The_Warlock
Explorer
1001 Mysteries...
In the vein of a number of the old “101 X” posts, what I'm hoping for is people pitching in descriptions of odd, creepy, mysterious, unexplainable phenomena and scenes for use by GMs into their campaigns to add color and provide enigmas to their world.
The point isn't to detail what is really happening, how it came to be, or any mechanical stats. Just a scene for the PCs to stumble upon. A GM who uses one then can let it remain a hanging mystery, or if the PCs show great interest develop it into a true plot hook, encounter (whether a haunting or just a gnome with a weird taste in illusions), or adventure that meshes with his or her world and plots.
I'll start it off....
1) Faceless (Cross-posted from Creepy...)
On a lonely backwoods or frontier trade path, the group notices several sets of wagon tracks that dig up the dirt and damp earth and go off the road. If they follow them, the find themselves in a small dell not easily visible from the road, made of three or four low hills. The earth is churned and trampled by feet, hooves and wheels. One merchant's wagon is smashed and overturned at the base of the far hill. There are no horses, though the wagon's cinches are covered in blood.
About two dozen naked human/humanoid bodies lay scattered across the dell. While most are covered in mud, they don't appear to have any obvious wounds from a distance.
The first one the group approaches is contorted, face down in the mud, but it's nails are broken and it's hands covered in blood as if it was attempting to scratch it's attacker.
When they roll the body over, the body has no face, from forehead to chin, is solid flesh, ripped and torn by fingernails to reveal muscle and smooth bone beneath, with nary a socket or orifice. As if the poor soul, suddenly bereft of sight and breath was desperately clawing at their own head to make a way to breathe.
All the bodies share this faceless death.
Several sets of hoofprints and wagon wheel tracks leave the dell more sedately and return to the road, heading in the same direction the group was heading, and eventually lose distinction from the common ruts in the road about a mile on.
2) Blood from a Stone
When the group is within an underground area made of, or faced with, stone, they come upon a room where there is the sound of a slow dripping. From the ceiling, where no crack or hole exists, is a damp spot which slowly enlarges to a drip of a thick, crimson substance. It falls to a place on the floor where, similarly, there is neither crack nor hole. Yet only a tiny puddle of reddish fluid sits.
No matter how long it is watched, the pool never grows in size. The drips from the ceiling pass through any barrier or container placed in their way. Unless the object is the skin of an intelligent creature. If so, they find that their hands are covered in blood, and they hear a distant wail, as if from a man being tortured, that no one else can hear. AS the scream fades, the blood seems to soak into their hands.
If the blood is wiped away from the stone floor, it seems to evaporate as it is pushed away, briefly revealing a single brownish stain, which the drips quickly cover up.
3) From Behind
In a abandoned or secluded home, tower, or small ruin, the group comes across a room that looks like it was once a study of some sort. Rotted furniture and broken glassware litter the room, as do several books with many pages torn out and scattered.
A closer look will show brown stains on the floor in odd and irregular patterns, certainly not the expected splashes and splatters of injury or combat.
Investigation shows that many of the pages bear similar dark brown smears and stains, often lines and curves.
Dedicated investigation will show that some of the smears on the pages and the floor seem to line up.
Attempts to piece the puzzle together will eventually have the pages of the books laid out in the rough image of a Thaumaturgic triangle, the stains the boundaries of letters of a common language. The words say, “Fear beyond the door. Open and safety revealed. A (a blank area) S behind. Watching.”
The blank area in the words is in the center of the diagram, and from the looks of it, something was there when the writing was done, but is now gone.
4) Untreadable
In an ruin or other abandoned building, the group comes into a dust and cobweb covered room. While examining the room, locked away for years while furniture dry rotted, one will notice that there are “muddy” bootprints...on one of the walls. They appear to show someone having walked down the wall, then the continued apace diagonally across the room, and end with one print halfway in the far wall.
If examined closely, caked earth has dried and cemented itself to the wall, but the prints on the floor merely disturb the dust there, with no traces of other material.
No doors, secret or otherwise exist in the surfaces the footprints appears to come from or go to.
5) Whose Shadow
Wherever one or more of the group is, but when they are somewhere other people are in nearby rooms or such (at an inn, a noble party, etc), one of the party notices a shadow cross their field of vision from behind them. If they point it out without looking, others will see it, but as soon as they turn to look, they notice no one behind them. An NPC will approach them from where they were originally looking, for some mundane purpose, having noticed nothing.
This will repeat one or two more times. If one member watches the shadow, while another tries to “catch” a glimpse, the watcher will see the shadow move and disappear as if obstructed by some hard edged object which throws no shadow itself.
Sometime later, when the group is in a lonely or abandoned locale, the first to have seen the shadow will notice that wherever their light source is throwing shadows, there is one more shadow than the number of members of the party.
Any overt mention of the shadow, or pointing to it, will cause it to appear to leap sideways - “landing” in one of the group's shadows, and that person's shadow will fade away. Apparently forever gone.
The next time that person is in direct sunlight, they will feel suddenly and briefly weak, only to watch their shadow “fall” out of them onto the ground in a fetal position, shiver, and then stretch to normal proportions, and act in all ways normally henceforth.
