The Runic Cthulhu Hour: Something wrong in a small town college.
DM with a vengence
First Post
This makes me wish I had a real group of players, instead of a bunch of piece of sh*t f**k ups.
((Read my Story Hour))
Shameless, arn't I?
Anyway, back on topic, excellent, most excellent.
((Read my Story Hour))
Shameless, arn't I?
Anyway, back on topic, excellent, most excellent.
Broccli_Head
Explorer
Rune said:
Eerie...very eerie, Rune. I don't know if it's Lovecraftian--generally too much gore--but it is very horrifying...night-of-the-living-dead-ish. I've been trying to coax my players into playing CoC but they refuse. If they read this story hour, they'll not want to even more. Especially if I suggest that they play themselves....
What a nightmare!
Rune
Once A Fool
Broccli_Head said:
Eerie...very eerie, Rune. I don't know if it's Lovecraftian--generally too much gore--but it is very horrifying...night-of-the-living-dead-ish. I've been trying to coax my players into playing CoC but they refuse. If they read this story hour, they'll not want to even more. Especially if I suggest that they play themselves....
What a nightmare!
Thanks for dropping by, Broccli! Good to see you! I'm sorry to hear that your players refuse to play CoC, but whatever you do, don't press the issue. If they aren't willing to let themselves go and be terrified, horror just isn't going to happen!
Too bad, though. I'd have liked to have read about it.
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Desdichado
Hero
Hey, not all Lovecraft is tentacles and Old Ones! This could fit remarkably well next to The Case of Charles Dexter Ward for example. Great work, Rune!
Niiiiiiiice.
You see, this is where the fact that i'm a professional writer works against me. I think in story structure too much. This $#%ked-up hopelessness and surrealism is a genuinely very, very bad place for the PC's to wind up.
And I thought the live, mewing upside-down kitten head in the corpse's mouth in my campaign was weird ...
I'm inspired.
You see, this is where the fact that i'm a professional writer works against me. I think in story structure too much. This $#%ked-up hopelessness and surrealism is a genuinely very, very bad place for the PC's to wind up.
And I thought the live, mewing upside-down kitten head in the corpse's mouth in my campaign was weird ...
I'm inspired.
Rune
Once A Fool
jonrog1 said:
You're inspired! Where do you think I get my inspiration for horror! A significant bit of it comes from your horror!
The live, mewing upside-down kitten head in the corpse's mouth was weird! As a matter of fact, rootbeergnome (who plays Mike in the first session) talks about it all the freakin' time!
I've been practicing "$#%ked-up hopelessness and surrealism" for a long time, as the link in my sig would attest to. I will say that I would have a little more story structure, but with my players, there really is no point. They wouldn't stick with it, anyway. I thought, maybe, just maybe, they would want investigate Rune's death, being investigators and all. Ha! Not likely. They just wanted to get out. Bastards.
Anyway, thanks for dropping by! I'm flattered to have inspired you, although it might present a sort of chicken-and-the-egg syndrome.
While I'm on the subject, I have to pimp your story. Anyone reading this who likes horror and hasn't read jonrog1's DarkMatter D20: Drunk Southern Girls with Guns, Zombie Toddlers and Bad Aliens story hour, go there immediately. It is all kinds of horror goodness.
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Rune
Once A Fool
11 May, 2002 Session. Part 1
As Kelly takes a step back from the advancing abomination and as Jude dashes toward the door, the flaming teddy bear is wrested from Kelly’s immobile hands and arcs toward the rotting monstrosity that was once his forgotten brother. The Once-Rune is hit squarely in the chest and tumbles backward to the floor. The aroma of cooked Rune fills the chamber, quickly overpowering the antiseptic scent of the hospital, but the flesh is far too moist to actually ignite.
Kelly and Jude hear the sound of a scuffle behind them and turn to see that their companions have vanished.
And then, the floor falls out from under them. The hospital is sliding downward in a steep decline and bits of the ceiling fall around them. They can see—through holes torn into the walls—that they are descending deep into the earth, perhaps half a mile or more!
