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Little Fears Game Tools: SPOOKY STORIES

Started by Jason L Blair, June 21, 2002, 08:35:27 AM

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Jason L Blair

This thread is where people post story hooks/adventures they've created/used in their Little Fears games. If you post, please the three basic parts of the story:

The Bait (the setup/premise of the story)
The Hook (how to get the PCs involved)
Resolution (ways the story could end)

Feel free to add more than just the basics, but include at least those three elements.

Please do not just post with a "SWOOT!" no matter how cool someone's monster may be. I would like this to become a list that GMs can refer to when they're stuck for story ideas.

Have fun!
Jason L Blair
Writer, Game Designer

mahoux

The Bait is that an NPC girl who lives in the players' neighborhood, and whom the players play with in her treehouse, is abducted.  She disappears from her home under the nose of her babysitter while her divorced dad is out on a date.  No one can find her and pictures and posters are scattered everywhere.

The Hook: She is someone that is the players' friend.  By searching the treehouse, they find a wadded up piece of paper near the trash can.  It is a scrawled note telling that they are coming.  She ran across shadowy things while down by a lake at a nearby park, and then was told by a white Thing that they will be coming for her.  She ran home but they got her that night.

The White Thing is actually La Llorona, a spirit of a woman who drowned her children in a story popular in Spanish and Mexican folklore.  (Just do a little 'Net research, you'll be amazed at what you find.)  She got the girl and dragged her into the lake and into closetland for the King of Pride.

Resolution: The characters must go into Closetland to save her.  One way is to go through the lake.  Or possibly the characters may find a doppelganger of the girl has returned.  Use your imagination and have fun...

(Any resemblance to actual stories posted elsewhere is purely coincidental.  I wrote this thing up around the beginning of this year.)
-Aaron
Taking the & out of AD&D

http://home.earthlink.net/~knahoux/KOTR_2.html">Knights of the Road, Knights of the Rail has hit the rails!

ynnen

Cradle of Fear

The Bait
One of the characters has a newborn in the family. Since this baby was somewhat unexpected, the family purchased a used crib from a local thrift shop. Unbeknownst to the family, this crib was once owned by Emily Clairborne, a woman who had two children die in their sleep in that very same crib.

Emily Clairborne suffered from Munchausen by Proxy syndrome -- her need for attention so grave that she smothered her own children to make it look like a case of Sudden Infant Death syndrome. The rush of attention she received after her first child was so great that she couldn't resist the temptation when she had her second child.

Emily Clairborne has since divorced, but recently remarried and is with child again. Her vile spirit permeates the crib where her cruel actions took place, and the character's newborn sibling will suffer the same fate as Emily's next child -- at the same time -- unless this mystery is unraveled.

The character will hear crying in the middle of the night, nearly nonstop from the baby's room. Curiousity is piqued when the crying continues even when the newborn is out of the room. The parents, of course, hear nothing of the sort and believe the child is trying to win attention.

The spirits of Emily's previous victims reside in the crib, and cry out at night. They are too young to speak, but a variety of clues could hint at what happened (a few ethereal feathers, swollen or blotchy faces, whatnot). At times, the character can see a vague dark cloud swirling over the newborn's head while it sleeps.

Carved into the bottom of the crib, where the adults would easily overlook it, are two names: Samantha Caroline Clairborne (which has been crossed out) and Joshua Michael Clairborne.

The Hook
The hook is simply that the newborn is one of the character's siblings. The parents are willing to allow a slumber party for the main character so he doesn't feel overlooked or unloved during the transition with the new baby -- that creates a simple way for the rest of the group to get involved.

Resolution
If the characters can learn more about the Clairborne's (library, news archives, rumors around the town) they'll quickly come to the conclusion that Emily Clairborne is dangerous. She is about to give birth to her next child, and is already dreaming of the attention she'll receive when the child tragically dies.

If the characters can confront her, her new husband Ralph Santos, already a little suspicious, may be able to be convinced. In her personal things, Emily has a diary that describes in cold, casual manner how she is looking forward to the current child. Enough evidence to convince the police as well as Mr. Santos.

Alternately, the children can destroy the crib -- burning it is the best -- and set the babies spirits to rest. While this will save the character's sibling, Emily Clairborne's child will still die. Then, perhaps, the character will be visited by yet another spirit, and come to realize the evil still exists.
if life is a game, i need new dice.

Grave Boy 13


This adventure was inspired by Alan Ryan's short story, "Death to the Easter Bunny!"

