Creepy...

I enjoy creeping my players out with little details that have no obvious meaning. For example, while in a town where a murderer was causing a stir they were asked to help with the investigation. At each crime scene they examined with a body they noticed a small black beetle scurrying away. They could never catch the beetle as is always appeared out of the corner of the eye and was gone in a few seconds.

I really got them when they went back to thier room at the in and saw a small black beetle scurrying away from thier room....

Like everybody else, I love to tell game stories.

Our party was investigating an ancient ruined fortress/temple. We'd already been creeped out by a mural or relief on the wall depicting the ancient "evil gods" in battle with all sorts of weird creatures. Then we walked into a room where the floor was covered in blood. Not "The Shining" tidal waves of blood, but enough that it made sticky squishy noises underfoot. Mind you, this place had apparently been abandoned for centuries. There were several torture devices in the room. In a sort of giant thumbscrew we found an imp-like creature. It appeared to be gleefully torturing itself. It gave all the players the heebie-jeebies when the GM told us the imp crawled back into its device and starting turning the screws again after we found it.

In another campaign the party members had found a "black diamond" that radiated evil. One of the PCs had gone over to the dark side and inserted a shard of the gem in his body, giving him new powers (the GM was inspired by the Shikon jewel from the anime "Inu-Yasha"). One day as we were traveling along a flying centipede-like monster with a humanoid torso and head swooped down on us and started attacking the guy who had the shard. She managed to take him down to 0 HP. An NPC ran up and poured a healing potion on him (in our campaigns you don't have to drink them) while the centipede-monster was still holding him. Then the monster backed off, taking the PC with her, and started using her dagger-like limbs to literally dissect him while we watched. I was impressed that the GM was willing to go that far, since he usually doesn't like anything too grim or graphic.

The RuneQuest setting has plenty of creepiness, especially with its chaos gods and disease-spreading broos that will mate with anything. In one session our RQ party went to an island that was supposedly infected with Chaos. I don't know why, but I think we all found it intensely creepy when the GM described all the giant insects buzzing around, especially when we saw a huge mosquito go buzzing past with some other giant bug in its clutches. I guess bugs are just innately creepy to most people.

I just bought Occult Lore a few days ago and one of the classes is very creepy- the gleaner. Very similar to the rpg Sorcerer, the gleaner has little magic of his own and must collect the reminants of memories that are left when a soul leaves a body. Using the reminants in 3 forms (spirit stone, reliquary and charm focus), they take these fragments of memories and cause selected ones to grow in power (which is why the chapter is called spirit cultivation) and become something like a spirit which then can evolve beyond that (possibly into demigods with time).

I see orders where they collect the fragments of the best (to cultivate) and worst (to imprison) of society. Society would be lead by the living and spirits of good people long dead. I like the idea a lot more than the orbs in Seven Civilizations as good people can remain good in deed.

A varient of the above would have several gleaners work together and kill each other, collect the memories, raise the dead person and allow him to "raise" his spirit clone (or several). How such a unbound spirit would react to their living counterpart could be interesting and very creepy.

Well, I thought that the Master of the Shambles was lost completely, but Archive.org has a copy on the archived Dungeoncrafter website.

More importantly I found my notes for an Iron Kingdoms game that I was describing on their forums. I do not remember who I got the address for Archive.org from, but I do recall that it was here on E.N.World. Thank you, whomever you may be!

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* Those who think that this is thread necromancy of a topic that I liked, well... maybe. It also got revived by someone else just before the Great Crash of '06, so....

Ooo- thread necromancy! Creepy!

Sorry, somebody had to say it.

On topic, a couple of the creepiest games I've ever run involved what my campaign calls "true Dreams" or more commonly just "Dreams" (with the capital D). Now, off and on over the years, it's been the practice of my group to use Dreams as a sort of filler for when half or less of the usual player group actually shows up for a game- to give those who did show up something fun to do. Basically these Dreams work like being in Tel'Aran'Rhiod in the Wheel of Time, or other similar concepts; the idea is, the PCs are in the Region of Dreams and can use the Lucid Dreaming skill to influence things if they have it.

