Thursday, March 31, 2011

Scenario Eleven

The Whispering Mouths

Rain pattered down on the library’s windows.  Mary’s face pressed against her palm, her eyes closed, her head throbbing from the task of translating the ancient tome on her desk.  Instead of deciphering the nearly forgotten language, she found herself recalling the desperation of…  How long ago was it?  It seemed like the day before.

The Dark Young skittered, slithered, and swarmed around them, rending and gorging in sprays of blood, bone, and inner organs.  Hecate’s power had grown so immense as had her offspring.  She bred with the Ancient One that had become her puppet vessel.  Her cultists shrieked with wild adulation, the blood of their victims, the blood of each other, smeared on their faces…  They copulated with her orgiastic children even as they, still living, were dismembered and devoured by them.  The memories— writhing in unholy frenzy as the tentacles enveloped and consumed them— haunted her eyes.

Had the Key itself not poured foreign knowledge into her mind, forcing her lips to move against her will, surely they would have all been doomed.  Her spell of banishment broke the link leashing Shub Niggurath to Hecate.  Hers indeed?  Torn asunder, the two demons began to battle between each other… For dominance, for vengeance, for?  Then they vanished, and peace descended on Arkham again.

The turmoil ceased.  Again.  For now.  Mary felt as if she had just been startled out of a nightmare.  Her head lurched up, had she been asleep?  Her memories had the vividness of a dream.  She looked around the room for answers, but all was silent.  Her memories and confusion still tormented her.  She knew it was no dream.  No ending.

A month of quiet had passed.  Then shadow garbed monsters in the shape of men stalked the town.  They were human once, but now…  Something else.  One of Tony’s spies told him that he’d seen someone in a strange mask bringing a book to Sadie’s place.  No one had seen her since, but ever since then, that’s where the monsters came and went.  Was she a prisoner?  Or something worse?

Mary listened to the rain and watched it oozing down the glass.  The tears of God? She nervously fingered her crucifix and tried to calm her suddenly agonized breathing.

 Her breathing?  Not hers alone.  It grew louder and louder.  It came from her book.  It came from all the books.  A lusty and sinister rasping.

“Mary,” it whispered with endless voices, “I am the answer to your prayers.”

It was not God, no more than the voice that spoke to poor deluded Zoey was.  Mary sprang from her seat to run, but she could not flee.

A hard yellow hand had reached out from the book and gripped her wrist with an unyielding grasp.  She struggled to tear herself away, but the book was too heavy from the bloated thing dwelling within it.

She felt the hand…  Licking her.  Gently nibbling, a passionate lover.  Pain!  The tips of rows of teeth pressed deep into her flesh.  Endless rows of stabbing pins.  The pain.  She screamed for help, but no one could hear.  The whispers chuckled at her futile cry.  The Whispers promised pleasures of the flesh, far greater than a non-existent Heaven, they spoke of her as having a wasted cloistered life, devoid of sensuality, devoid of significance, they promised a child for her blighted womb.  They called her a feast for their eyes, though they had none.  They pleaded, cajoled, and tore through her flesh as she denied them again and again.

Why did the Key not save her?  Pull her forth?  Send her elsewhere?  O, send her somewhere safe!  God’s judgment for questioning Him?  Job had wondered at His justice as well!  Yet…

“Oh God!  Oh God!”

“Is that pain or pleasure?  I can not tell,” said the mouth in the hand, tonguing around her meat, to talk in muffled tones, as its nails and teeth bit deep into her yet again.  Mary did not scream again.  Her voice began chanting.  The Key controlled her.  The hand released, the book slammed shut, the library was silent.

Mary fell to her knees in her pooling blood, weeping in pain and prayer.  She collapsed as a librarian entered the room shouting for help.

The next thing Mary knew, she was being carried to the hospital, burning with fevered thoughts.  Was God punishing her for violating His law with her own sorceries?  But…  She was a nun, not a witch, was she not?   A judgmental hypocrite perhaps...  Is this the lesson God wishes to teach?  The darkness of unconsciousness tore her from her speculations.

