Underneath System, Insight Resolution System, Campaign Intro, Encounters, GM Forward.
Ghost Ship / Missing Isle
The Last Radioshack
The last Radioshack store closed in April of 2025. Somehow, this one didn't get the memo. It looks exactly how you'd remember it from the outside, if you'd ever been to one, like it'd been plucked out of time. The building is an island, isolated from everything around it with empty parking lots. There's two entrances: one front one back. The windows are covered in paper. Black bulb cameras overlook every side. One advertisement in the front remains:
"CAR BATTERIES $79.99. BUY ONE GET ONE FREE!"
Katie O'Neil, sister to Margaret (Motel 8 Night), is the sole employee. She has made this place into a fortress. With dripping paranoia she watches the building exterior through a closed-loop surveillance system, fearing the things that now roam the town. She has all of the electronics you could ever need and five tasers taped to a stick.
Portable radios are duct-taped next to the front and rear doors. Katie will use those to communicate with anybody on the outside. She will not trust them. If they can provide some testimony to the strange electrical occurrences, she might trust them enough to let them inside.
DAY 6: The Electric Cult, if it hasn't been dealt with, will assault the Radioshack during the night and kidnap Katie, bringing her back to The Asylum to become one with the Body Electric. She will be replaced with Crawling Lightning that errantly patrols the store exterior.
Power Substation
Josh McConnor, Electrician, present 10am-5pm Daily
Lies next to Superior Assisted Living. A handful of large transformers and a small office containing power flow control for Venture, kept inside of a chain link fence with a locked gate. Parked nearby in the Superior Assisted Living parking lot is a cop car, says: "Marquette County Sheriff - Dial 811"
Power lines go between the Substation and Superior Assisted Living, then to both the town of Venture, and to long titanic power lines going west through the woods.
BODY/EMPATHY: Ask for something strange, and you can sense the faint sound of voices in the wires. The souls of the body electric try to cry out but cannot be clearly heard.
DAY: During the day, the electrician Josh McConnor is doing work here. He works from 10am to 5pm, claiming to be "doing some calibration on the transformers". He is a secret member of the Electric Cult. What he's really doing is monitoring the progress of The Body Electric and all the souls trapped within it.
Josh McConnor has been to the Chinese Theater and knows a spell: Lightning Bolt. He can cast it exactly once at the cost of burning his eyes out, rendering him blind. It deals 3 Body damage to one target.
TRAP: The air around the gate is electric - the fence is electrified. There are no warning signs, save for your hair standing around it, and the feeling of potential in the air. Touching it without insulation will cause 1d2 Body damage, and has a 1 in 3 chance of alerting Officer Ronnie Craig in the parking lot nearby.
Inside the fence is a small office for Power Flow Control. It has an old 90's style computer and spare key to the lock on the gate. Boot it up and it'll give a power usage readout for various places around Venture.
Acronym Meanings:
WDS = Woods ; VEN = Venture ; DVT = DeVart
____ = Data erased (The Asylum) ; TWNT = Townend Taxidermy ; SFS_ = Smith's Fishing Supplies
ECCM = Eccon Gas Station ; RDHS = Roadhouse ; MTL7 = Motel 7
811_ = 8/11 Convenience Store ; LGHT = Sharps Point Lighthouse ; RADI = Last Radioshack
SAL_ = Superior Assisted Living ; ROAD = Road Commission ; DVPD = DeVart Police Department
COAL = Coal Plant ; ____ = Wizard Tower ; DVES = DeVart Estate
INTERACTION: From this substation any Venture or Woods location can have its power cut off. DeVart locations are locked from this terminal, requiring instead access at the "COAL" location.
- If the Lighthouse is cut off and it's nighttime, it will turn back on and sweep its foul light on the Investigators at the terminal.
- If the Asylum (____) or Superior Assisted Living (SAL_) locations are cut off, Officer Ronnie Craig and the rest of the Electric Cult will come to this location to hunt you down.
- If the Last Radioshack (RADI) is cut off, Katie O'Neil will come to investigate.
- For the rest of the occupied locations, its occupants will simply be miffed.