Oddly, a wind shrieks through the holes in the walls, even this far underground. The hallway has been collapsed on either end and the robed people are completely lost in a mass of rubble—as is the Once-Rune. Jude and Kelly make their way to another room and find nothing but clouds of dust, as well as chunks of stone and tile. The floor drops a little, producing what is roughly a thirty-degree angle. The wind screams through the holes in the far wall of this room, as well—at a much higher pitch; the holes are considerably smaller than those in the last room.
Jude searches through one of the piles of wreckage and comes across a cold piece of rubber. Feeling around a bit more, she discovers that it is in the shape of a human hand. When she gets to the sticky end of it, she realizes that it is not rubber at all; it is a real, severed hand. She pulls it out of the debris.
The congealed blood that she has smeared all over it is stained with her handprints. She drops the hand in revulsion and tries to wipe the sticky, red-brown syrup on the floor, but succeeds only in collecting a layer of dust.
The hand, Kelly notes, is that of a very old person.
The floor shifts again, producing an incline of forty-five degrees.
And then, the hospital is sliding downward, again.
As Kelly takes a step back from the advancing abomination and as Jude dashes toward the door, the flaming teddy bear is wrested from Kelly’s immobile hands and arcs toward the rotting monstrosity that was once his forgotten brother. The Once-Rune is hit squarely in the chest and tumbles backward to the floor. The aroma of cooked Rune fills the chamber, quickly overpowering the antiseptic scent of the hospital, but the flesh is far too moist to actually ignite.
Kelly and Jude hear the sound of a scuffle behind them and turn to see that their companions have vanished.
And then, the floor falls out from under them. The hospital is sliding downward in a steep decline and bits of the ceiling fall around them. They can see—through holes torn into the walls—that they are descending deep into the earth, perhaps half a mile or more!
Oddly, a wind shrieks through the holes in the walls, even this far underground. The hallway has been collapsed on either end and the robed people are completely lost in a mass of rubble—as is the Once-Rune. Jude and Kelly make their way to another room and find nothing but clouds of dust, as well as chunks of stone and tile. The floor drops a little, producing what is roughly a thirty-degree angle. The wind screams through the holes in the far wall of this room, as well—at a much higher pitch; the holes are considerably smaller than those in the last room.
Jude searches through one of the piles of wreckage and comes across a cold piece of rubber. Feeling around a bit more, she discovers that it is in the shape of a human hand. When she gets to the sticky end of it, she realizes that it is not rubber at all; it is a real, severed hand. She pulls it out of the debris.
The congealed blood that she has smeared all over it is stained with her handprints. She drops the hand in revulsion and tries to wipe the sticky, red-brown syrup on the floor, but succeeds only in collecting a layer of dust.
The hand, Kelly notes, is that of a very old person.
The floor shifts again, producing an incline of forty-five degrees.
And then, the hospital is sliding downward, again.
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Rune
Once A Fool
11 May, 2002 Session. Part 2
When the building comes to rest for the second time, it is on its side. Kelly is hanging from the doorway of the room into the hall. High above him, Jude hangs from the exposed metal supports of the wall—a wall inlayed with incomprehensible symbols.
Jude climbs through the hole in the wall, from which she is suspended. Kelly scrambles around in an attempt to find some way up to that hole. Eventually, as the building groans and shifts, Kelly climbs a pile of debris and escapes through a hole created by Jude’s unstable determination—and her black leather boot.
They are in a large, circular, domed chamber. It is certainly constructed by humans. A strange moss grows along the walls, casting a pale luminance all around them. Jude and Kelly climb down to the floor of the chamber and the hospital slides further into the ground, leaving a crater of no determinable depth.
Three tunnels branch from this large room and one archway leads directly into another chamber. All are illuminated. They decide to enter the room. It is merely a quarter of the size of the room they exit, but it is still quite large. Inside it, they are greeted with the smell of an old cemetery—the smell of moist earth; it is the smell of the grave, of loneliness and solitude. Several more tunnels branch off from this room, all also illuminated by the unusual moss.
Kelly realizes that they will need to map their progress and begs Jude for a scrap of the only paper that they have—a page from her bible. She is understandably very hesitant to yield this significant tome for such a blasphemous purpose, but a growing sense of paranoia clouds her judgement in the matter. She tears a page from the concordance in the back and Kelly begins to scribble.
