TROUBLE AT ST. MONSTRANCE

22 Aug, 2026

Also available here. For Crime Wave.

192X.
Wednesday, April 18th.
New Babylon City, Old Quarter.

Your sister has been a nun for years. You never quite understood her. This morning you received a letter through your mailbox:

To my dearest sibling,

I hope that this letter finds you well.
I know we didn't always see eye to eye about my faith. Yet, the convent has urgent need of someone like you. Someone more worldly, or something like that... Something terrible has been happening and I don't know how. Please visit as soon as you receive this. When you do, don't mention the contents of my letter please.

May god be with you,
Sister Judith, St Monstrance Convent

Scenario

Sister Judith, 29. Judgemental. Freckles. Fiddles with a curl of hair that spills from her veil.
Sister Hellwig, 76. Folksy and bumbling. Etiolated. Rubs her glasses constantly (they don't help her see).
Sister Joanna, 63. Sceptical and ruthless. Wispy hair. Gesticulates with brandished items.

Sister Judith's face and hands have been kept gentle by her vocation. She beams but anxiousness radiates from some small pit within her habit.
She asks how you are as she ushers you along the edge of the cloister to the locutory, where she explains her problem.

Over the past three weeks Judith has taken over from Sister Marianne with assisting Sister Hellwig, the ageing steward of St Monstrance. Hellwig is the treasurer and manages all the convent's funds, yet in recent months her eyesight has worsened and she's needed assistance.
While carrying out the book-keeping, under Hellwig's verbal guidance, Judith has begun to realise that there's a big problem:

One of the tasks that she performs is the binding and storing of money in the convent's safe. Funds are stored in wads of $100 each. She's noticed that there's two fewer of these bundles than there should be according to the books (there should be five in total), and that they've gone missing since she began helping Hellwig. One vanished a fortnight ago and another vanished five days prior.

This is, obviously, a big fucking deal. Judith suspects that there will be Hell To Pay, and soon.

Not only is Easter coming up next week but there is a currently an archivist from the Vatican visiting who would surely report back if he caught notice of this trouble. Worse yet, Sister Joanna, as St Monstrance's Almoness, normally manages the finances of Easter Alms directly with Hellwig and will surely notice the conspicuous absence of the money.

All in all, Judith suspects the issue needs to be put to bed within a week. She has thought of three good reasons to allow you into the convent for your investigations though is receptive to other ideas. If it comes to it Judith will risk her neck and unlock the wicket gate for you in the middle of the night.

• A prospective nun considering becoming a novice (guided tour and overnight stay).
• Plumbers come to fix the groaning pipes of the convent's cisterns (escorted to latrines but left unobserved).
• Visitors from Pimento University seeking to meet with Father Karl (escorted to Karl in the cellar).

Judith herself has only one suspicion: Sister Brigitta and Sister Jeanne's receipts. While it wouldn't explain the missing money it's the only idea Judith has.

Judith can tell you that the sister previously responsible for assisting Hellwig was Sister Marianne. Only she, Hellwig, and herself know the combination to the convent's safe.

St Monstrance

St Monstrance's Convent was once an annex of New Babylon's "first 'cathedral", a prime example - architecturally, if not spiritually - of the colonial edifices built between Maryland and Rhode Island in the seventeenth century. It was dedicated to an Italian nun and mystic venerated in 1612, the patron saint of the redeemed criminal. Her attribute is an alms-giving basket.

St Monstrance's red bricks withstood the height of anti-Catholicism over the eighteenth century. It burned down on Palm Sunday in 1883 and was never rebuilt: Holy Terror Cathedral took its place as the city's church. The rubble was cleared and a farmer's market grew over the scorched flagstones.
The convent was spared the flames. Some of the nuns remember when the city's first cathedral still stood but Sister Hellwig is the only woman left who took the habit in its shadow.

Dusty red bricks and swept paving slabs. The convent has been absorbed into the city like a tree grows around a hammered-in nail. The perimeter walls are twelve feet high. A wooden gate once allowed access for carriages and carts though only the wicket is used any more.

It feels very still within the convent. It smells like a dry cave, though the scent of fresh produce wafts from the east during the day and malt percolates at night. Footsteps echo around as one moves from the cloister's stone paths to the thick terracotta tiles inside. The walls are all whitewashed.

