She finds herself on a bit of coastline, waves shhhing against a sandy beach, clouds overhead, a bit of a nip in the air. The ground under her feet is rife with Earth-typical grasses, and to her left, on the opposite side from the beach, is a twentieth-century railroad track. 

She closes the door behind her, and walks over towards the railroad tracks. She's warm enough, thanks to her subdermal modifications. Cheaper than packing a coat in style for every period and era. 

The tracks look slightly worn, like they've been put to hard use but aren't due to be repaired just yet. 

She picks a direction at random, and starts walking. Railway is human-made most places, it probably goes somewhere. She can camp if need be, she has food.

Eventually the edge of a town becomes visible in the distance. 

She keeps following the tracks, checking her appearance. Loose white cotton shirt with black buttons. Blue jeans. Modern hiking pack... 

She'll probably blend. This fits most eras, though the pack and the pants could be strange. 

The edges of the town seem oddly deserted; most of the houses have curtained windows and closed doors. Remnants of daily life, like children's toys left out on a lawn, can be seen here and there, but nobody seems to be outside. 

... She is definitely concerned, but at the same time she doesn't want to be pulling her pistol unnecessarily. She walks onwards, trusting in her Chron to give her reaction time if she needs it.

Towards the center of the town, people begin to be visible, but they all hurry about their business and try to avoid catching her eye. 

They look odd. Partly they look like standard caucasians, ethnically, but there's something off about the facial structure. 

Something slightly different. Not quite standard human. 

But since when does that mean much? 

She notes it and continues walking. Can she catch any snippets of overheard conversation?

If she strains her ears--

"--the newcomers have--"

"--do everything, or it would have come up sooner--"

"--maybe this is like that--"

"--don't see why." "Because 1846."

That's suggestive that she's being lumped in with some other group. If only she had a way to find them. 

In lieu of anything else to do... turn her gold into local currency. Seems like a decent option. 

She goes looking for a jewellery-store, listening for anything else untowards.

She can find a pawn shop if she looks. The proprietor is a middle-aged man with a somewhat pronounced version of the oddity present everywhere, an unblinking stare and an odd protrusiveness of the center of the face. 

"Sir, do you buy gold?", she asks.

He goggles at her. "Buy gold?"

She reaches into her pack, and turns out a gold coin about the size of a spanish silver dollar, embrazened with the letters OTC in a hexagonal grid.

"Yes. I'd like to sell this."

"...Okay." 

He gets out a money box and starts counting out bills. 

She doesn't dispute his tallying. After all, it's worth what she can get for it, and right now that's what this pawnshop owner says it is.

He gives her the bills and closes the money box and puts it and the coin under the counter. 

She takes the bills. "Thank you very much."

She goes back out into the street. 

Well, now what? 

She goes looking for a general store. 

There isn't one, but there's a drug store and a grocery store. 

She'll try the grocery store. She wants a packet of sugar cookies that she can eat while she thinks.

The grocery store is brightly-lit and welcoming, and the cashier does not have the typical facial anomaly. 

"What brings you to Innsmouth?" he asks as he rings up her cookies.

"Seeing the sights, getting to know the place. I'm considering moving here for the foreseeable future, but... the other townsfolk haven't exactly been welcoming."

"No kidding! I've been here for months and I can't get people to say hello to me in the street. Why would you want to move here?" 

"It's just luck that I'm considering moving here, not sure if it's good or bad luck yet. I'm interested in the people here, if only they'd talk to me. But I suppose they must have their reasons of being wary of outsiders. Do you know an inn in the town? I've only just arrived today." 

"There's a hotel, yeah." He gives her directions. 

"Lovely, thank you very much. Do you know anything about any other newcomers? I overheard the locals muttering in a way that sounded like there was more than you and me?"

"Oh! Yeah, a few weeks ago these people showed up...I don't know what's up with them but the locals didn't treat them like they treated me, they'd actually talk to them and stuff. One of them's a girl about my age, she comes in for their groceries, she'll talk to me, but when I ask why the locals talk to her and her folks--I dunno if they're actually related or anything but they were definitely traveling together--anyway she just said they had a personal recommendation and wouldn't go into detail." 

"Interesting. I'll keep them in mind. In the meantime, I should actually shop!"

She gets a box of sugar cookies and pays with one of the bills, hoping this produces a hail of change.

Change ensues!

