Something Wicked This Way Comes (textbox)
Move the action forward to the dress rehearsal. Fill them in on what’s been going on in the meantime -- any or all of the odd things below can be discovered by the PCs observing, snooping around, or talking to other characters who’ve stumbled over them:

• The play’s script text itself is strange: identical mass-market copies of The Tempest, with multiple redactions and new typed pages interpolated. A half-dozen scenes are changed (some quite radically), and there are three completely new scenes -- one of which is very creepy, and contains some very striking parallels to the history of one of the PCs. (A Good +3 Scholarship roll will identify some of these as from alternate versions of the play; a Great +4 Lore roll will imply that at least one of the new scenes is some form of Thaumaturgy.)
  
• Prospero has become very directorial and precise: every word must be said thus, in this specific place, and every movement must be just so. It’s kinda strange, especially given the way he’s directed productions in the past. (He’s certainly distracted, concentrating only on the play/ritual.)
  
• The "special effects" are certainly special. They seem to come out of nowhere, accompanied by the scents of warm rain and wildflowers (but perceptive PCs might notice that Ariel is always around when they happen).
  
• Parts of the set are decidedly odd, with strange angles, runic carvings, and deformed protrusions.
  
• Some but not all flats and scrims have weird symbols painted on their backs.
  
• Each corner of the building has something odd within it -- a mirror, a windchime, a prism, a brass statue, a spherical bottle full of blue fluid, a silver bell, etc.
  
• Cellphone reception starts getting really spotty in the theater, watch and flashlight batteries drain quickly, light bulbs regularly blow out, and other minor hexing (YS228) effects.
  
• Unsettling phenomena abound: hearing sibilant whispers and hisses in the dark (Good +3 Alertness check to make out that it is "Sycorax"), feeling a sense of dread when working in "hell" (the area directly beneath the stage), and seeing a vague shape standing in the balcony, watching intently.
  
• Two weeks into rehearsals, three dozen dead rats are found clinging to the lighting rig.
  
• At least one mundane crewmember has fallen desperately ill and withdrawn from the production (mystical abilities awakening, subtly struck down by the gathering entropomantic energies, or just mononucleosis?).