They head down the center corridor. It could just be her imagination, but Jude seems to see patterns in the illuminating moss. No, they couldn’t be…
The path is straight and has no slope. This is a trait that they are to discover is common to all of the corridors. They intersect each other many times and the sound of the two investigators’ footsteps, the sound of their breath, and the sound of their heartbeats echo through the hallways, before them and behind them.
Eventually, Jude can no longer subdue her suspicion that the moss holds some message. She takes a long look at the moss and is mildly surprised to see that it shifts into the form of an obscure script. She is not even sure where she has seen it before. She cannot read much of it, but some of it speaks of a command to "Turn away," and something about "mortal" and something else about "Great Old" somethings.
Kelly wants to deface it.
Jude is quick to dissuade him. "Don’t touch it!"
"Why not?"
"It’s shifting, glowing, script of moss. You just don’t see that every day!"
After a very brief pause, Jude and Kelly decide to go the other way.
When the building comes to rest for the second time, it is on its side. Kelly is hanging from the doorway of the room into the hall. High above him, Jude hangs from the exposed metal supports of the wall—a wall inlayed with incomprehensible symbols.
Jude climbs through the hole in the wall, from which she is suspended. Kelly scrambles around in an attempt to find some way up to that hole. Eventually, as the building groans and shifts, Kelly climbs a pile of debris and escapes through a hole created by Jude’s unstable determination—and her black leather boot.
They are in a large, circular, domed chamber. It is certainly constructed by humans. A strange moss grows along the walls, casting a pale luminance all around them. Jude and Kelly climb down to the floor of the chamber and the hospital slides further into the ground, leaving a crater of no determinable depth.
Three tunnels branch from this large room and one archway leads directly into another chamber. All are illuminated. They decide to enter the room. It is merely a quarter of the size of the room they exit, but it is still quite large. Inside it, they are greeted with the smell of an old cemetery—the smell of moist earth; it is the smell of the grave, of loneliness and solitude. Several more tunnels branch off from this room, all also illuminated by the unusual moss.
Kelly realizes that they will need to map their progress and begs Jude for a scrap of the only paper that they have—a page from her bible. She is understandably very hesitant to yield this significant tome for such a blasphemous purpose, but a growing sense of paranoia clouds her judgement in the matter. She tears a page from the concordance in the back and Kelly begins to scribble.
They head down the center corridor. It could just be her imagination, but Jude seems to see patterns in the illuminating moss. No, they couldn’t be…
The path is straight and has no slope. This is a trait that they are to discover is common to all of the corridors. They intersect each other many times and the sound of the two investigators’ footsteps, the sound of their breath, and the sound of their heartbeats echo through the hallways, before them and behind them.
Eventually, Jude can no longer subdue her suspicion that the moss holds some message. She takes a long look at the moss and is mildly surprised to see that it shifts into the form of an obscure script. She is not even sure where she has seen it before. She cannot read much of it, but some of it speaks of a command to "Turn away," and something about "mortal" and something else about "Great Old" somethings.
Kelly wants to deface it.
Jude is quick to dissuade him. "Don’t touch it!"
"Why not?"
"It’s shifting, glowing, script of moss. You just don’t see that every day!"
After a very brief pause, Jude and Kelly decide to go the other way.
Rune
Once A Fool
11 May, 2002 Session. Part 3
The next room that they come across as the walk through the maze of tunnels is a very large hemisphere—or possibly a full sphere—with a floor that is completely lost in a pool of water. More tunnels branch from this room, but, more significantly, the pale moss-light reflects movement in the water. Quite a bit of movement, in fact.
Jude and Kelly decide not to enter the room. After traversing more corridors, they find themselves in another circular chamber—this one with no visible ceiling despite the presence of moss-light crawling up the walls further than their eyesight can follow. Every sound that the two make in this room is amplified and echoes. The echoes echo. The very sound of their own breathing travels up the walls and back down again to drown the out their source. Kelly’s face twitches and the two move on.