In the vein of a number of the old “101 X” posts, what I'm hoping for is people pitching in descriptions of odd, creepy, mysterious, unexplainable phenomena and scenes for use by GMs into their campaigns to add color and provide enigmas to their world.
The point isn't to detail what is really happening, how it came to be, or any mechanical stats. Just a scene for the PCs to stumble upon. A GM who uses one then can let it remain a hanging mystery, or if the PCs show great interest develop it into a true plot hook, encounter (whether a haunting or just a gnome with a weird taste in illusions), or adventure that meshes with his or her world and plots.
I'll start it off....
1) Faceless (Cross-posted from Creepy...)
On a lonely backwoods or frontier trade path, the group notices several sets of wagon tracks that dig up the dirt and damp earth and go off the road. If they follow them, the find themselves in a small dell not easily visible from the road, made of three or four low hills. The earth is churned and trampled by feet, hooves and wheels. One merchant's wagon is smashed and overturned at the base of the far hill. There are no horses, though the wagon's cinches are covered in blood.
About two dozen naked human/humanoid bodies lay scattered across the dell. While most are covered in mud, they don't appear to have any obvious wounds from a distance.
The first one the group approaches is contorted, face down in the mud, but it's nails are broken and it's hands covered in blood as if it was attempting to scratch it's attacker.
When they roll the body over, the body has no face, from forehead to chin, is solid flesh, ripped and torn by fingernails to reveal muscle and smooth bone beneath, with nary a socket or orifice. As if the poor soul, suddenly bereft of sight and breath was desperately clawing at their own head to make a way to breathe.
All the bodies share this faceless death.
Several sets of hoofprints and wagon wheel tracks leave the dell more sedately and return to the road, heading in the same direction the group was heading, and eventually lose distinction from the common ruts in the road about a mile on.
2) Blood from a Stone
When the group is within an underground area made of, or faced with, stone, they come upon a room where there is the sound of a slow dripping. From the ceiling, where no crack or hole exists, is a damp spot which slowly enlarges to a drip of a thick, crimson substance. It falls to a place on the floor where, similarly, there is neither crack nor hole. Yet only a tiny puddle of reddish fluid sits.
No matter how long it is watched, the pool never grows in size. The drips from the ceiling pass through any barrier or container placed in their way. Unless the object is the skin of an intelligent creature. If so, they find that their hands are covered in blood, and they hear a distant wail, as if from a man being tortured, that no one else can hear. AS the scream fades, the blood seems to soak into their hands.
If the blood is wiped away from the stone floor, it seems to evaporate as it is pushed away, briefly revealing a single brownish stain, which the drips quickly cover up.
3) From Behind
In a abandoned or secluded home, tower, or small ruin, the group comes across a room that looks like it was once a study of some sort. Rotted furniture and broken glassware litter the room, as do several books with many pages torn out and scattered.
A closer look will show brown stains on the floor in odd and irregular patterns, certainly not the expected splashes and splatters of injury or combat.
Investigation shows that many of the pages bear similar dark brown smears and stains, often lines and curves.
Dedicated investigation will show that some of the smears on the pages and the floor seem to line up.
Attempts to piece the puzzle together will eventually have the pages of the books laid out in the rough image of a Thaumaturgic triangle, the stains the boundaries of letters of a common language. The words say, “Fear beyond the door. Open and safety revealed. A (a blank area) S behind. Watching.”
The blank area in the words is in the center of the diagram, and from the looks of it, something was there when the writing was done, but is now gone.
4) Untreadable
In an ruin or other abandoned building, the group comes into a dust and cobweb covered room. While examining the room, locked away for years while furniture dry rotted, one will notice that there are “muddy” bootprints...on one of the walls. They appear to show someone having walked down the wall, then the continued apace diagonally across the room, and end with one print halfway in the far wall.
If examined closely, caked earth has dried and cemented itself to the wall, but the prints on the floor merely disturb the dust there, with no traces of other material.
No doors, secret or otherwise exist in the surfaces the footprints appears to come from or go to.
5) Whose Shadow
Wherever one or more of the group is, but when they are somewhere other people are in nearby rooms or such (at an inn, a noble party, etc), one of the party notices a shadow cross their field of vision from behind them. If they point it out without looking, others will see it, but as soon as they turn to look, they notice no one behind them. An NPC will approach them from where they were originally looking, for some mundane purpose, having noticed nothing.
This will repeat one or two more times. If one member watches the shadow, while another tries to “catch” a glimpse, the watcher will see the shadow move and disappear as if obstructed by some hard edged object which throws no shadow itself.
Sometime later, when the group is in a lonely or abandoned locale, the first to have seen the shadow will notice that wherever their light source is throwing shadows, there is one more shadow than the number of members of the party.
Any overt mention of the shadow, or pointing to it, will cause it to appear to leap sideways - “landing” in one of the group's shadows, and that person's shadow will fade away. Apparently forever gone.
The next time that person is in direct sunlight, they will feel suddenly and briefly weak, only to watch their shadow “fall” out of them onto the ground in a fetal position, shiver, and then stretch to normal proportions, and act in all ways normally henceforth.
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