Superior Assisted Living
BUILDING FROM A DISTANCE:
A sad grey structure. Big bold letters: “Superior Assisted Living” above a picture of Lake Superior. Big blank concrete walls, gravel perimeter. Giant power line towers branch the Substation, Assisted Living, and the Woods.
ELECTRIC CULT ADVERSARY ROSTER:
All Staff working at the facility are secretly a part of the Electric Cult.
Rhea Hackett is the de facto leader of this cell of the Electric Cult. Everyone else follows her orders. Lisa and Sarah each constitute a 1 HD foe. Rhea, Josh, and Ronnie are each 2 HD. If shit goes down, Ronnie will enter through the main entrance with his gun and/or taser ready. Josh will take at least 10 minutes to realize and run over.
FRONT DESK
Two automatic sliding doors. One of them doesn’t open.
Inside: ugly puke green floral wallpaper, peeling at the seams. Coarse red carpet. At the front desk sits the secretary Lisa Manger. Won’t pay attention to anyone coming in. Endlessly plays Solitaire on her computer, even when talking to people. Even when they point it out to her.
She has a taser in her desk.
Area to the left is marked “Staff Only”, and locked from this side. Key to it in the desk.
TV
Hallway is dark, cold, and empty. Solitary flickering light bulbs barely illuminate. All the adjoining patient rooms are dark and empty, their nametags removed.
Any particular room has a 2 in 6 chance of being locked.
The first relaxation area has a few tattered couches and an old tube TV with VCR. An old man, Mr. Anderson, sits watching static. His eyes reflect the grainy reality.
Successfully fiddling with the TV can turn it off, but every channel plays static. The VCR tape currently playing plays static.
Insight Threshold > 5: Faces in the static. Horrible, pained faces.
Empathy check might get Mr. Anderson to wordlessly whisper for help just once.
GM Note: Practice and make the static sound audibly. Use it strategically for spooky effect among any electrical equipment. This is the effect of The Electric God, of the people trapped in the wires sacrificed by the Electric Cult. Make it a recurrent spook.
Sarah Goodman, a 15 year old “nurse” (she is not even close to one) will be nearby cleaning patient rooms. She’ll come over if due time is spent here. She thinks she’s a nurse because she works here, and has no idea that real nurses are certified and take years of training. She "takes care" of the handful of patients left. To her that means simply doing what Rhea tells her to.
BLANK WALL
An old woman, Mrs. O’Neil (Katie and Margaret's mother), stands right next to a blank concrete wall, staring at it unmovingly. She talks and mutters to herself, having a conversation with "the people in her teeth". Interact with her after this explanation and she’ll break down into tears.
3a. Occupied Patient Room
The only occupied patient room - an old man hooked up to half a dozen machines: heart monitors, respirators, dialysis, I.V. drips. More tube than man. His skin is practically grey. The heartbeat monitor is too slow.
This man is dead. Yet, the heartbeat monitor continues to go. Static sounds in the background.
Fiddle with anything, or even just coincidentally, and the heartbeat monitor will flatline.
After the flatline, you'll see the Paulding Light out along the power lines behind Superior Assisted Living - it races away from this facility, down those power lines in the woods.
Then, the sound of heels clacking on the floor from the Staff Area - Rhea Hackett. If she sees what might appear like interference she’ll call Ronnie Craig, the Electric Cult’s secret cop, to come arrest. If the Investigators go quietly, Ronnie will take them to the Asylum and lock them up in a cell, to sacrifice them one by one.
STAFF AREA
Rhea Hackett sits here during work hours, filling out paperwork related to the remaining patients: Mr. Anderson (TV), Mrs. O’Neil (Blank Wall), and Mr. Konway (Patient Room). Documents provide cover story for their symptoms.
Area contains numerous filing cabinets and a desktop computer. They will be unlocked if Rhea is present, locked otherwise. Contains patient data going back a decade.
Patient Data: 4 Hours to look over. Information on successful Resolve check.
In early 2022, 98% of the patient population over a period of six months. Despite this the facility continued to operate. Rhea Hackett (the current head nurse) is the only patient of this period to survive it.
There are inconsistencies with treatment and diagnosis of symptoms. Doctor visits are rare. (Once every three years)
Some of the files are old, very old. Over a century old. They’re dated to the 1890’s, marked “Venture Institution for the Criminally Insane.”
