So, I finally managed to get to this point in Scarlet Hollow, and I feel like that gives me a good excuse to compile the tangled mess that is my speculation as to what is going on in Scarlet Hollow
So, there are going to be major spoilers, and I am going to be hopping around willy nilly between the 4 chapters that are out as of the time of me writing this, so, if you haven't played through the game multiple times, I'm going to be giving out some pretty hefty spoilers. There's your warning as to what is below the cut.
Furthermore, I want to say that this is going to be a whole lot of rambling and a massive amount of tinfoil hat levels of speculation.
Let's talk about what I think are some of the major players.
Stella
As much as I love the objectively best girl in the game, I can't deny that there is a pattern of flakiness. When the going gets tough, Stella likes to get going, be that in the ditchling nest in chapter 1 even when you insist that they're not attacking, to just running off at the end of chapter 3. Yes, a lot of it can be explained by what happened to her parents, and the final choices that you get to make (if you find her) revolve around finding out more about that whole thing and her coming to terms with the death of her parents, so she may be turning over a new leaf there. Still, sources say that that is not the case. Those sources, of course, being possibly the centrepiece of the most insane rambling rant I have in me about this game, so buckle up, because I'm talking about...
Wayne
I want to clarify, when I say Wayne, I don't mean the human. When I'm talking about the human, I shall refer to him as Sam. Wayne, is the thing that follows you around, protecting you. They are completely separate entities.
So, after Sam's death, Wayne picked up Sam's rotting corpse and started to puppet it around. It is his way of interacting with the world. I think that he is the main point of the story. He is your father, he is Tabitha's father, he is Sybil's patron (I'll get to that in Sybil's section), he is the reason why the ditchlings are everywhere.
So, let's start with the reason why I think the ditchlings are there. Scarlet Hollow has something going on. Something that is very much tied to, at least in my theory so far, to Sybil and Wayne. Wayne isn't fully in our world, he is interacting with it as much as he can, but I believe that the Wayne we see is less than a finger puppet compared to the actual being he represents. I believe that he is going to be making his way to the world of the game, in his full power, right around the time of the funeral. Such a thing will be an apocalyptic event, and Scarlet Hollow is days away from being the eye of that worldwide storm, so of course the harbingers of doom that are the ditchlings would be appearing there en masse.
Wayne is far more than what we've seen of him, right now, he is confined to the deceased body of Sam, and he has to adhere to some of the laws of the world while at such a tiny fraction of his true power. Even still, we've seen him appear and disappear at will, effortlessly dodge the powerful build, even when also fighting Reese, and obviously, the fight against Reese himself.
Now, we get to some of the weirder stuff. I believe that Wayne still needs a vessel that can hold him. People with such capacity aren't easy to come by, so, over the course of years and years, he made some. It's why the Scarlets, as pointed out in the tea room with Sybil, tend to not really have many men in the family. It's all Wayne, through some eldritch ritual, bringing about Scarlet after Scarlet, until you, finally, the human who has the capacity to serve as his true vessel. That's why Vivian left Scarlet Hollow, she was forced to partake in the ritual, and you were the result of that. The child growing inside of her was going to be possessed by an eldritch abomination and bring about the end of the world, but his followers only really had reach within Scarlet Hollow.
It's why he cares so much about you. The simple answer is that he doesn't care so much about you, he cares about your body being kept safe until he is able to make his way through the veil and take it over. It's why he will threaten Sybil about there being hell to pay if anything else happens to you should you give up the decade of your life to the ghost of Charles Shaw Jr. It's why he wants you to just stay put in the estate when he finds you poking around the mines on Tuesday. Speaking of Sybil...
Sybil
Goes without saying, she's a witch. But, in modern media, a witch is not simply a female wizard (unless you're talking about the Harry Potter universe). A male witch is a warlock, and in modern media, they don't do the whole studious study in order to earnt their magical/mystical prowess, that's a wizard thing. Witches, like Sybil, skip the whole studying thing and go straight to being masters of the arcane by striking deals with supernatural (almost always evil and demonic) beings. The witch serves the patron and the patron allows the witch to have great magical power.
With that established, I already mentioned who her patron is (Wayne), but, with that being the case, she is the one who takes the orders in the relationship. On the magical hierarchy, Wayne is Sybil's direct boss, and if she wants to have the massive power that we sense when we first meet her with the mystical trait, she will do as Wayne tells her, when he tells her. That said, she doesn't want to scare us off by saying anything about Wayne. She knows what he is, she knows his true nature, and I believe that Wayne offered her a seat at the table in his new kingdom if she pulls off summoning him.