Custom components can be found here:
http://s622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader/Additional%20Components%20for%20the%20Fan%20Creation%20League/

Ancient One: Y’golonac
Herald: The Sheldon Gang
Required Investigators: Sister Mary

Special Rules:


Gangster tokens are not drawn for being in stable locations during the first upkeep.


All stable locations except Ye Olde Magick Shoppe and Arkham Asylum are corrupted.  Whenever the terror level rises, draw two mythos cards and corrupt any locations shown on them; The Science Building can never be corrupted, but its special ability comes with the additional cost of two sanity.

Cultists are immune to handcuffs.


Investigators driven insane or knocked unconscious must lose half their clues in addition to normal penalties.



Thursday, March 17, 2011

Scenario Ten

Seeds of Corruption



“Mary, Mary!  Believe me, you have to believe me!  We need to stop them, now!   Now now now!  They want to wake the Thing in Dunwich!”

            The nun hissed spitefully.  “You saw it Marie?  You saw it with your witch-spawn vision?  Your witch blood?  Devil blood?  You think that’s a gift of God?  I think it’s a gift of Satan!  I think you’re just another witch watching for Hecate!”

            “Not true!  Not true!  I swear by my soul it’s not true!  I’ve never lied to any of you.  I knew you’d do this if I told the truth, but I told it anyway.  You believe everything you read in your book.  Like there’s only one kind of witch.  Like there’s only one kind of anything!  I swear, I want to save our world, just like everyone else here!  I’m not risking my life for anything else...”

            Disgusted and distrusting, Mary spat and stalked out of the room. 
The others seemed to agree.  Marie felt hostile stares all around her.  But they had listened.  Hadn’t they? And that was the important part.  Joe, Joe could do it.  Joe could go and stop them.  He…  he had to.

***

            The nun seethed in feverish rage.  The obscenity…  The filth.  The creature which claimed to be a God, a pornographic monstrosity, trading unspeakable sex for death and the chance (as if it were a gift!) to be mother or father to an abomination.

And Marie.  Marie was a witch.  She…  Was.  The Bible said to slay them, but…  But…  Didn’t Saul deal with the witch of Endor?  And…  Her protests sounded sincere.  But couldn’t the Devil lie with the voice of an angel?  Could she really not understand that she was in the thrall of Satan?  Could she still be saved? 

Mary steeled her heart and prayed, readying to exterminate all of Arkham’s abominations.  This time the woods would be cleansed of the foul demon worshipping sinners.  Perhaps God would lift the curse from this town after she let loose His wrath.  How many more trials could He send at them?  For what sin did they atone?

She felt…  Strange…  As if the Witch’s soul was clutching at her heart again.  This fury…  It could not be hers, could it?  She had worked so hard to purge herself of anger.  A deadly sin…  She prayed to God for grace, that the sin may not be rooted deep in her heart, that she might be forgiven, that it might be uprooted.  She might have to ask Marie for forgiveness as well.  But…  She felt anger rising again.  Something was wrong.  Something was corrupting her spirit again.  She felt it.  She knew it.  She prayed for strength against the temptations of Satan.  Could it be that to hate even Satan was a sin and a pathway to Hell?  But, was not God a God of wrath as well as love?



Custom components can be found here:
http://s622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader/


Ancient One: Shub Niggurath
Herald: The modified Black Goat of the Woods in the custom components album.
Required Investigators: Sister Mary, Marie Lambeau

Special Rules:

Start of Game: Investigators may begin the game at the Train Station instead of their normal locations.  Dark Young can not move during the first Mythos phase.  Regardless of the gate on the first Mythos card, it opens at Whatley Farm, and instead of the normal monsters that would emerge from it, place three crescent Cultists; this gate can never be closed or sealed.

Non-Dark Druid Cultists are now Dark Young, not Cultists.  They become exact copies of Dark Young except for retaining their movement symbols and Awareness. 