Waaaay back when, several years ago, one of my groups decided to travel with an expedition to an ancient ruin known as the "City of Death," which was expected to take months just to reach the place with all the supplies and people it was bringing along. Now, at one of the caravan's stops along its way, the party was going around town looking for something to do, and chanced upon a local cemetary haunted by a ghost. The ghost was specifically described as an elf with no eyes in his sockets, and he screamed a word at the party before he left. As an amusing side note, the party's Cleric PC (the only one able to Turn Undead) got a natural 1 on her Will save to avoid the ghost's fear, so she ran away screaming while the rest of the party just wondered what this ghost was about.

As it happened, that ghost encounter was at the end of a session, and the very next session several people didn't make it on time. So I ran a Dream. In this Dream, the Cleric and two other PCs found themselves in a cavern of ice, apparently part of an entire dungeon complex carved out of a glacier, or some such. I played up the weirdness and mystery of it all, and the players (appropriately awed and in wonder) set off to explore. But I had an echoing whisper suddenly come from one tunnel, saying the same word the ghost had screamed the night before (unfortunately the PCs all failed their INT checks, so none of them remembered this- and the players had forgotten during the week as well). The PCs decided to follow the voice, down into a strangely darkened tunnel on a lower level.

In that dark tunnel, they found a man, literally frozen in place, and when they went around to see who it was, they saw that it was the ghost- and why he had no eyes. The eyes had been frozen apparently at a different rate from the rest of him, and had burst out of his face creating little trails of (now frozen) goo down his cheeks. And his face was set forever in his dying expression, which I described as a "rictus of horror." That happy image drew some "Ewww"s from the players, as I had hoped.

The next step was to follow the whispering voices still further, into an even deeper and darker tunnel, past a door made of a strange metal that looked more grown or frozen into shape than forged. Beyond it was a long, straight passage that finally ended in a single bare room with three smooth walls (with a hint of something somehow carved into the ice below the actual surface) and one rough one. Since the room, as everything else on its level, was pitch black and the PCs were relying on Darkvision, one of them took out a regular light so they could get a better handle on things. When switched on, the light revealed several things which I rattled off matter-of-factly from a list:

One, the reason things were so dark down here was that the ice itself was somehow colored a thoroughly unnatural black.

Two, the rough wall was NOT black, but a stark pearly white, and yet bitterly cold to the touch- even more so than the other ice around it.

Three, those hinted-at "carvings" in the other three walls were in fact people- sacrifice victims literally frozen into the walls in their dying moments. (This caused one player to abruptly turn away in horror, as she'd apparently had a dream similar to this in real life once and it was now seriously freaking her out.)

As the players realized this, they took a few moments to discuss this latest finding and get over their shock. Which was when I dropped the next shock on them. The sacrifice victims started writhing and moving, within their tombs of ice, and it quickly became clear to the PCs that those mysterious voices whispering that mysterious word were in fact these very victims. And as the voices built upon themselves, calling out the word triumphantly over and over, getting louder and louder as they did, the fourth wall began to move of its own accord. After a few seconds of movement, a sudden horizontal gap appeared in the wall, and pulled itself open in both the vertical directions to reveal an enormous red eye staring balefully at the PCs. Who then woke up, as other players had arrived and it was time to start the game proper.

The last helpful touch, for those players who had been reading their game books? The word the sacrifice victims (and the ghost) were all saying was a name- "Xixecal."

That was the way I set up an Abomination from the ELH as a vaguely Lovecraftian BBEG in my world. In subsequent Dreams the PCs discovered more about it, but it also drove the same priestess quite insane in its efforts to get an agent to do its work for it (particularly, getting it released). I still haven't released it, and actually it's likely now that it never will be, but ever since that Dream my group's used "Xixecal!" as a catchphrase whenever somebody does something shocking or gets scared.

One of my favorites from years ago (in college):

The party had been after the key to a door they couldn't seem to open, and had found that the key had been placed in a tomb. I had planned a "Tomb of Horrors"-ish adventure, with death-traps at every turn, but on the night when the adventure was supposed to take place, only two of seven players were able to play. Rather than put the adventure off for a week, I decided to take a different tack...

