The Butterfly Halls: San Francisco

Queen of the highway: Alcatraz

The swarm hive in this world is in the dungeons of Alcatraz, a deserted prison island about a mile north of San Francisco. Alcatraz was a federal fort converted into a federal prison, but abandoned in 1963. The above-ground fort was destroyed to build the prison, but the dungeons from the original fort remain.

The dungeons are down a stairway at the front of cell block A in the prison barracks, behind a large steel door. The stone corridors of the dungeons are cold and damp, and pitiful ghosts wail in the distance. The dungeons are known for their maniacal suicides: an inmate who hacked his own hand off, another who slashed his throat with his eyeglasses, one who killed himself with a pencil sharpener.

Within the dungeons are the sounds of dripping water, rats, and footsteps high above. Unintelligible voices whisper in the damp air. A woman’s voice cries in the stone.

The cells of Alcatraz are four by eight feet. They contain stained toilets and a sink. The prison yard is a concrete area sunk into the hill and surrounded by concrete walls.

The two industries buildings are where prisoners worked to earn money. The model industries building is five stories. There are several caves beneath the model industries building, carved into the sandstone by wave action.

A tall smokestack rises from the power plant. The power plant’s roof says “Alcatraz” in large letters, visible by air. The island is covered in plant life imported by its various occupiers, including roses and lilies once part of gardens maintained by military officers.

The water around Alcatraz is cold, making it very difficult to swim without dying from loss of heat.

From an organizational standpoint, the swarm hosts within the Alcatraz dungeons are interchangeable. They all know the same thing, because whenever the come near each other their knowledge is merged. Even when a host is not near the other hosts, their death and its immediate circumstances will be felt by other hosts nearby.

Queen of the highway: Jesse Hill

Jesse Hill lived at 1139 Grant Avenue (between Pacific Avenue and Broadway Street) in the Sunset district when he first came to San Francisco. This number is in the phone book, along with his telephone number 673-1123. The number is disconnected. “Your call cannot be completed as dialed. The number has been disconnected.”

“Mr. Hill” moved out several months ago and the current residents (William and Ellen Browning) don’t know where he went. They know he was a Vietnam veteran, so maybe the army knows where he is. They can provide a description, which can lead to the north docks or to Hill’s Steuart Street apartment. His current apartment at 77 Steuart Street (the Rose Field Apartments) Apartment 409 is south of Market looking towards the piers.

The military has his Steuart Street address. However, they’ll need to be tricked into giving it out. If they go to the army base at the Presidio, an easy Charisma roll will get his current address.

Jesse was found by Charles Manson and recruited for Charly’s friends on Alcatraz. Once he joined Manson’s family, Jesse moved. He gets a check once a month from the army, mailed to his current address. He has become a swarm host, but only part time. The bug will not be controlling him when he performs the assassination.

Jesse was a sniper in the army. He has an M16 semi-automatic rifle with a military scope that negates three range penalties. He’ll be using this to assassinate August Wey. His run-down apartment has a near-perfect birds-eye view of the park at the end of Market Street.

Jesse’s apartment has newspaper clippings about August Wey scattered about the walls, with bulls-eyes drawn on his face. He also still has his army uniform, which he’ll be wearing during the assassination. There is a green beret in his closet, which is not part of his uniform but is there (like the uniform) to tie his action to the military, in this case special forces (which he was never a part of). He also has a matchbook from the Paradice Island Lounge.

His apartment does not have a phone; he uses a communal phone at the end of the hallway. Other residents will sometimes answer the phone when the swarm from Alcatraz call him to tell him they’re on Market Street and need to talk to him (and mesh their knowledge). This is a rundown hotel and the other residents are not talkative to anyone who remotely resembles law enforcement, but will be perfectly happy to chat with someone who gains their trust (or buys them a drink). Some of the things they’ll be able to pass on are that:

1. The guy or guys calling Jesse had a strange, raspy voice.

2. Jesse has a throat problem—sometimes he speaks in a diseased, high-pitched, maybe raspy too, voice. Sometimes he doesn’t.