St Monstrance's nuns are not spared noise. The city hemming them in relentlessly blares out at all hours: the fruit market in the morning, the rush of commuters in the afternoon, the drunks and hobos in the evening. Robbed of their cathedral's bell, a street-car instead marks time, rattling past every fifteen minutes to the south.

Locations within the convent are as follows:

• Cloister. A quadrangle with shady arches and a neat lawn in the centre, forty feet across.
• Chapter House. An airy meeting room, the walls lined with benches. Doors lead off to three tiny offices belonging to the Abbess, the Head Prioress, and the Treasurer. A small but well-stocked infirmary is also present.
• Refectory. A cramped dining room filled with a long table. A door leads to a well swept and surprisingly modern kitchen. The cellar is less so, dingy and choked with dust (the only known entrance to the old cathedral catacombs is here).
• Locutory. A cold and echoey room occupied by a sparse collection of wooden chairs and tables (essentially a common room). It is looked over by a stained-glass depiction of St Monstrance washing the feet of imprisoned thieves.
• Dormitory. Corridors of spartan living chambers. A little brass name plate is affixed to each. Half the chambers look out onto the cloister while the others, adjoining the street, have smaller sealed windows raised near the ceiling.
• Chapel. A modest chapel in 1700s style with a terracotta tiled floor. Simple benches with cushions sit before a well decorated altar. A row of prayer cushions have been lined up before the raised chancel.
• Latrines. The facilities lack renovation. A bowl of potpourri is balanced on each creaking cistern.

Investigation

Sister Brigitta and Sister Jeanne's Receipts

Sister Brigitta, 40. Friendly and caring. Heavy set. Plays up her German accent, which she consciously maintains in memory of her mother.
Sister Jeanne, 30. Anxious. Oily skin. Twiddles with her rosary in her gown.
Sister Ruth, 32. Standoffish. Gaunt. Suffers from a chesty cough.

Two sisters are tasked with shopping for groceries each day: Sister Brigitta and Sister Jeanne. Judith, while assisting Hellwig, has noticed that they seem to overcharge for what they bring back perhaps by a dollar in total each week.

If questioned, they state that groceries are simply a bit more expensive than one might expect. There is a man at the market who sells slightly cheaper vegetables but he's a foul-mouthed man who oaths up and down as he bargains, and they don't much like to deal with him. This is a lie.

If trailed as they visit the market, the two sisters can be seen purchasing a small punnet of blueberries and strawberries and sometimes an orange or lime. They then hide the produce under their habit before returning to the convent.
If questioned about this, they state that they are merely sinful and delight in the eating of the fruit. This is a lie.

Truthfully, the two sisters smuggle berries and citruses to the ailing Sister Ruth, who suffers from long-term untreated syphilis, to boost her immune system. They are the only sisters who Ruth has confided in about her past.

Father Karl's Studies

Father Karl, 52. Antsy. Narrow and grey. Cares very little about the living but witters on about history. Delights only in coffee and pastries.

Father Karl has stayed for two weeks in a tiny hotel room near Holy Terror. Each morning he rises at 06:00, performs solitary prayer, and visits the nearby Cannoli coffeehouse. At 7:30 he purchases a sandwich and a selection of pastries from a nearby Puerto Rican store, is let into the convent, and descends into the catacomb with a box of candles and his notebook. He ascends at 18:00 and returns to his hotel for food and sleep.

Karl is single-mindedly focused on cataloguing the remains interred below the convent. The old catacombs bear much historical importance as a rare window into the total anomaly that was St Monstrance: "an uninterrupted Roman Catholic community in the heart of a West Coast American city, spanning from the seventeenth to late nineteenth century, is a startlingly unlikely thing to have existed, and I must allow the faithful of that institution to be recognised by history".

The catacombs are fortunate to have survived the ruin of the cathedral above. During the clearing of debris, their main entrance was sealed. By sheer happen-stance the catacombs have remained accessible from two points, one at each end: to the west the cellar of the convent's refectory, and to the east the basement of the market warehouse that was built upon the foundations of the burned cathedral.

The catacombs are paved and walled in thin red slabs, their colour concealed by layers of caked dust and dirt. The complex is formed of three snaking parallel tunnels, each five feet wide and ten feet tall and sixty feet long, with shelves of remains sealed by desiccated wooden boards that have long shed their painted labels but still retain the faintest trace of lettering. From these three passages stem off six cramped sepulchres, four of which are occupied by a stone tomb.