BARREN COURTYARD
A gravel, unappealing courtyard bridging the interior of the complex. Windows in Staff Area and all adjoining patient rooms see into it. Maybe there’s a dead bird. Windows will have a 3 in 6 chance of being locked. Locked windows require a Body check to open.
St. Droggo's Catholic Church
Open on Sunday (Day 5, 7am)
A tiny little chapel on the outskirts of town. It is locked until Sunday (Day 5). Contains a few pews, an altar, a depiction of Jesus Christ on the cross, and a small closet that contains some clean cloths for the altar and spare curtains. The mini-steeple has a bell which can be rung by hand.
Alexander Yung arrives in his little white volkswagon on Sunday morning. He is a kindly and generous middle-aged man, humble and cautious. He has come here every Sunday for the last 12 years. The priest comes by once a month - he was supposed to come today but was "feeling ill". Alexander will have a difficult time believing anything extraordinary or seemingly supernatural that you tell him.
He brings with him a carboy full of excellent coffee, some bread and wine for communion, and a couple of mugs. He is not a priest. He is an "Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion", which means he can do communion, but not hear confession or the like.
He'll offer Communion. It won't do anything extraordinary.
He'll also offer some coffee he made at home. This coffee heals 1 point of damage, and additionally grants 1 point of Resolve. It's some damn extraordinary coffee.
The Church is a safe location until Day 9.
DAY 6: Overnight, Alexander gets thirsty and drinks some of the tap water from a spigot just outside. In the dark, he does not see the color. Drinking the orange tainted water, he transforms into a horrible mutated fleshy creature. Terrified by his new appearance, he hides in the closet of the Church for the rest of the campaign unless coaxed out. He retains his mind and his sanity, and can continue to be helpful if he can be convinced that he's not a harm to anyone else.
Secret: Alexander Yung qualifies as a priest for the purposes of the Banishment of the Northern Wind, despite not officially being an ordained priest, even while in his grotesque form. It will take mighty convincing for him to partake in such an obviously 'satanic' ritual.
The Beach
Sandy, occasionally littered. The Lighthouse can be seen off to the east. Go far enough west and the Shipwreck can be seen. At night, the Lighthouse turns on. Watch it for some time, and you'll get the sense that something is off about it:
Bad Feelings About the Sharps Point Lighthouse:
- the rotation timing is irregular. Sometimes it seems to stop, or stutter, or swing lower than it should be able to go.
- the color is too white or too dark, like it's unnatural somehow.
- the feeling like being a deer in the headlights as you're looking at it
- the sense that it's searching for something...
There is a 1 in 3 chance every time the Beach in Venture is crossed at night for the Lighthouse to try and shine its horrible light on the investigators.
The Lighthouse is Onto You: (Pick 1)
- The rotation slowly begins to speed up, until it's going at a frantic pace. Then it'll slow down until it stops. Then the beam of light will duck down and start sweeping across the water, then the beach. It seems to sweep and grasp like a reaching leech.
- The light turns red, and distant cries and screams can be heard like the pit of hell has opened from the light's portal.
- Every time you blink the Lighthouse seems larger. By the tenth blink it's looming over you, bending like a tree in the wind. You can see the burning light at its helm, and its terrible promise.
One or two of the party must make an Instinct check or get whisked off to Lost in Time and Space as the Lighthouse shines it light upon them like the Eye of Sauron, and they simply disappear as the light crosses over them.
Petosky Stones: (Needed for the Banishment of the Northern Wind) When searching for Petosky Stones here, every person may make an Instinct Check at -1 every 3 hours to find 1d6 of them. The area immediately next to Venture is more picked clean than further down the beach.
If rolling for Random Encounters, roll on the Beach table.
I might steal this to run once there's more of it. This is very cool! Love the very surreal approach to the magic of it, where instead of set gribbly monsters and spells, there's almost this feeling of the world breaking down into metaphor and madness. Good stuff!
ReplyDeleteI am so excited every week for more Everlasting Summer. November, to me, is more engaging fiction, but Everlasting Summer? This, this I think I might actually run!
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