3. Jesse never made calls, he only received them.

4. He once mentioned that he’s still in the military, then told them to forget he said it.

5. Usually they meet at a coffeeshop on Market Street, the 49 Café, but a week ago he said back to them something about going to the island.

6. They always ask for Private Hill.

7. Jesse sometimes went for a ride in a black Cadillac sedan that would come pick him up after he got a phone call. Sweet vehicle. New or almost new deVille.

8. He was a quiet man. Kept to himself mostly. Never drank or smoked.

9. The apartment next to him goes through a lot of people, and a lot of them are women.

Some good names for other residents of his hall are Dan Westof, Ignacio Delgado, Franklin Gallia, and Sergio Morales. Lots of Blacks and Mexicans, and everyone is poor.

If they manage to capture Jesse alive (and without an insect inside him), he doesn’t know much. If they ask him about Charles Manson, he’ll claim to have known lots of Charlies in Vietnam (Viet Cong). In the aftermath of the bug leaving him, though, intimidating him into talking will be a very easy task. Jesse knows that:

1. Charly brought him to Alcatraz to meet the bugs.

2. Some of the bugs walk around as bugs, others live inside humans.

3. The bugs use the doors beneath the Palace of Fine Arts to reach Paradice City.

4. The symbol is the crossroads, and the crossroads are the meeting of Highway 49 and 61 on the way to Paradice City.

Jesse’s swarm scar is on his lower back.

Queen of the highway: The Zodiac

The Zodiac sent an encoded message in a three-part cryptogram to three San Francisco-area newspapers: the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Vallejo Times-Herald. Decoded, it reads:

“i like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangerous anamal of all to kill something gives me the most thrilling experence it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl the best part of it is that when i die i will be reborn in paradice and all the i have killed will become my slaves i will not give you my name because you will try to sloi down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife ebeorie temeth hpiti”

Deciphering this message is a difficult intelligence roll; it takes one day to try. Note that the words are all run together in the code. Without knowledge of the language, they’ll probably see this as ebeorie temethhpiti. Without knowledge of the demon’s name, they’ll see it as ebeorietemethhpiti.

Ebeorie temet hpiti means Ebeorie, Lord of Discord in the language of the underground. Depending on how well they translate it, it might come out as lord or king of unrest, chaos, or conflagration.

The letter that corresponds to the crossroads symbol is the letter “d”. D is for Discord.

The Zodiac is one of Manson’s disciples. He was provided to the swarm by Manson so that they could provide him to Red Jack. They did this in return for Red Jack’s cooperation using the doors. The Zodiac enjoys killing and leaving strange messages to the world about his killings. He wants to cause discord and chaos.

The Zodiac lives in a run-down apartment in west San Francisco. Red Jack often rides along with the Zodiac and pushes him to murder.

Zodiac: (Human: 1; Survival: 5)

His name is David Stoley. He has short hair and glasses and is five feet eight inches tall.

Charles Manson

“I am the devil, and I have come to do the devil’s work. I have no mercy for you.”

“Death is the greatest form of love.”

“We have crossed ourselves out of this world.”

There were many prophets during the sixties and seventies. At this very moment, the Reverend Jim Jones is moving his congregation to Mendocino County several miles north, so that they can survive the coming nuclear war. Northern California is a nice place for that sort of thing, and he’ll be a big hit among the local politicians.

Charles Milles Manson (born November 12, 1934, as Charles Milles Maddox) was leader of what came to be known as the Manson Family, a hippie cult that began to form around him in San Francisco in 1967. Manson believed that a Final War between Black and White in the summer of 1969 would destroy America. He and his Family would wait out the war in a secret city underneath Death Valley that they could reach through a hole in the ground. In this secret city they would live in splendor while the world above was drenched in blood.

When the Blacks didn’t seem to cooperate with his prophecy, he decided to trigger the war himself by committing murders and blaming them on black activist groups such as the Panthers and Muslim groups.