Lovely. 

She snacks lightly on her box of sugar cookies on her way down to the hotel. 

The hotel is apparently manned by a single clerk, who looks at her suspiciously. "Hello?" he asks.

"Hello," she says. "I'd like to stay for the week, please?" 

She waves her stack of bills at him vaguely, and hopes it's enough.

He counts out an amount and hands her the rest and a small handful of coin in change, as well as a key. "Room 428. There's no running water," he warns her. 

"I've dealt with worse," she says. 

She goes and investigates her rooms.

The room has a single unadorned lightbulb, an iron-framed bed, and a small writing-desk with chair. Despite the sparse accoutrements, the room is spacious. 

There is no bolt on the door. 

It's something. Better than camping in the woods any day. She'll have to find a washroom to take care of the necessities later. 

And it's nice to confirm that this world does in fact have electricity. 

She sits on her bed and munches her sugar cookies. 

The newcomers came with a personal recommendation. The newcomers talked to the shopkeeper, who didn't have a personal recommendation. Clearly she needs to find the newcomers. They ought to be staying at the hotel, perhaps she can bump into them? 

She catalogues her change and the denominations of bill she has and tallies how much each is worth and what the sugar cookies and the night's stay were worth. Now she has a working knowledge of currency. Hurray. How many more weeks can she afford to stay on this coin? 

And where is the washroom, anyway? They ought to have one. She goes looking.

Almost two more weeks, if she doesn't buy any more food. 

There's a washroom at the end of the hall. 

She takes her journal out of her pack, sits down at the desk, and writes. 

Landed on an insular electrical age town. Possible Masquerade; magic readings for this plane inconsistent with apparent tech level. Will have to secure a private location for beacon. Storekeeper is nice enough. I want to meet the other newcomers. 

She closes her journal, and seals the page with Secret Page. 

She goes and looks at where the sun is.

It's past its zenith, but only by a few hours. 

She has an afternoon, then. 

What to do... she supposes she could ask with the hotel clerk after the newcomers. If only she knew any names... 

She is so getting into others' business. But that's what she was built for, so...

"Excuse me," she asks the clerk. "I'm looking for a group of people who've come here travelling before me a couple weeks ago. Are they staying at this hotel, or...?"

"I don't answer questions about other patrons," the clerk said flatly. 

"That's fine," says Thorn. "Thank you for your time." 

She goes back to the grocery store. "Hello there! I was just wondering if you could describe the girl who comes in here for groceries sometimes. I want to know her if I should happen across her out in the town; I want to ask her about Innsmouth and so on, she seems the knowledgeable type."

"Oh, well, it's not hard--everyone in town except you and me and the other newcomers has the Innsmouth look--well, them and old Zadok Allen. He'll talk, if you ply him with booze, but the stuff that comes out of his mouth is nonsense. The girl who comes in sometimes is really pale, her hair as well as her skin. The other three I've seen only in passing, but the other woman is blonde, and one of the men is as pale as the girl and the other is really tall. The girl's name is Lucy, she won't tell me the others' names." 

"Where can I find this Zadok Allen? It'd be nice to have some more company, even if he is a drunk." 

"He lives in the poorhouse on the north edge of town, but he spends most of the day wandering around near the fire station." 

"And where's the fire station?"

She's not sure she wants to take advantage of a poor old man's addiction to gather information, but - 

"Actually, wait a second. What does he talk about when he's in his cups?" 

"He has these crazy stories, about fish-people and pirate gold and blood sacrifice," he says, shaking his head. "If he were a little better educated, he might make a fine novelist." 

"I see," says Thorn, not entirely sure she's seen enough. "Well, thank you for your time."

She buys a loaf of bread, some cheese, and some ham. She goes back to her hotel room and makes ham and cheese sandwiches and eats them. She records the "crazy stories" on her secret page as further evidence of a possible Masquerade. 

She cleans her pistol and loads with her enchanted ammunition. She does jumping jacks for cardio. She tries to sketch the local "Innsmouth Look" and fails; she's no artist. Eventually, she goes to bed and sleeps.

People move around the hotel in the night, but if that doesn't wake her, nobody disturbs her until morning. 

She sleeps lightly, but not that lightly. 

She goes down to the grocery store again. "Hello again, I don't think I actually got your name," she says to the clerk. "I'm Thorn." 

"That's a weird name. I'm Adam."

