couple of security cameras on it. The switch is in a panel box on the pole.

To the left after another hundred yards the trees open up and the Church of God With Signs Following sits on a ridge overlooking the little holler known as Akeldama.

The church is using the tractor for their illegal grow operation. The key may be in the possession of a deacon, the grow supervisor Troy, or the Reverend. The church also deals in the illegal exotic reptile business—for religious purposes, of course. People know that the church members mess with rattlesnakes sometimes, but no one outside of the church is aware of the exotic snakes or drug farm.

The church members believe if they are overtaken by the Holy Ghost, they can perform miracles. They have good reason to believe this. Some church members are more apt to be overcome by the Spirit than others—but only those of true faith are given the gifts promised by the Word of God. If a church member’s faith falters, they can lose their gifts or even have them backfire.

There is 2-in-6 chance any random church members on guard duty will have a snub-nose revolver. Church members who are taken by the Spirit may have rattlesnakes draped over their shoulders or carry flasks of strychnine that they drink from. If they take a player prisoner they may test the player’s faith by forcing them to perform one of the more dangerous miracles.

Services are Wednesday night and Sunday morning. Choir practice is every Tuesday and Friday night. But these are devout folks and you never know when they might show up for a prayer meeting or a revival. The church deacons can often be found around the chapel, and sometimes rope other members into helping patrol.

If you bring a lot of firepower or make grave threats they will call Troy, the grow supervisor. He lives on the other side of the valley in a little cabin. He drives a lifted 4x4 and has an AR-15 and three hand grenades.

The Deacons:

• Brother Bill: tall, big glasses, gray hair, will run away or surrender if all hope is lost
• Brother Cyrus: skull tattoo on his forearm, gold chain, dark curly hair, will fight to the death
• Brother Scott: slight, close-cropped beard, pleasant demeanor, will try to cut a deal
• Deacons carry semi-automatic handguns and will get pump shotguns and bolt action rifles if alerted and on guard for intruders

The Church Grounds

The gravel of Akeldama Rd terminates in a small parking lot. Behind the chapel the land stretches out in an idyllic valley. To the right there is a fellowship hall with a barn behind it. There is very little room to maneuver here.

The chapel is two floors. The main door opens into the sanctuary. There are pews lined up on the left and right. They have mass-produced Bibles and hymnals in the back.

Behind the pulpit is the choir, and then the baptistry. There are three black mamba snakes in the baptistry that will come out if summoned by a church member or otherwise disturbed. The door to the baptistry is to the right of the pulpit.

To the left behind the piano is a door that leads to a deacon’s office. There is a cabinet with communion wine and wafers and three bottles of strychnine.

Beyond that is a hallway with a utility closet, a bathroom, and a couple of rooms for Sunday school. The chairs and tables are pushed against the walls. There is a door that leads down to the basement.

At the bottom of the stairs is another hallway with four doors. One leads to an empty room used for storage—old decorations, a nativity set, moth-eaten choir robes. The other smells terrible; it’s full of cages. Some have rats in them. Others have eggs with heat lamps over them. Any weekday evening church isn’t in session there’s a 2-in-6 chance Troy will be in here moving around snakes or rats.

There is a door that leads out back. There is a bonfire circle with suspicious bones and burnt papers in the ashes. There is a locked door at the end of the hallway. Inside the room the Reverend waits.

The Reverend has a distended torso, button-up shirt undone to the belly, red and swollen skin, eyes white, oral thrush at the corners of the mouth. There is a copperhead curled up beneath his shirt that strikes at anyone who comes too close.

If the snake moves, he wakes up, reaches behind his chair to grab the two pistols strapped to it, and starts blind-firing. If he dies, the snakes are uncontrollable from that point on.

The fellowship hall has folding banquet tables with cheap folding chairs and plastic tablecloths. There is a kitchen and pantry with a bad mouse problem. The mice have a bad gaboon viper problem.

The barn is empty except for old tools and rusty chains. There is a faint sound like that of maracas when anyone moves over the floor. The middle of the barn floor is covered with hay. If anyone walks out onto the hay the floor will collapse and they will fall into a pit full of rattlesnakes.

When moving around the church itself, there is a 1-in-6 chance the players will encounter a snake every time they enter a new area or exit the church. Around the church, there is a 1-in-6 chance the players encounter a snake when they move between two points.

Behind the barn is a dirt path that leads into the woods. The dirt path is a mile long and is patrolled by hired help. There is a 2-in-6 chance every half mile that the players will run into hired help. If they decide to sneak through the woods, there is a 4-in-6 chance every half mile they will run into a group of copperheads.

The Grow

The dirt path opens to a clearing where they operate the illegal grow. There are a couple of fields, three barns, and a couple of sheds. One shed has a lean-to attached and the tractor is underneath it.

These buildings have cameras over the doors. One shed houses the generators that run the operation. The other houses tools. One of the barns is for processing, the other two are for drying. There are two 14’ king cobras that patrol this area.

Besides Troy there are a couple other hired hands that work here. They carry handguns and have access to rifles. They are not church members, and may be swayed by worldly offers.

There is a gravel road opposite the dirt path that leads away from the grow. There is a barrier gate at the entrance to the clearing, locked with a padlock. At the other end of the road, about a mile down, is the other barrier gate that leads to Akeldama Rd. Troy has both keys.

The Miraculous Signs Following and the Consequences of Faltering Faith

Each miracle has an effect and blowback if its performer suffers a loss of faith.

Handle snakes without danger

• Touch, pick up, and even direct snakes without being bitten, or if bit suffer minor consequences
• Snakes may turn on their handler, the venom working quickly to gruesome effect

Drink poison and live

• Ingest poison such as strychnine without suffering ill effects
• Poison works immediately with disgusting consequences

Speak in tongues

• Speak in a language that seems to be nonsense, but can be understood by other believers
• Speaker cannot be understood by anyone, and can no longer speak their native tongue

Touch fire and not be burned

• Pick up hot coals, touch open flame or heated iron, grasp gun muzzles without harming the skin
• The skin is burned and begins necrotizing

Cast out demons

• Drive demons out of apostates and unbelievers by speaking the name of God
• The demon seeks refuge in the next nearest human

Laying of hands

• Two church members (at least one being a deacon) touching someone sick or injured and praying uninterrupted for ten minutes will heal the sick
• The sickness or injury immediately gets worse in a horrifying way

Raise the dead

• Three or more church members (at least one deacon) praying uninterrupted for an hour will bring someone recently deceased back to life
• The revenant reeks of brimstone and viciously hates the living