The problem is, as you keep asking questions about Wayne, she doesn't know how to calm you down about him other than brushing you off. If you are not in Scarlet Hollow when Wayne is summoned, he won't have a body to possess and his time in that world will be short lived. She knows that he is an eldritch being piloting a corpse like a finger puppet, but it's easier to brush you off when you ask about that than it is to risk scaring you off and away from Wayne and away from Scarlet Hollow. Besides, as long as you're running around playing detective, you're staying in Scarlet Hollow. You want to try and get some kids out of a mine? You want to go have dinner with the jersey devil and his mum? You want to go ghost hunting? You want to go look for Stella after she runs off? Sure. Fine. Not the safest use of your time, and it somewhat puts the body on the line here, but it is better than you digging into and using that energy to figure out what Wayne is and then leave his area of influence before you can become his vessel, since you're obviously not going to listen to him when he tells you to just stay put in the estate. You need breadcrumbs to keep you interested, sure, but the real leads need to be withheld from you until the ritual happens for their plan to have the best shot at bearing fruit.
Sybil gets more complicated though, this is where it gets really dark with her, but I think that she needs to sacrifice her firstborn for the ritual to summon Wayne. It's why she is working so hard to keep Kaneeka in place. I think she killed her husband, probably through poisoning to bring Kaneeka back from veterinary school, then has been using her mind controlling tea on her ever since. And yes, it is certainly the tea. There is a lot that changes depending on whether you drink the tea or not, including whether you can hear dr. Kelly badmouth her in the old x-ray room.
At this point Kaneeka is basically a puppet of Sybil, and I think that part of the ritual to summon Wayne she's going to have to sacrifice Kaneeka. Given how she apparently responds to the knowledge that Mile was in the mines though, I don't think Sybil really cares whether he lives or dies. I think that he's unimportant to the upcoming ritual and Sybil doesn't expect him to last long after said ritual anyway.
Kaneeka
I said a lot of what I have to say about her in Sybil's section, but she is under Sybil's control, she has not actually been sick, she's just gotten a bit too rowdy for Sybil's liking so Sybil has been using her tea to control her and possibly just hide her away under the guise of being sick until it is time for the ritual. They're in the endgame now and Sybil doesn't want to take the chance of Kaneeka making good on her promises to herself now of all times when there isn't enough time to work on preparations for the ritual and a scheme to get Kaneeka back in time again. It's just far easier if Kaneeka thinks she's too sick to get out of bed until it's time to sacrifice her. Meanwhile, the tea in her is actively pushing against her really taking onboard anything weird about her mum. Their relationship is in the gutter and I think if she were able to, Kaneeka would damn near hate her mother at this point, but the tea makes her quick to forgive her mother when she does something that Kaneeka doesn't like.
Coven/Cult
Stepping away from the character centric format for a bit, I want to talk about the coven, the group responsible for the upcoming ritual. I think that that group is lead by Sybil and the head Scarlet has been the right hand of the coven since the Shaws got driven out. Pearlanne has been hanging onto that role since Eddie died, and for some unspecified amount of time has been teaching Tabitha the ropes of what needs to be done. The group is dedicated to and ultimately takes its orders from Wayne, his witch making the more day-to-day decisions, the Scarlets using their power within the town to enact what needs enacting (such as purposefully hiring a bunch of incompetent and lazy individuals who prioritise a bowling night over a murder inquiry for a police force). If you mention the mayor to Tabitha at her hideout house, she even says the quiet part out loud and tells you about him being a dog, saying that the Scarlets hold all of the power in the town.
Honestly, the coven is probably very small, possibly only currently consisting of Tabitha and Sybil at this moment in time, now that Pearlanne is gone.
Pearlanne/Sam
This one is a doozy, but I think that the Scarlet women are forbidden from getting into romantic relationships with men, and the enforcement of this rule lead to Pearlanne's death. Simply put, Tabitha starts dating Sam, Pearlanne finds out, enforces the rules by having Sam killed, and in a fit of rage, Tabitha smothers her mother in her sleep after finding out what she did. It's why Tabitha knows that even though Wayne is possessing Sam's body when you see him on Wednesday night, that's not him; it can't be him, since Pearlanne killed him, and had Pearlanne not done that then Tabitha wouldn't have her mother's blood on her hands.