Hook
Easter, a pure and joyous holiday for many children, is a day that promises a fun filled hunt for eggs colored the night before, of chocolate and squishy marshmallow chicks, of jellybeans and all forms of sugary sweetness, and, most of all, it's a part of the eternity that is Spring Break.  It is, in essence, a brightly colored and pure happy time free of all shadow and fear.  Things that lurk outside the darkened window pain, in the shadows under the bed, and in the closet do not belong to the world on this day.  Fear and screams of pain have no place among the light pastel colors of life and spring.  For almost every child, only laughter and cries of joy exist on this day... at least, this is the way most everyone thinks it ought to be.

One thing that almost every adult in the world seems to forget when they grow up, curiously enough, is how frightening it is to meet one of the icons of a holiday in person.  They can never seem to quite grasp the terror that runs through their little boy or girl as they are brought before some great giant white or pastel colored bunny in the mall.  They look on in dismay at their childs red puffy eyes and tear stained cheeks.  They smile while urging them onwards to the bunny... after all, its fun for the kids, right?  

The stories of the Easter Bunny coming and hiding eggs in the dead of night for the children to find latter are all fine and good, but actually meeting the giant creature from the stories, that's an entirely different matter.  Luckily, when their parents finally take them from the Easter display in the mall, they lave their fears behind along with the monstrous man-bunny.  But what happens when they can't leave it behind, when it comes in the dead of night to hid its eggs in their yard... a fair trade for the children that sleep within.  Most children do not have to worry about such a thing, but in one place, in one neighborhood with a dark secret and a hundred-year-old curse, Easter is truly a time to be afraid.

The Monster and its Goals
As the stories go, a hundred years ago (and yes, its a hundred years ago every Easter) there was a man, a preacher and missionary, who lived in the town.  He had a small church and a small congregation, but big, big dreams.  He was ambitious, and wholly unsatisfied with his life.  He wanted more, so much more, but didn't know how to get it.  Then, on one of his missionary trips to the jungles of Africa, he met an evil witchdoctor who promised the preacher his hearts desire if he, in turn, supplied the witchdoctor with five young, innocent children a year. The preacher quickly agreed to this deal as images of fame, fortune, and power danced through his greedy mind.

Upon his return home, he began planing a way to get the five children that the witchdoctor demanded and, that Easter, he came upon it.  With the promise of seeing where the Easter Bunny lived, he lured five of his congregations' children away, never to be heard from again.  The next year, he again did the same, and again, and again.  Every Easter, he would lure five more children away with tales of the Easter Bunny, but his promised fame, fortune, and power never came.  Soon he grew impatient with his bargain and decided to do something about it.  Before he could, however, the towns' people caught on to him.  A lynching mob stormed across the town and to the church, but when they got there, they found the church ablaze with no sign of the preacher.  The church burned to the ground before the blaze could be put out and with it, 20 children that he had imprisoned in the root cellar.  The preacher was never found.  He was assumed to have died in the fire, but every Good Friday since, the church has come back bringing with it a monster which can only be described as the Easter Bunny in the Church.

The Easter Bunny in the Church is a kind of monster known as a Pretender.  It can't manifest in the for-real real world on its own, but instead must posses a host body, trading places with the hosts' soul.  It usually chooses a male of low intelligence, possibly mentally retarded, and, preferably one who is already at least partially corrupted by Closetland.  This time around, the monster has chosen a mentally retarded sex offender by the name of Benny Hebbert who, prier to the Easter Bunny's intervention, was eeking out a meager living as the soul gardener in Hebberts Lawn Care.  While adults only see an over weight, sad, and balding middle aged man, or anyone else the Easter Bunny dresses up as for a short time, children always see the pretender as it really is, or at least as it mostly is.  No matter what, they will see a large 6 ft 3 in white fuzzy bunny with pink eyes and a twitching nose hop-walking around on its hind legs, or driving its beat up forest green pick-up with gardening tools in back.  Anytime an adult talks to the Easter Bunny, they would believe him to respond appropriately for the situation and how he is dressed -children would simply see the bunny twitch its nose and adjust its ears.

From the time he arrives on Good Friday to the time he departs, midnight Easter night, he would do his best to round up five or more children as he has been doing for a century now.  The Bogeyman, who rules the Easter Bunny in the Church (due to its reasons for creation), demands a tax of five children a year, and the pretender would like to have a few left over for its own amusement.  Once the pretender chooses a target, it will go to great lengths to get that child.  To accomplish this, the Easter Bunny in the Church has several tricks at its disposal.