"Alas, we don't choose the names we're given. Have you seen Lucy today? How often does she come in?"

"No, not today. Every three or four days, usually, and she came the day before yesterday." 

"Mind if I hang around the store for a bit? It's just this is the only place I know where Lucy goes. I promise to buy more sugar cookies."

"Hah, sure. I'd welcome the company."

So she hangs around and gets a basket and fills it with boxes of sugar cookies and a jug of milk to go with. And then she hangs around some more. 

A few hours later, an albino woman who looks to be in her late teens or early twenties pushes the door open. She flashes a quick smile at Adam, then turns seriously to Thorn. 

"Hi. Can we talk? Outside." 

"Certainly." She waves goodbye to Adam.

He looks vaguely confused but waves back. 

Lucy leans against the wall outside. "Hello. You've been asking about me and my friends." 

She glances around quickly to see if anyone is watching them. 

Prestidigitation. She holds up her palm and makes a spark dance across it, then has it flicker into a ghostly flame and then wink out.

"Yes," she says seriously. "I have. Because I expect you have answers and might want to share. I could take advantage of old Zadok Allen and maybe what he'd tell me would be something like the truth, but..."

She relaxes slightly when she sees the spark. 

"You could," she says mildly. "But I've never found prying into other people's secrets behind their backs to be the friendliest thing. Howabout you tell me what you want to know, and why, and I'll tell you what I've got permission to tell you, and then we go from there?"

"Now you've got me calculating how much I'm allowed to tell you. Feels a bit like a sliding-block puzzle."

"I want to know everything that's not directly personal, everything you can tell me about Innsmouth and its magic; as to the why, well... That's complicated."

"I'm... seeing if Innsmouth would make a good trading partner for an extremely large, extremely powerful entity that's a bit like a corporation and a bit like a deity. We hate slavery, we love magic, we want magic to be more available to everyone, we have a lot of magic. Paradigm-shifting amounts of magic. In order to bargain fairly, we have to understand what's on your side of the table to offer, and what's not. We need to understand you in all your complexities, to the degree that a single scout like me can manage anyway. We understand privacy. But we are willing to trade a lot for the chance at new magic."

"...Okay. Well, assuming you're telling the truth, that is very good to know. See, the thing is, there are people in this town who aren't exactly human, and there's a lot of people on his side of the information gap," she waves at the grocery store, indicating Adam, "who react...aggressively...to finding out that people who aren't human exist. Or magic."

"Yeah, we're familiar with the general situation regarding magic being persecuted, it's common in a lot of places. Nonhumans less so but still common. I am, myself, not exactly a standard human. I only need four hours of sleep, for one thing."

"I only need a few hours of sleep a month. I am much less human than your average Innsmouth resident, even if I don't look it at the moment. And, honestly, 'paradigm-shifting' amounts of magic isn't that much, for most of the humans hereabouts. You do the weest hint of necromancy in public and suddenly they're breaking out the torches and pitchforks." 

"Sounds like a good design, we might have to buy that from you. As for necromancy, we approve of it when it's not slavery. Getting the public on side can definitely be tough, though."

"It's not slavery. Not, uh, magically anyway, unethical practitioners have existed. Buy that off me? I don't think you can, it's just how I am."

"My patron is very good at working from examples, and if someone owns your body other than you we generally consider that A Problem. If you want proof I'm legit, then I can contact my patron in front of you - I just need a safe space where we won't be walked in on."

"I don't even know what you're claiming to be able to demonstrate. I'm--I'm a spawn of Yog-Sothoth, I don't know how replicating me would be possible without Yog-Sothoth itself, and even then, we can be pretty different from each other." 

"I don't know what you being a spawn of Yog-Sothoth implies. What I do know is that my patron is very good at duplicating things once it has an example, even with edits. I was custom-built in order to make contact with the local magical community, for example. But this is beside the point. I'm offering to show you my abilities that I can't show off in public, if that would help you understand what's up with me. I can fly. I can levitate heavy things. I can mend broken things without any parts to do it. I can open a gate to the place I came from and bring through magics and technologies that don't exist here, sufficently varied that you'd need a catalog. You'd also get to meet one of my patrons in person if you went that route."

"--It implies things about the level of power you'd need to make more of me. I'd like to see your abilities, should we go somewhere more private?"

"Power we have, it's finesse we're looking for. I would appreciate that."