Creepy...

The Master of the Shambles

Written after I read about Victorian slaughterhouses... I have used it in several games, and in none of them did the players want to have anything to do with the Master... he crept them out so much. One party just turned and ran when they saw him.

The Auld Grump
*EDIT* Updated link

TheAuldGrump said:

The Master of the Shambles

Written after I read about Victorian slaughterhouses... I have used it in several games, and in none of them did the players want to have anything to do with the Master... he crept them out so much. One party just turned and ran when they saw him.

The Auld Grump

Click to expand...

***YOINK***!

Back in the early days of 3E, I wrote a monster called an Abiku. They were fiends that would convice children to commit unspeakable acts of violence (usually against their parents or siblings). Well, the party was getting close to discovering what was going on in the campaign, to I sent a bunch of controlled, psychotic children after the party. They didn't want to attack, but the kids kept attacking. It wasn't pretty.

Then there was the modern game I played in in which we were a group of mercs sent into the jungles of Vietnam to discover the whereabouts of a pharmacutical research team. One of the researchers was a sorcerer that found a site that had an inactive gate to a realm of nightmares. We didn't stop him before he opened the gate, and then ran when he did. As we ran, we came to an area filled with cobwebs. One NPC was suddenly pulled up into the canopy. We heard screams and then silence. Right as we're about to leave, a cocoon falls to the ground. One player goes up to it, to see if maybe the NPC was still alive, but right as he was about to cut away the webbing, the body bursts open and hundreds of cat-sized spiders poured out. Being an arachnaphobe (both in RL and with my character) my action was to run like a bat out of heck! That session actually gave me nightmares that night.

Kane

During a trek through the lair of a (believed) destroyed lich I creeped out some of my players by having phantom hands touch them at random times. Thanks to bardic knowledge they knew that the lich in question used to be a lady's man - even in undeath he would use spells and illusions. During the adventure all the female PCs would feel a ghostly hand on them, nothing lewd, just something brushing thier hair out of the way or touching them on the back. That gave some of my players the creeps, they also had to wondered how destroyed this lich was.

Another time was when they found out, after he was already gone, that the kindly old priest that had helped heal them, watch out for them, and even keep an eye on helpless characters while they adventured elsewhere was an undead horror slowly feeding on them and others.

They never did find out what happened to him...

TheAuldGrump said:

The Master of the Shambles

Written after I read about Victorian slaughterhouses... I have used it in several games, and in none of them did the players want to have anything to do with the Master... he crept them out so much. One party just turned and ran when they saw him.

The Auld Grump

Click to expand...

Yeah, awroight, that was pretty good. Good stuff.

"Crystal Rose was a very evil woman. Thank the Gods she's dead. Curse her for not letting me end her life. She had made a contract with a demon, Baalrath, for hellish power. I destroyed her contract, nullifying the agreement, but I had to suffer to do it.

Her fortress, buried beneath the sands of the desert, was a terribe place. In one chamber, we came across what looked like larger versions of the incubators we discovered in Malecan's keep. When I waked near to one, its sides twisted and expanded, reaching out for me with grasping limbs. I'm quick, but these were the quicker, and I ws unceremoniously grabbed and pulled forward, through the side of the structure.

The inside was filled with a thick, familiarly scented, reddish fluid that filled my nose and mouth as the arms planted me inside. I had barely enough room to move, but I hadn't dropped my adamanine blades. Punching through the sides, the fluid started the drain, and with my companions' assistance, I cut my way out and slid onto the cold stone floor, gasping for air.

In the process of freeing me, however, Elayne strayed too close to another of the chambers. dark arms reached out, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her into the incubator. Rising to my feet, I cut her out as well. We would have turned around, but our goal was through the room, and there was only seven more chambers. It was going to smell bad, but I'd had worse. When the next chamber reched out for me, I lept forward, slashing with my swords. I wasn't even pulled completely within before the side of the incubator shattered and I was thrown to the floor.

I got up and was going for the next one, when it split open along its side, and a wet form started to wide up from inside. I caught a look at the creature's face as it turned to look at me and our eyes went wide. I say 'our' because the creature staring back at me was none other than myself!

Reacting before I could, I.. She.. My double reached into her quiver and retrieved a very familiar looking wand. My blood ran cold as she leveled it at me and spoke the word of power... Yet nothing happened. Dropping the wand she drew her.. My swords.. And attacked me, this time not catching me off my guard. We battled together, another chamber reaching out for me as I got too close, but I ducked away. Seems my double had nothing to fear from these chambers, as she stepped close to one as she circled around, whipping wet adamantine at my head. It wasn't until Elayne threw a knife at my double, and I buried my sword in it's chest as it deflected it from the air, that I was able to land even a single hit. I.. she.. It looked at me, shock on its face.. Before melting into the same red goo that filled the chambers.

Now I know what I'll look like, the moment I'm slain in battle. It isn't very reassuring knowledge."

- Melissa Corinth, Demonslayer.

In my now-concluded Modern tabletop game, the adventurers were searching for clues to a missing girl. The search had taken them to her university dorm, a private detective's office, and now a museum. The museum exhibit, curated by her boyfriend, was about Mayan funerary practices and included a mock-up of a gravesite complete with a dead Mayan mannequin.

Or so they believed.

A good Search check allowed one of the players to recognize the 'mannequin' as the private detective, who'd also gone missing while searching for the girl. While one of the characters went to distract the guard, the others closed off the exhibit area and attempted to search the 'mannequin' - when they touched it, it rose up and attacked. I described it as moving in a disjointed, erratic fashion, as if it had little control over its limbs. As soon as one of the players scored a hit on the PI's corpse, it split open and disgorged about a dozen monstrous spiders. (My homebrewed 'vermin husk zombie'...)

When I described what happened, two of the players freaked. One of the players lifted her feat up off the floor while the other shuddered noticeably. Is there any more satisfying moment for a GM than that?

In one gaming group I ran a long time ago one of the PCs found a sword that had the power to create a ghostly double of the wielder during combat. This was all well and good until the double started appearing at the oddest times, usually at the edge of everyon'es vision. Even after the sword was disposed of the double kept coming back, it wasn't until the dead animals started showing up that they got really freaked.

In the same campaign there was a paladin of an ancient order dedicated to fighting the undead. In the course of the adventure he found a holy sword that belonged to a member of the order. Every so often he would get visions of the old paladin's life. At first it was what you expected - good, wholesome activities. Then the visions starting getting ....darker. Gradually the visions showed the paladin twisting into an awful creature of darkness, but not before leaving his (un)holy sword to fool and tempt further paladins...

Oh, gee, I was supposed to add to this thread. I must've lost track of things. La dee da.....


(* shameless BUMP disguised as casual banter *)

Wraith Form said:

Oh, gee, I was supposed to add to this thread. I must've lost track of things. La dee da.....


(* shameless BUMP disguised as casual banter *)

Click to expand...

Hay, if you didn't, I was gonna. I don't have much else to add (my games just aren't creepy enough), but I don't want to see this thread forgotten. So much to steal.

- Kemrain the Creepy.