Session Reports:
Centuries ago, a ship of Irish settlers bound for the New World ran aground on an island in the Atlantic Ocean that shouldn't have been there. The settlers identified this island as Mag Mell, the Irish Otherworld. Few survived it. One of those that did survive was the man who would come to be known as Father Donnchad. He and the other survivors repaired their ship with lumber sourced from the island and set sail again - and Donnchad brought a branch he cut from a plant there: the Branch of Mag Mell.
These settlers would in the end reach the New World, and there found the town of St. Fiachra's.
Planted in the briny sea-cave below the island that St. Fiachra's was being built on, the Branch of Mag Mell grew into an odd sort of carnivorous plant - it ate animal matter, but at the same time excreted a vegetable imitation of the animal matter it consumed. This imitation, this duplicate, also bore the memories and personality of that which was consumed to spawn it.
Donnchad believed the Branch to be a gift from God - the fulfillment of His promise of the Resurrection. Donnchad was the first human to be consumed by the plant and replaced by a duplicate, and over the years his duplicate would convince others to be consumed as well - the duplicates were free of the diseases and degradations that afflicted their originals, and Donnchad would shape his branch of Christianity in St. Fiachra's to predispose its people into accepting this, and to identify their duplicates as themselves. The duplicates weren't entirely ageless, however - after enough time they would be compelled to take root connected to the Branch and enter an endless dream. Donnchad didn't quite avoid this fate - he figured out a way to trick the Branch into consuming his duplicated form and spit out yet another duplicate, his memories and will surviving through the centuries even as "he" died over and over again.
The town ensured its prosperity by offering this rebirth to wealthy, old, and/or sickly individuals in return for a substantial donation. The last such client taken by the town's duplicate conspiracy was Johnson Bronson, who had recently survived a brush with cancer. However - Johnson's chemotherapy-weakened immune system let him get infected by the fusarium fungus, an infection which can affect both animals and plants. When Johnson was consumed by the Branch his fusarium infection was copied over into his duplicate, and from his duplicate spread throughout the Branch and its duplicate-network.
Not really understanding what went wrong, the duplicates convinced themselves that the Branch was weakening because it had only been fed the old and sick. They began a campaign of kidnapping young and healthy people from St. Fiachra's and the region around it, feeding them to the Branch and then destroying their duplicates so they couldn't snitch. When this didn't work and the duplicates kept getting sicker they split into two factions:
Donnchad's faction, who accepted the sickness as God's judgement and the Branch's "immortality" as a false temptation sent by the devil.
Crabatt's faction. Ingestion of processed portions of the Branch in alcohol rendered people hypnotically suggestible towards the duplicates, and the duplicates were already primed by Donnchad's branch of Christianity to accept identity theory with regard to their selves. Crabatt figured that if he got people drunk enough for long enough, he could make them think they were him, and make them think that his memories he told them about were their own - he could effectively huisheng them. Faced with the choice between giving that a shot or being stuck in their degenerating bodies, most of the duplicates who could still walk at that point in time joined Crabatt.
In the end, due to the actions of the Private EyeNTJs, Johnson Bronson was found, Donnchad killed before the sickness could get to him, and Crabatt and his cronies - or rather some people who now thought they were Crabatt and his cronies - fled St. Fiachra's to an uncertain future.
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