Underneath System, Insight Resolution System, Campaign Intro, Encounters, GM Forward.
Ghost Ship / Missing Isle
VENTURE
It's little more than about a hundred empty vacation homes, a handful of motels, and a beach. So remote even the brand-name chains don't set up shop here. The pothole-filled roads are empty by day, and strange things crawl out of them at night.
On the first night, the town will be speckled with electric comfort. The occasional house will be lit. You may even see a car driving around. One by one, night after night, the lights will go out, until all that remains is that of the Lighthouse in the distance, and the 8/11 convenience store.
Buildings Easy to See: Motel 7, 8/11 Convenience Store, Super Assisted Living, the Road Commission, the Lighthouse.
Motel 7
Day Shift (8am to 8pm): Brian Hefner present (until end of Day 0). Motel is unattended during the day after that.
Night Shift (8pm to 4am): Margaret O'Neil (until Day 4)
Two rows of motel rooms, like you'd see anywhere in the U.S. There's an empty swimming pool contained in a padlock-locked fence. There's a small building on the end of the row of rooms where the Front Desk is. It's always unlocked.
SAFETY: The numbered rooms of the Motel 7 are safe, inviolable by the strange forces about, provided the doors are locked and bolted. That is, until Day 9...
Rooms numbers range from 101 to 109 (nine rooms total) on the first row. 201 to 209 on the second, stacked on top of the first. Each Motel room has a programmable safe, two beds, air conditioning, electrical outlets, a television with cable, free wifi, windows facing the parking lot and 8/11 out front, and a single wooden chair. The motel rooms require a key to access, found in a drawer at the Front Desk. Each room has a lock, a bolt, and a chain bolt to lock it.
ENCOUNTERS: If the Investigators get rooms, having things check in to adjacent rooms can be fun. Alternatively, having Encounters merely lurking/stalking outside can be fun.
Front Desk: Building at the end of the motel, about 30ftx30ft big. Door is always unlocked. A security camera watches the door from the side.
On Day 0, Brain Hefner - an overweight sweaty man with a haircut reminiscent of the Gerber baby if he was 43 - is hastily packing all of his belongings behind the counter. He is visibly nervous, sweating up a storm, and is very bad at pretending everything is normal. Late in the day he'll take all of the cash out of the cash register and skip town.
He can answer basic questions about the Rumors, or any of the town's features. He can direct investigators to a brochure holder next to the door which contains advertisements for Townend Taxidermy, Smith's Fishing Supplies, the Sharps Point Lighthouse, Superior Assisted Living and the Roadhouse. He'll mention there's a continental breakfast at 6am.
Night Shift: Margaret O'Neil mans the lobby of the motel at night. Every so often she'll try and contact the motel's owner Brian Hefner, to no avail. She'll spend most of her nights browsing her phone using the motel's wifi, bored out of her mind. On Day 4 the A'aqur Cult will come and kidnap her for sacrifice, bringing her to the Wizard's Tower.
Rumors About...
Missing Hunters: "They never came by here, but maybe they went to Townend Taxidermy?"
Perfect Pasty: "The Roadhouse is a couple of miles from the Crossroads. Just make a right at it and keep going."
Ghost Ship: "Head to the beach, make a left. It's a couple of miles that way."
Orange Lake: "Sounds impossible. Never heard of it."
Paulding Light: "A local legend. Folks over at Superior Assisted Living have spotted it a few times."
8/11 Convenience Store
Green roof brick and mortar. Big glass windows full of advertisements for cheap beer, cigarettes, and lottery tickets. It's lit up like a beacon at night, until the final days when its guardian ascends. When the automatic door opens, a haze of weed smoke will come wafting out.
It is every American convenience store you've ever seen: junk food snacks, big fridges along the walls stocked with various corn syrup soft beverages, a slurpy machine, cigarettes, lottery tickets.
Until Davey ascends on Day 8, no monsters may enter here. It is a sanctuary, consecrated in Davey's stoner serendipity. Do not tell the players this.
Davey sits behind the cash register, his feet kicked up on the counter. He is and always will be doing some kind of hard drug when the players walk in. A Shaggy lookalike, he talks in stoner sentences, gives no fucks, acts like a dilapidated saint, and is a supreme being of peace and hospitality. You could punch him in the face and he wouldn't even get mad.
On the first day, he'll still expect people to pay for things they want to buy. On following days, he'll basically tell folks to help themselves to the 8/11's bounty. Unfortunately, it's all garbage food, with a 1 in 10 chance that any given meal won't count for sustenance.
Davey is operating on a much higher level than his stoner looks and personality let on. Whatever drug cocktail he's been on for the past few months has given him visions of the future. He will punctuate his sentences with: "...what with the end of the world coming up, and all." without even really knowing what he said. Question him on the things he say, and he'll be surprised and forgetful in a very stoner way.