His Manson Family is an echo of the True Family.

It’s a bit of a stretch to put Charles Manson in San Francisco but there are reports that he was in Northern California in the summer of 1969. In the context of this adventure, Manson is a swarm recruit, a charismatic leader drawing in an army for the Autumnal Swarm, and creating a hit list for that army to kill. If the hit list is even half successful, there will be chaos. Manson is also influencing the Zodiac killer, a protégé of his if you will.

He doesn’t know about the Autumnal Swarm, only that the people he’s hooked up with have power.

Manson is 34 years old in August of 1969. It is likely that he has already killed several times. He uses a High-Standard 22 pistol. If they try to capture or kill Manson, his family will fight for him while he fires from the rear—or more likely runs away. If he runs, he’ll try to get to Alcatraz.

In 1970, Manson was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for instructing certain members of the group to carry out the August 1969 Tate-LaBianca killings in Los Angeles. During the trial, Manson and his followers courted media attention. Manson appeared at the trial with an ‘X’ he had carved into his forehead with a knife. This was copied by his followers the next day. The pattern was modified several times and copied by his followers each time. Eventually the pattern became a swastika, most likely for the publicity it would bring.

This is one of the places where you’ll need to be careful not to send the players off on a wild goose chase. If the player characters choose to go to Los Angeles, you’re pretty much on your own. Do a search on “Spahn’s Movie Ranch” to find out about the semi-abandoned Cielo Drive “hole in the earth” where the Manson family lived. If they do this after the Tate/LaBianca murders, remember that Hollywood was in a panic. Two nights, two brutal murders, and “pig” in blood on the front door of the Tate house. Some stars left town; others sent their children away. They had no idea who did it or why, until November when Susan Atkins confessed.

Death Angels

A black supremacist group, the Death Angels believe that white men are a created race inferior in all ways to true humans. They were created by grafting snakes to humans thousands of years ago by a wizard named Ya’akov. Already murderous, the Death Angels are destined to burst into San Francisco news in 1973 when they go on a killing frenzy starting with a machete killing.

In 1969, the Death Angels are one side in the True Family’s attempt to foment racial tension. They will probably not figure in this adventure unless Wey dies. If Wey dies, the Death Angels will be one of the groups the swarm uses to stoke racial violence.

If the player characters choose to find and question some Death Angels, they will find them polite and well-dressed, with short hair or shaved heads. They can be found at the Self-Help Moving and Storage warehouse on Market Street at Twelfth Avenue.

Convincing one to talk will be difficult. They will claim that they’re members of the Nation of Islam, but will refuse to talk about “Death Angels”. The following information is available from the Death Angels if they do talk:

1. The grafted snakes are going to kill a prominent black man. When they do, it’s our time to act.

2. They’re going to kill police officers, as many as they can. They know they’ll eventually get caught, but they need to inspire others to fight the snakes.

3. They’ve been in contact with a black wizard named Mark. He can make time itself slow. He drives a late-model black Cadillac.

4. Mark meets them in their warehouse or sometimes at the park by the Palace of Fine Arts. There is a door in the park that wizards can use, and the door leads to the magical crossroads, from which all crossroads and choices echo.

5. Mark has taught them rituals that he performs at the Palace.

The Weathermen

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

On the white side of the racial divide, the swarm are priming a splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society. The weathermen will, when they happen, speak approvingly of the Manson murders and set a deadly bomb at a San Francisco police station. The Weathermen prefer explosives to direct confrontation, however. If the August Wey assassination goes as planned, the Weathermen will begin bombing shopping areas, police stations, and municipal buildings.

The Weathermen have a couple of old houseboats in Sausalito, about a mile northeast of the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge. They consist, currently, of a stable group of about five white men and women, and usually around ten to twenty more people who move in and out of the group. The unofficial leader of this cell is Bernardine Dohrn, a veteran of the 1968 Chicago riots outside of the Democratic national convention.