The warehouse basement entrance is simply a withered wooden door clinging to rusted hinges. The dust around it has been disturbed as though the door has been repeatedly opened, though Karl is yet to notice. The other side of the door is covered by stacked crates of hessian sacks that also appear to have been shifted.

Karl takes his lunch breaks from studying in the refectory cellar. However, one can also find a clear sign of someone having sat down and rested on a stone tomb in one of the sepulchres. Karl denies having done this and assumes it was one of the nuns but has yet to raise a complaint within the convent.

Each night Susie infiltrates the convent there is a 1-in-2 chance she bumps into Father Karl burning the midnight oil after a breakthrough. She will bludgeon him to death with a tire iron and stuff his body in one of the unused crates in the warehouse cellar, planning to dispose of the corpse once it starts to smell. She will continue to work her con on Sister Marianne.
Father Karl will be assumed by all to be investigating somewhere else in the city: "perhaps the father's at the library of Pimento University, or looking at gravestones in the Necropolis district.

Sister Marianne's Ecstasy

Sister Marianne, 61. Pedantic and humourless. Squints. Is never more than six feet from a mug of ovaltine.

Once a steady hand in the convent, the nun has become fretful and can't concentrate. She has retired from assisting her dear friend Sister Hellwig with her book-keeping and has taken up simple cleaning, yet often requires assistance even with this.

For three weeks Sister Marianne has endured sleepless nights, groaning and wheezing all the while as if she's just stepped off a carousel. It's quite unpleasant for her neighbours.

All in the convent are aware of the reason for these nocturnal disturbances: five times now Marianne has been met in the night by an angel outside her dormitory's open window. A She-Angel named Susan, cowled in white robes, with wondrous features that made her restless in their beauty! Yet, none have glimpsed the angel besides from Marianne herself.

The angel has spoken to Marianne as an agent of god. She has forbade the nun from reporting on her words, instead instructing Marianne to, if questioned, report that they whisper to each other, through the panes of her window, of charity and forgiveness and the redemption of all the wretched of New Babylon.

In truth, the angel has conversed with Marianne on the subject of St Monstance's wealth "and how it can be given to the poor and needy more quickly". On the second visit, the nun told her that there was a safe with money managed by Hellwig that she had access to. On the third and fifth visit, the angel commanded Marianne to go to the steward's office in the chapter house and retrieve a bundle of cash for her. The nun followed these directions without question in a trance-like state and is unaware of the act herself.

To someone familiar or medically trained Marianne clearly exhibits signs of laudanum usage: shortness of breath, constricted pupils, drowsiness, and pruritus.

Susie

Susie the Shark, 25. Shifty and spiteful. Toothy grin. Unmatched in sleights of hand and poker cons. Wears a denim boiler suit so stained it appears olive green.
Sister Marjorie, 32. Cagey and regretful. A knife-scar runs down the outside of her right arm and hand. A capable fist-fighter. Habitually listens in to suspicious folks.

Sister Marianne's heavenly visitor is little more than a gutter thug. Susie was left out to dry when Marge, her partner in crime, suddenly developed a conscience last Christmas and decided to join a convent. Susie's made it her mission to spite her self-hating ex however she can.

Her scheme has evolved as so:

• Two months ago Susie stole a novice nun's habit from some nuns at the laundrette.
• Then she investigated the cellar of the St Monstrance farmer's market warehouse and discovered that it has a forgotten door into the old cathedral catacombs.
• Using this passage, she's donned the stolen habit to sneak in during the evening and tamper with Sister Marianne's mug of ovaltine, which the nun leaves on her windowsill. Susie doses the drink with a sizeable glug of laudanum in order to make her suggestible.
• Later in the night she returns wrapped in a white sheet and plays the role of an angelic emissary, attempting to work Marianne into an ecstatic trance where she'll fetch her wads of cash from the safe.

Susie has visited Marianne five times and taken money twice. She's grown confident and intends to return and get more money every three days onwards (starting Friday 20th, then Monday 23rd, and so on).

Susie stores the money in a suitcase under the floorboards of her apartment (Room 237, 18 Argyle Street, The Devil's Hambone District). She's blown d20% of it on drinking and gambling and women.

If found and chased she ditches her disguise and tries to lose people by fleeing into the raucous Fat Cats jazz club the next block over.

Susie the Shark is known to the police as a conman and a card hustler. Sister Marjorie can instantly identify Susie from even a rough description and can share her address. She'll feel very guilty about causing all this.