Things Davey May Be Doing:
- Pouring slurpy directly into his mouth from the machine
- Spaced out with a needle in his arm
- Smoking a joint, pantless
- Sleeping on a bed of Reese's Peanut Butter cups
- Rearranging the plastic bottles in the fridges to spell out: "YOU HAVE 7 DAYS" in product labels (Only up until Day 3)
- Smoking from his crystal skull bong
- Scratching lottery tickets. Every one he scratches is a winner. He's amazed every time, and then tosses it away, forgetting it every time like a baby lacking object permanence.
- Making an army of origami cranes using cash from the cash register. Somehow the arrangement will mirror any current situations going on for the party.
- Staring at smoke like an augur of antiquity
- Eating a sandwich. He's not sure where it came from.
Day 8: Davey ascends to a higher plane, becoming smoke in his skull bong on the counter of the 8/11. If anybody smokes this stuff, they may ask the GM three questions which they must answer truthfully.
Mike's House
Mike is a veteran and a drug dealer. Two tours of Iraq, 'Semper Fi' arm tattoo, short receding black hair. His house looks empty: no lights on, windows boarded up, a "For Sale" sign out front. He's there, though. He's there and he's going insane.
Mike sells drugs. He's got all kinds: "Uppers, downers, weird stuff." He only takes cash (Resources) or potentially ammo. Pound on his door or snoop around his house long enough and he'll open a window with his AR-15 at the ready, shouting for motherfuckers to back the fuck off. Ease it over, though, and he'll sell you drugs.
Stimulants: for 2 hours, +1 bonus to physical checks and ignore fatigue penalties. When you come down deal Resolve damage.
Depressants: helps you sleep, guarantees strange dreams. Each use lowers Insight by 1.
Weird Stuff: each use increases Insight by 1 and temporarily lowers Instinct or Empathy by 1 for 6 hours.
Day 9: he simply disappears. Poof, gone. He leaves behind all the drugs you could take and more, just sitting on his kitchen counter.
Road Commission
(Insight < 10)
An empty building shaped like a cargo container. It's got a big big parking lot, where there sits an inoperative excavator and a steamroller. Neither looks like it's seen use recently. There's fresh concrete poured on the sidewalk between it and the road. No matter the day, it's always like it's been freshly poured.
Neither the steamroller nor the excavator have fuel. They'll need diesel to operate, found at the Gas Station or Marquette. The keys to the steamroller are in the building. The keys to the excavator are kept by an A'aqur Cultist in the Coal Factory. The building is locked. It's typical office building environ inside.
TRAP: Instinct check before approaching the building, to notice the freshly poured concrete. Failure means your shoes get slagged in liquid concrete. It'll harden in 8 hours, ruining your boots. Those who fail also come under the notice of The Devil, if they approach The Chinese Theater.
ENCOUNTER: Roll for a random Town Encounter if the building is infiltrated.
(Insight > 10)
Replaces the physical space of the Road Commission for anybody who has an Insight score of above 10. It will likely take several days before anyone reaches this Insight level.
A Chinese Theater, like the one in Hollywood. It lights up the night with great floodlights on red streamers outlining a pagoda of gold. It is a building of misappropriation, like it does not know or understand its own simulacrum.
It's eerily quiet. There's no-one about. Footsteps fall loud and heavy on the marble tiles. The box office is manned by a ghost, hidden behind a pane of dark glass. You can buy tickets there.
Adorning the walls of the lobby will be three movie posters in old Hollywood style. They have titles in big sloping vintage typeface. They will be random, every night.
It costs 2 Resources to buy a ticket. The box office takes cash or other physical riches. With a ticket, one person can see one movie. Seeing a movie grants knowledge of a magical Spell. From sitting down in the theater to the movie's conclusion, the watcher will have no memory of what happened on screen. The knowledge of the spell will nevertheless exist in their mind. They may use it freely.
What's Showing at the Chinese Theater Tonight (Roll 3d8, reroll repeats):
- The Banishment of the Northern Wind
- Winds of A'aqur
- Foresight
- Imprisonment of the Unicorn
- Poisoned Apple
- Banishment of the Troll
- The Body Electric
- Reveal
TRAP: When the newly appointed warlock emerges from the Chinese Theater with their new spell, they will be confronted by The Devil at the freshly poured concrete. A tall man, suit and top hat, gold-tipped cane and golden teeth. He will ask the spell-knower to finalize their compact by signing their name in the concrete. Conjure up whatever folksy, slick, or slimy devil you'd like to portray. Have a conversation.
If They Sign, Truthfully: Whatever parts of their name they sign with, that part of their name is lost. Erase whatever parts of the name were written in the concrete from their character sheet. The Devil congratulates them on their new stardom.
They try to worm their way out of it: For every letter in their name, roll 1d10. On a '6', the investigator takes 1 Damage of their choice. The Devil tutt-tutts that they couldn't come to an arrangement.
This is cool as hell and I'm excited to see where it goes. One note, there's a sentence fragment:
ReplyDelete> Night Shift: Margaret O'Neil mans the lobby of the motel at night. Every so often she'll try and contact the motel's owner Brian Hefner, to no avail. She'll
Ah, great catch! I knew I'd forgotten something. Thank you!
Delete