When my two players showed up, we started play in the inn where they'd been staying. They were approached by the man who'd given them the clue to the tomb, who told them he'd seen the minions of the BBEG heading in the direction of the tomb. The other characters being 'indisposed (read: absent),' the two characters (a human cleric and a half-elf thief), set out for the tomb themselves to try to stop the minions.

They caught up to the minions just as they smashed in the front door of the tomb, and swiftly dispatched them. The tomb was described as being smaller than they'd expected, and the two decided to have a look inside. At this point, I stooped play for a break. When they returned, they were told that the rest of the action would happen in real time, in a LARP-type situation.

I led them to the main hall of my apartment. I'd previously set up my bedroom as one of the adventure locales I'd had planned for them to go through (I was a theatre major, and had a good many requisite props). They made their way down the hall to a locked door, the thief picked the lock (I made them wait a few minutes to simulate the 'real-time' lockpicking while I suited up in the 'tomb.').

When they opened the door, they found a dark room, lit by a single candle (a burning candle in a tomb?). There was a sealed crypt door (the closet), a sarcophagus (the bed), and, seated in the corner, a robed figure holding a gnarled oak staff (me). In the figure's left hand was the key, and a golden ring.

Now...all they actually had to do was walk over and take the key from me. The ring and staff were additional 'treasures' they could acquire. The real-time atmosphere, however, probably augmented by the thunderstorm outside, made them extremely nervous about everything (though neither, to my knowledge, had ever done any type of LARP-stuff before, they took to it like ducks to water). As a result, the 'exploration' of the tomb took almost an hour and a half, as they debated (in character...I was proud of 'em) what to do and looked around the room.

During the 'looking,' one of the most 'creepy' moments occurred when the thief was having a look at the crypt door. A small spider (a real one, apparently with an excellent sense of timing) dropped down from the ceiling and landed on the back of her hand, resulting in a scream that could probably have been heard in the next county.

Eventually, they took the key and the ring from my hand, and left the tomb, deciding that the staff was something better left untouched. As they left, the rogue decided to blow out the candle. As it was extinguished, I let out a low moan; and both of them literally RAN out the door. When the full group met again the next week, the cleric and rogue presented the group with the key and the story of an odd adventure.

A follow-up...

Last year, I ran into the rogue's player at the museum where I was working. We started talking about our D&D group, and she told me that the 'tomb crawl' had been her favorite gaming experience. Pretty decent effect for about forty-five minutes planning.

Regards,
Darrell King

Fallen gods

Hi im new to the forum but Iv been reading through the weird/creepy thread and loving it, I also have an idea to contribute, though not something thats actually been used. Before I start I just want to apologies in advance for the spelling mistakes of which I'm sure there will be several, I'm dyslexic and don't have a word processor with a spell check on my computer. The question I ask you is what has happened to deity's when one polytheistic society has conquered another? The answer is twofold one they take a subservient place in the pantheon as as either minor diety (see the plethora of minor Roman gods, as well as Vanir of Norse pantheon, or even many of the demons of the monotheistic religions), or they are killed (either in terms of a mythic battle or just by being forgotten). Now in a fantasy world where the gods intervene on a regular basis the battle would be going on simaltainously between the gods themselves and their followers.

I wish to look at the fate of those vanquished gods and give an example of what they may become. Now the gods COULD battle to the death, but I find it more likely that one would demand the serenader of the other or failing that that the vanquished god would serenader or run away rather then face the end of their immortal excistance. In the first two cases the god would take a subservient role to the conquerer based on their original purpose, though perhaps in a very specific form (again I say look at the plethora of minor deity's in the Roman pantheon), or they could be forced into a very different form (see the demons of the catholic pantheon).
With this in mind I would like to suggest a very creepy goddess and see if anyone has ideas for other such fallen divinities.

Cor'a'va was a fertility goddess like many others, she tended to the harvest of the fields and she tended to mysteries of motherhood. Cor'a'va had once been much more, she had ruled all of nature... well all of nature in her valley, but a centuries before her people had been conquered and she with them by Nak'thun a grate stag headed god of war and the hunt. When Nak'thun had first taken Cor'a'va as his bride she had wept bitter tears as he forced himself upon her, but she had grown to love him over the last century. Cor'a'va did not understand how she could come to love him but as her worshipers came to see their union as natural and then as blessed she too came to first to tolerate, then to accept, and then even finally to cherish their union. But that was a hundred years ago and now in the spring when her land, her people, and her belly were full of new life her people were also finely conquered after a brutal war.

