Monthly archives: October 2020

Wereboar

None of us believed the massive man, when he warned us not to try hunting for the boar. Sure, we heard about the massive feral pig, which locals were calling Porkus Magnus. But we were well armed and had done this many times before. We had a half dozen good dogs too. We’d driven six hours to get here, and weren’t leaving without giving it a go. The man, who lived in a remote homestead a few miles north, told us that if we’d be sorry if we tired, and someone might get hurt. The dogs hated him, barking wildly at him, but he just sighed calmly as he delivered his warning. We all had a good laugh after he left, but no one is laughing now.  

Wereboar, by Brad Hicks
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Burning Revenant

The core of these creatures, all forms of Revenant, in fact, are outsider spirits of hate and vengeance which were never human, that have been attracted to individuals who’ve died due to betrayal. These outsider spirits bond with the dying person to reanimate the body, reanimating it for the purposes of enacting vengeance. This vengeance could be against a specific individual, an organization, a family or community, or even society as a whole. 

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The Night Mother’s Moon

Introduction

Life on the streets is hard. The Homeless are invisible. New York City has almost one hundred thousand homeless. Each night they sleep in the city’s parks and subway system, invisible to the population who passes them every day. What better victims could one ask for?

This scenario is designed for 2–4 investigators and can be completed in one to two evenings of play, depending on the length of your sessions. In it, the players take on the roles of New York city’s street homeless as they come together to solve the mystery of something that is stalking and killing the members of their community.

When a relative newcomer to the streets turns up dead in a dumpster, her death is chalked up to just another example of street violence. The local homeless know better. Something is stalking them. Something no one has an explanation for. With nowhere else to turn, they must band together and save themselves before they become just another statistic.

Players will take on the role of local homeless as they attempt to find out what killed Claire and stop it from killing again.

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Yara-ma-yha-who

According to Aboriginal folklore, the Yara-ma-yha-who are three to four feet tall and resemble a red-skinned, bipedal frog. Their fingertips and toes are described as having “octopus-like” suckers, while their face is dominated by a wide, toothless, frog-like mouth, large enough to engulf a person.

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Angel of Pestilence

The patient was gasping for breath, desperately clinging to life as we rushed the only remaining ventilator to his bedside. As we struggled to flip her over and intubate them, they began hallucinating, babbling on about the monster hovering above them, eating their soul.
“Can’t you see it!  Don’t you see it?!” she screamed.   
Once the tube was inserted, and we stabilized her breathing, she stopped struggling as much.  The lack of oxygen to her brain had to have caused a terrifying hallucination. Strange that the last five patients who died claimed to have seen something similar before they died.  The nurse held her hand, and told her she’d be alright now.  We all knew that her chances were slim, 1 in 3  at best..

These strange creatures roam the places between dimensions, invisible and incorporeal to beings grounding in a single reality most of the time. They are parasites, feeding on the vapors emitted by slowly dying beings and their radiating pulses of fear and dread. Some say they are a servitor race of the Great Old One Aboth, Source of Uncleanliness, but what their true relationship is to that entity, if anything, remains a mystery. 

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Time-Tangled

There was this funny legend that Old Lady Margaret still lives in Margaret Mansion. Silly, isn’t it? Margaret Mansion is called so because it was built by a Lady Margaret two centuries ago! But we were bored so we went to check it out.

What we met there might have been Old Lady Margaret. A skeleton laying on the dining room floor. It might have been dead for two centuries—but it was alive! As we argued what to do about it, lots of women—Ladies Margaret?—appeared around the corpse. Some were quite young, some terribly old, some probably dead. I screamed and ran. The others…I don’t know, I was too frightened to look back. Will you help me find them?

When you look at time from a higher dimension, human life really is a line. Creating a Time-Frozen loops a tiny part of that line into a never-ending circle, but from the point of view of Yog-Sothoth and other forces invoked to create this being, the potential remaining part of the line already exists. Sometimes those forces make a separate entity out of this loose threada Time-Tangled.