When the Doom track reaches six, place Dark Druid at the Woods.  It is an Endless Spawn monster and can not be removed from the board or taken as a trophy.  If it is defeated by a combat check, return it to the Woods.

Shub Niggurath gains magical resistance.

Clarifications:  

Always designate a location for monsters to place before they would go to the outskirts (if no gate is shown), if it is a Dark Young, place them there instead.  If a gate was shown, place them there.  Don’t take three corruptions for defeating Dark Young.



Thursday, March 10, 2011

Scenario Nine

Worms Rising

            “Isabelle!  Oh God, Isabelle!”  Jenny wept.  Joe held her and tried to comfort her.  A cold comfort.  The Rat-things had gotten her.  Oh God…  They giggled as they gnawed, as she shrieked.  And she saw!  She saw from the cage....  Her sister dying again.  World after world.  Was there no respite?  How could the nun see such things and not doubt her faith?  Was she mad?  A fool?  A hypocrite?  What kind of God would allow such abominations to wreak such destruction?  The father of the things giggled as it died.  Far more sinister than that serpentine demon of ice.  Its perverse delight in malice chilled her bones though the world was finally warm again.  The witch…  Hecate.  Hecate was responsible for this.  She would have revenge.  Joe stroked her hair softly, but the hate did not leave her.  Her tears had dried as her heart burned with the warmth of rage.  And then the earth shook.

            Fire blazed in the streets.  Geysers of lava burnt rocket like through the sky.  Buildings began to burst into flame.  The ground shrieked and a deep fissure ran through the street, separating her and Joe.  A Cthonian like none she had ever seen seemed to grow into the sky.  She shouted to Joe to get his weapons— they’d need them— that they’d meet up later.  She half-heartedly prayed she was right.  Where God, where was the respite?

***

            Joe streaked to the station, wondering when he would find out the meaning of the strange tasks Carl Stanford was putting him to.  It was good money though.  Charlie told him he should stop.  But it was very good money.  The kind you don’t turn down.  It was definitely fishy though.  And Roland had told him some strange stories about fish.  Then there’s Tony, he’s also doing things for mysterious strangers.  Corpse collectors…  There was definitely another something going on in Arkham, but there wasn’t time to find out what. Not with the noises under his feet.  Not yet. 

The cases still weren’t coming together…  And something was following him beneath the ground, he was sure of it.  He needed to get back to the station.  What would it take to take out that thing looming over the town like a tower?  He hadn’t a clue, but he would.  He always got the answers.  Because he was Joe Diamond, he grinned, and he was that damn good.  And even if he wasn’t, he was sure he could find some dynamite somewhere.  The noises under his feet grew louder.  He ran faster.



Custom components can be found here:
http://s622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader/


Ancient One: Shudde M’ell
Herald: The Great Dark Worm
Required Investigators: Jenny Barnes, Joe Diamond

Special Rules:


Start of Game: Investigators must discard Cthonian and Lloigor trophies.  Place a crescent Cultist at Merchant District, Rivertown, Miskatonic University, and French Hill streets.  The fissure they emerged from prevents movement between Merchant District and Rivertown, or Miskatonic University and French Hill streets. Monsters do not move during the first mythos phase.

Investigators with injuries can not retire.

When Cthonians and Lloigors move, a roll of 5-6 causes each investigator in Arkham to roll a die before taking damage, investigators who roll a failure are reduced to zero stamina instead and draw an extra injury in addition to normal penalties for being knocked unconscious.

Cultists have Weapons Immunity, and Magical Resistance; Chthonians have Physical and Magical Resistance; Lloigors have +1 toughness.  They are endless Spawn monsters; move them from the Outskirts to The Black Cave instead.


Shudde M’ell has Weapon Immunity instead of Physical and Magical Resistance.

Clarification: Cthonians and Lloigors appear from failed checks after all aspects of the encounter or combat are resolved, even at locations investigators are relocated to e.g. Lost in Time and Space.