As their people were subjugated Cor'a'va could do nothing and she wept bitter tears, as Nak'thun was castrated and then be-headed she could do nothing, and wept bitter tears, then the conquerers came to her as their worshipers chipped away at the inscriptions in her temple and she knew a fear far different then she had on her conquest by Nak'thun for Cor'a'va knew the conquers and knew that among their midsts was another god of fertility. Cor'a'va wondered if she would be spared and if so to what minor function she would have to degrade herself, she had herd of other fertility goddesses who had ended up as no more then patrons of midwives and prostitutes, or they could kill her as they had her love. But Cor'a'va had no idea what was in store for her, for as the conquerers had conquered they gained many patrons for their peoples lively-hoods, and both the god of war and his brother the god of fertility had wives that sated their desires. Rather then kill Cor'a'va right out she was given a choice to go to the underworld, she took if for to a goddess of life it was utter horror to be mired in the souls of the dead but still better then oblivion. As she was led off to her fate the god of fertility held up his hand and she stopped for even being nothing but a field in which he would plant his seed would be better then to be surrounded by death. The god of fertility then said "she plans to take one small life with her into the land of the dead, that can not be allowed and I shall brook no other to to be the sours of life" and with that he pulled forth a dagger and stabbed her in the womb, Cor'a'va was then cast into the underworld.

her clerics were raped or killed and her temples burned to the ground. But in defeat she changed and began to gather a cult to herself, of mothers like Cor'a'va herself who had lost a child while still in the womb, and as time passed she and her cult were warped beyond all recognition and came to exalt that which they had once taken to be their burden as one. However in the shadow of great city's she regained her strength, a new strength and in the shadows she endured while that civilization was conquered as well and she endured while it's goads were destroyed and their names erased from temple walls and the minds of people. The sisterhood forgot their names to but not the part they played in Cor'a'va 's tale.

The sisterhood of the un-dead womb is a cult comprised exclusively of women, and all of whom are priestesses in training or in actuality. They worship Cor'a'va and preform blasphomus rites to mimic her struggle to birth her dead child in the underworld. The priestess give birth to all manner of monsterositys (for less disturbing they grow them in tanks but for full on ewwww it's live birth).

Goblyn said:

If it was an all adult game, I might have been less forgiving, but she's only twelve.

Click to expand...

Awww, Zombies are quite intimidating for a 12 year old...

Anyways... I run Horror games (ala Heroes of Horror) So I've done some freakish things. Ummm... personal favorite... I'd have to say the "Big-Baddy" Called Visigin.

Visigin was an Elven Dread Necromancer(Heroes of Horror) with a few classes in Sorceror and a prestige class of two. What was annoying about him was that his combat strategy was the make you lose your class... in other words become "Ex"-whatever. For instance, he cast a Quickened Dimension Door, a Quickened Silent Image spell and summoned a charmed servant, a helpless woman, in his place, using the dimension door to hide in a nearby area and silent image to make the woman appear to be him. He failed his checks, so it looked like him. Paladin attacks, kills a young innocent woman... what do you think would happen? Ex-Paladin, anyone?

Also managed to get rid of two clerics, a ranger, and a guilt-crazed Fighter(great fun... nice RPing) in the same manner/with little modifications.

"The Man who wasn't there."

I remember as a child hearing a silly bit of Shel Silverstein poetry...

Yesterday Upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish I wish he'd go away

On this poem, I based The Man Who Wasn't There. BBEG, scared my party witless.

He existed as a negative. You didn't see him, but could discern exactly where he wasn't. He spoke in terrible silences and players understood every word that he didn't say. He forced near-constant SAN checks, as he was a monologue maker, and merely being in the same room as him was a violation of causality. I think what really set the players minds on edge was how he looked exactly like their uncle... if their uncle wasn't a person, but an uncle-shaped hole in reality.

We had a bard gibbering for three full days. It was a terrible sight.