This is something in your life that has opened your eyes to the existence of the occult underground. The three street witnesses in the last chapter are examples of trigger events: Ruth Pechvogel's cave dive into an impossible chapel, Agnes Veuve's encounter with a death that was not death, and Remy Dole's night of unbelievable passion. All three of these people have been touched by the unnatural, just as you have been.
To prepare for a street campaign, come up with your trigger event. You don't have to know anything else about yourself at this point. Just make up a strange experience and go from there. Your GM can help you with this. If you have an idea, she can ask you questions about it to flesh it out. The others in your group can do this as well.
Imagine it's a winter's night. You and the others have each come to a snowbound inn to escape the cold world beyond. A fire crackles. In this quiet space, over steaming mugs of hard cider, the bartender asks a simple question: What is the strangest thing you've ever experienced?
Go around the table and tell your trigger events. Ask each other questions, compare experiences, and flesh out your stories.
Here are some sample trigger events you might think about, or even use if you're stuck for an idea:
You're eight years old, and for the first time you are stay- ing over at a friend's house. You both have crept into the attic with your blankets and pillows, and late into the night you tell each other jokes and read comic books. Finally you fall asleep. But you awaken a few hours later, before dawn when it is still dark. There is an old chest nearby. From the soft glow of the nightlight your friend's mother plugged into the wall socket that afternoon you can see a little girl squatting on the chest, staring at you, and she frowns and says: "Don't look at me. Don't look at me!" You shut your eyes tight for almost two minutes before you risk peeking again, and she is gone. But you remember her eyes, sunken from hunger, with a hatred you never even knew could exist focused directly on you.
On your fifteenth birthday, your parents gave you a puppy. You loved that dog. But your grandfather, who lived down the street, hated her. When you walked by with the puppy on a leash, your grandfather would come to the window of his run-down old house and scowl. One evening you came home late and your parents said the dog had run away. They'd looked all around, called her name, and had no luck. You ran out into the night to find her. Your grandfather was sitting on his porch and he called you over, looking grave. "I ate her," he said. "I had to. She had your grandmother's eyes." He would never speak of this again. Your parents didn't believe you. Two years later, he died of a heart attack.
Your karate instructor has an "unofficial" requirement for black belt. You have to go to Jolly Roger's, the local biker bar, and pick a fight. When your pal Ron was up for promo- tion you went with him, even though you were just a green belt. The guy Ron messed with--skinny guy with all these tat- toos--rolled his eyes and sighed, but eventually went outside to fight. Out in the parking lot, he just reached over and pulled off Ron's nose. Just pinched it off like a piece of clay and threw it behind the dumpster, where you had to go and find it so the doctors could reattach it. Ron said the guy must have had a wire cutter in his hand or something, but you saw it. You were there and he did it with just his fingertips. Right then you decided that, compared to that guy with the tats, karate was bullshit. The weird thing was, you and Ron later realized you'd been at the wrong bar the whole time.
You were in a highway construction site, looking for a place to sleep, when you saw these two old geezers glaring at one another by a half-done overpass. They were talking some language that was mostly phlegm, but one said some- thing about "John Dillinger" and the other said something about "Genghis Khan." They coughed and blathered some more, then shook hands and said "winner take all." They opened these big black suitcases and pulled out robots. Weird robots. One was like an ape made out of sawed-apart pistols and shotguns, and the other was this bright silver alligator. When the robots started to fight, you wanted to get closer, and that's when the old guys noticed you. They just pointed and the robots took off after you. Lucky they'd already hurt each other, `cause you barely got over the fence before them. Alligator still took a piece of your heel.
You weren't quite old enough to go to the movies yourself, but you could sense that the local theater--the Platinum--was a magical place. You snuck in to see Jaws and E.T. and the other, weirder films they showed--The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari and The Deadcoat and Clash By Night, but the guy who ran it kept kicking you out. The Platinum eventually closed down when the multiplex moved in, but one night you saw people going there and you snuck in one last time. It was the people who'd worked there--the owner and the ticket girl and the guy from the popcorn counter--but they were all dressed like characters from Casablanca or Key Largo. A black-and-white movie was playing, one you'd never seen, and one by one they started stepping up and into the screen. As they did, they got big and flickery and entered the action, becoming the movie. When just the owner was left, you ran up and begged him to take you too, but he just snickered and said something about how, after him, "Cinnamon Nancy" was going to be dead. Then he stepped in and the lights went out. You thought it was all a dream until last week, when you caught the last half of that movie on late-night cable. It was titled Cold House With Mirrored Door.
You were ten when your parents burned. Your house burned, your two family cats burned, and you should have burned up too, except for the man with the mismatched eyes. He just walked in through the flames, looked at you, and said "Want to live?" You nodded and he pulled you out. Fire was all around, and smoke, and you know now that you should have died from carbon monoxide, smoke inhalation, or even heat prostration, but he took your hand and you just walked out. When you got outside he said, "I may have need of you some day. Do not marry or form any permanent attachments. Become a fire fighter. I'll come when you're twenty-six." The guys at the station are plan- ning a big party. You'll be twenty-six next Wednesday.