The ultimate cause of death is the same with being smothered and sleep apnoea (suffocation), and it's not too weird for an old woman to have such a condition that Tabitha can blame it on, especially with the lack of doctor visits that doctor Kelly talks about if you ask her about how well she knows your family. All this to say, it's not that weird that, with a decent poker face, Tabitha can play off her mother's murder as a death by natural causes without raising enough suspicion to warrant anyone looking into it, and while playing with the mystical trait allows you to see her corpse, none of the other traits (I specifically went into my book smarts/mystical playthrough to look for this option) seem to be able to check for signs of foul play, all you can do is ask Reese if he knows how to check that (he doesn't).
At the end of the day though, if my crackpot theories are somehow on point, then all the Scarlet women basically belong to Wayne, he's the only one who is allowed to do anything that might impregnate them, and trying to step in the way of that rule will land you in a shallow grave if you're lucky. Hell, at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the reason for the landslide that caused the mansion to be leaning over a cliffside was caused by Wayne throwing a fit over and getting retribution for one of the Scarlet girls dating some human guy. Beings like that are not the type who you just tell that they can't have their way. You get a pass because harming you means harming his future vessel.
Tabitha
This one is one that I had a very different opinion about until I realised that I forgot to try something. Originally, I was going to say that Tabitha was for the time being innocent in all of this and was going to be inducted into the cult at or around Pearlanne's funeral, which will probably be when the cat fully comes out of the bag. In fact, I think there may have been some mention of this line of thinking earlier on in the post (this is taking a while to write; I started writing this on 9th March 2024 and it's now the 17th). That changed when I remembered that when Tabitha goes to get the special tea from Sybil, street smart can find a spot to listen to them that is subtle but can't make out more than a few syllables at a time, but keen senses can make out some of the conversation while standing in a very obvious spot until they notice you and switch to whispering. Point is, by using both of those traits on a single character, you can listen to that full conversation. Bottom line is that Tabitha lies to you when she talks about it being tea to help her sleep. If you have played through the game before, specifically with the speak with animals trait, and followed the sidequest on that one, you can piece together (out of game) that they're talking about the goat.
This put a bit of a wrench in what I had in mind, but okay. Turns out that Tabitha was the one who brought the goat over to the greenhouse (I thought that it was pastor Daniel since he also matches the description given by the goat, he can speak to animals and he owns a farm; my line of reasoning was that the good pastor heard the goat say something that disturbed him so he took it off of his farm and locked it away in the greenhouse so that it wouldn't just wander right back, or something, I couldn't figure out his long term plan on that, but maybe he was just stalling while he figured out what to do with Goat). With this new information about Tabitha being responsible for Goat being in the greenhouse though, it makes it seem more like Tabitha has been doing some ritualistic things already. This conversation alone, in my mind, shifts the blame of pastor Daniel's curse (the reason why everyone in town outside of his family, even the friendliest of people just instinctively hates him without an actual reason that they can state) from Sybil to Tabitha. Perhaps religion is seen as an annoying distraction by Tabitha, perhaps Wayne doesn't want the competition.
This does beg the question of why Tabitha would insist on fleeing from Wayne when you're in the ghost's visions on Wednesday together. I think that it's a mix of a few factors; the first being that he's using Sam's body whenever he interacts with you in physical form, which she can't stand to look at given the history, the second is that she doesn't recognise him for who he is when you see him in there, the third is that even if she knew who he was off the bat, she's in a similar position as Sybil and doesn't want to accidentally end up telling you more than she's meant to about him while you can still potentially flee town, and finally, the fact that this is a relatively new form of his and that he may have been showing up to Tabitha and Sybil in a very different manner up until now.
Wrap up
This whole post is a mess, I thought that splitting it up based on characters would help keep things clear, but given how intertwined the characters all are with one another in a game like this, the threads are still criss-crossing with one another all over the place, since I couldn't get into the weeds of talking about one character without some serious establishment of the ideas that I have surrounding a completely different character.
I have a strong feeling that I missed some things, hell, there are even some other points that I wanted to address in detail but I've had enough of writing this for now, and I'm starting to lose track of what I've written and what I haven't written, which really isn't helping. I know that I didn't address my thoughts on:
I think Avery might possibly be some kind of angel or opposite of whatever Wayne is
Avery hasn't been in human form for very long and the novelty of human experiences hasn't worn off for them yet, hence the weird things that they want to experience
Gretchen would often be taken with Stella to the estate when Tabitha and Stella were dating, but the very different personalities led to Gretchen trying to befriend Frou-Frou, who hates being approached, leading to her possibly attacking Gretchen on multiple occasions, hence their distain for one another
Tulip has a stronger version of the talk with animals trait (like how Sybil has a stronger version of the mystical trait) that allows her to talk with ditchlings and/or plants, and that's who's been leading her to tetanus lake
Anyway, thanks for coming to my PepeSilvie Talk