As they walk down another long pathway, Jude feels compelled to decipher some of the script in the moss again, if she can.
She can. She reads the same message as she saw the last time, but this time, she sees something else: something about "The Faithful of Berea." It looks like a list of names—a very long list of names.
The two move on. In another circular chamber, they see that the moss along the wall shifts perceptively. It writhes, even. Closer examination reveals the reason; the wall is covered with thousands of small, albino spiders, each blocking out the moss-light.
Kelly and Jude are retreating from the room before they even discover that the spiders can jump.
An unsettling thought crosses Jude’s mind. "Let me see that map."
Kelly shows her his hastily sketched rendering.
Her suspicion is confirmed. The tunnels and the chambers form a symbol that is strikingly similar to a pentacle.
She can also see that the corridors that they have not traveled appear to conjoin at two separate points.
They choose one and head toward it. It is another echo chamber—designed precisely as was the first, but with a much smaller diameter, so the echoes are at a far higher pitch than those of the other chamber. Again, Kelly’s face twitches and they move on.
The other point on the map is a chamber that they cannot see. That is to say, once inside, they can only see a void and thousands upon thousands of stars. Kelly is interested to see that a new passageway branches from this room, but Jude is entranced by something else, entirely. None of these stars are familiar. This room almost seems to be view of the universe from some point other than the Earth.
When she can will herself to move, they walk through the last tunnel and into a large chamber, also circular. A large shape dominates the center. As Kelly finishes mapping the room, the lines begin to glow and the bible page withers away. At the same time, stone snakes spring to life on the surface of the large…building…in the center of the chamber. Other stone shapes can be seen writhing across its face, as well--tracing the outline of a set of doors.
The doors swing open and an unearthly chanting rushes out to fill the room around them.
The next room that they come across as the walk through the maze of tunnels is a very large hemisphere—or possibly a full sphere—with a floor that is completely lost in a pool of water. More tunnels branch from this room, but, more significantly, the pale moss-light reflects movement in the water. Quite a bit of movement, in fact.
Jude and Kelly decide not to enter the room. After traversing more corridors, they find themselves in another circular chamber—this one with no visible ceiling despite the presence of moss-light crawling up the walls further than their eyesight can follow. Every sound that the two make in this room is amplified and echoes. The echoes echo. The very sound of their own breathing travels up the walls and back down again to drown the out their source. Kelly’s face twitches and the two move on.
As they walk down another long pathway, Jude feels compelled to decipher some of the script in the moss again, if she can.
She can. She reads the same message as she saw the last time, but this time, she sees something else: something about "The Faithful of Berea." It looks like a list of names—a very long list of names.
The two move on. In another circular chamber, they see that the moss along the wall shifts perceptively. It writhes, even. Closer examination reveals the reason; the wall is covered with thousands of small, albino spiders, each blocking out the moss-light.
Kelly and Jude are retreating from the room before they even discover that the spiders can jump.
An unsettling thought crosses Jude’s mind. "Let me see that map."
Kelly shows her his hastily sketched rendering.
Her suspicion is confirmed. The tunnels and the chambers form a symbol that is strikingly similar to a pentacle.
She can also see that the corridors that they have not traveled appear to conjoin at two separate points.
They choose one and head toward it. It is another echo chamber—designed precisely as was the first, but with a much smaller diameter, so the echoes are at a far higher pitch than those of the other chamber. Again, Kelly’s face twitches and they move on.
The other point on the map is a chamber that they cannot see. That is to say, once inside, they can only see a void and thousands upon thousands of stars. Kelly is interested to see that a new passageway branches from this room, but Jude is entranced by something else, entirely. None of these stars are familiar. This room almost seems to be view of the universe from some point other than the Earth.
When she can will herself to move, they walk through the last tunnel and into a large chamber, also circular. A large shape dominates the center. As Kelly finishes mapping the room, the lines begin to glow and the bible page withers away. At the same time, stone snakes spring to life on the surface of the large…building…in the center of the chamber. Other stone shapes can be seen writhing across its face, as well--tracing the outline of a set of doors.
The doors swing open and an unearthly chanting rushes out to fill the room around them.
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