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Time-Frozen

If ever I should to that moment say –
“So beautiful thou art, a little longer stay!”
Then I’ll care not who me with chains may bind;
Nor if I and my little all to ruin be consign’d;
Then let the church-bell toll my funeral knell!

J. W. Goethe, Faust, English by John Wynniatt Grant

Human life goes in a line from birth to death but changing this trajectory is no problem for cosmic powers. Spells invoking the power of Yog-Sothoth to change the course of one’s life were known throughout history and used for many purposes.

One of the most radical effects such spells can cause is the creation of a Time-Frozen. They’re a person trapped in a personal time loop, never aging and constantly reliving one brief moment while the rest of the world moves forward. Some people use this spell on themselves to preserve a moment of perfect fulfilment; others, to escape a terminal disease or some other looming misfortune. Others yet are cursed by someone else.

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The Outsider Within – the Shoggoth Under the Skin

Master adapters, not every shoggoth attacks to kill. Very rarely, a shoggoth incapacitates a victim, then enters its new host through the mouth, nose, and other orifices. Why the shoggoth does this is unknown. Perhaps it is to explore beyond its accustomed haunts with a degree of anonymity. Whatever the reason, the shoggoth enters the body, seeping into the interstices between the host’s own internal matter, down to the cellular level. Upon coming back to its senses, the host retains its general health, going about its normal business, often unaware that its body has become home to a new tenant. For its part, the shoggoth acclimates to its new environs, absorbing awareness of its host’s bodily and cognitive functions, studying everything the host sees, hears, senses, and does. With its impressive imitative abilities, the shoggoth can soon recreate with near perfection just about any sound that has been heard by the host body. 

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The Dreaming Blanket

We weren’t going to get the tire fixed before the next day, but this nice, elderly couple took us in. Name of Jeremy and Rebecca if I remember right.

When I got out of a much-needed hot shower, Rebecca greeted me with a quilt and a pillow. I wrapped myself up on the couch, and lay my head on the pillow. The quilt wasn’t very colorful, like many are, just a checkerboard of pink and grey, but it was warm and comfortable. I felt like I just gave myself to it.

I found myself back where I came up, I know I was thirteen, because my ma’s funeral had just been a week ago. As usual, I was runnin’ from my pa, not that he ever deserved to be called that. As always, he was shit-faced drunk.

I was high tailin’ for the woods, I could sometimes lose him in there. All of sudden, right at the wood line, there was this huge tree stump I’d never seen before. It must have been three feet across.

Just like that, the thing melted into slime, black with streaks of dark green, and rose up way over my head. A huge mouth split side to side, drooling more of that gunk, and a huge eye opened up right above that.

I panicked. I turned back. There, right up close to me, was that mean, ol’ bastard. He was dead, but standing, with his skin all melting. Flies were swarming his exposed muscles, and maggots were eatin’ his eyes.

‘Bout three in the morning, I woke up screaming. 

The old couple’s bedroom door opened, and Jeremy walked out, real casual. He asked if I was okay, and offered me a glass of water.

Still, just before that, I swear I thought I heard the two of them laughing, real soft.

–Lt. Colonel Bennet Blake, USAF (RET.), drunk, at a bar in Waxahachie, Texas.
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Halloween in the Time of Covid-19

Introduction

Halloween 2020 was to be the best Halloween in the last few decades. October of 2020 had five Fridays and five Saturdays! Halloween itself fell on a Saturday, and with a full moon no less! That hasn’t happened since 1944! On top of all that, Halloween was also daylight savings, giving the holiday an extra hour of night! Yes, Halloween 2020 was going to be the best Halloween of all of our lives.

It was…until the Global Pandemic of 2020 shut large public gatherings down. In 2020, things like attending costume parties at bars or clubs, going to the movies to watch the latest horror movie, and trick or treating were dangerous activities. Many industries which relied on the holiday were hard hit, but none worse than the Haunts.

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