First and foremost in its arsenal are its servants and spies, a large pack of cute fuzzy white bunnies with floppy ears and pink eyes.  It uses them to scout out potential targets for abduction as well as to lure children either to it or to the Church.  After all, what child could refuse a cute fuzzy white bunny with floppy ears?  Secondly, it has the ability to dress as any non-specific person and, to adults, be that person without question.  A simple blazer, pare of sunglasses, and paper star that says "DETEKTEV" would make adults believe it is a police detective.  Thirdly would be its seemingly endless supply of colorful Easter eggs.  These it either uses to entice children to come to it or throws them at them if they get violent.  

The eggs don't seem to do much.  When they bust open, they send out waves of nauseous fumes showing themselves to be exceptionally rotten.  The whites are gray, almost black and half-runny. The yolks are even worse and are full of small thin white worms.  When they shrike a child, the worms will attempt to crawl into the nearest orifice to get lost in the childs body.  These are the same eggs that the pretender will hide in childrens yards for reasons beyond anyones guess, other then the fact that it is an evil Easter Bunny.

Though with all these tricks, its not above a simple snatch and go kidnapping from the street or yard or breaking in and steeling the child away from his or her own bedroom.  Basically, it will do anything and everything to get at least five children to the church.

Bait
Things would start on Good Friday, the last day of school before spring break. Classes would be ending 11:30, letting the children out into the schools spring carnival fundraiser.  All about the common areas of the school, and even spread throughout the playground, would be all kinds of booths with all manner of games and plush prizes and gold fish in plastic bags.  There would be a booth set up to dunk the principal, a booth to throw a cream pie at a one teacher of another, and even pony rides.  Their would also be an Easter egg hunt for the younger kids, K-2, with all kinds of neat prizes hidden in each colorful plastic egg.

The Easter egg hunt would be held over about half the playground and out into the large field behind the school.  As the young children launch themselves out to hunt for prizes, each trying to find the most amount of eggs, a couple of the children would drift off from the rest of the kids and out and away from the watchful eyes of the teachers, hunting up more eggs.  As they do so, they would startle a white bunny with pink eyes.  Unlike most bunnies, which would run for cover if approached, this one would hold its ground and actually seem like it is trying to get the stragglers attention.  When they approach it, it would move a few yards back, and where it was would be an egg with a shinny quarter in it. The bunny would wait patently for the children to approach again before moving further off revealing yet another egg.  It would continue this behavior, each time leading the children to another egg and further away from everybody else.  Soon, the children who followed the bunny would find themselves hopelessly lost deep in the thickly wooded area that makes up the greatest portion of the park behind the school.  The bunny would continue leading them to the only sign of refuge, a white church with a fire stained black roof sitting in the middle of the wooded park.

If any of the players children are involved with the Easter egg hunt, then they would be the ones led away by the bunny, possibly with one or two other kids.  When they are being led into the forest, it should not be readily apparent that they are being lead far away or even into the forest unless the kids really stop and take a good look around.  As they fallow the bunny and the egg trail, go from describing the eggs hiding places as being in tall tufts of grass or under a bush to being under a log, nestled between a trees roots, in the hallow of a tree, etc.  

Eventually, it should dawn on them that there shouldn't be trees and woodsy things in a field, and they would probably stop at that time, but it would probably be too late.  If they had gone a decent way into the woods before realizing what was going on, then they would be at the old white church when they stop.  All around them would be tall trees stretching high into the sky, their branches and leaves knitting a thick shield of vegetation blocking out the sky.  There would be no trails or paths showing how to get back to the school; they would be lost and alone in the woods except for each other and the white bunny.

The bunny would look over at the children as if waiting for them for a few seconds, and then it would hop inside the church.  If none of the children fallow it in, it would poke its head back out of the doors, again looking expectantly at the kids.  If any of the PC's fallow it in, they would find the Easter Bunny in the Church waiting for them.  It would do its best to incapacitate them and quickly toss them into the root cellar.  If none of the PC's fallow it in, at least one of the NPC children would fallow it.  If none of the PC's are a part of the Easter egg hunt or if none of them fallow the bunny, then one of the NPC kids should be someone close to the PC's to give them reason to try to find him or her.  

Alternately, they very well might encounter the Easter Bunny on "Easter Island" in the mall.  Amidst the massive spectacle of screaming kids and oblivious parents, they would see the giant man-bunny.  They might mistake him for a man in a suit, but that would be increasingly hard to do as they see that its nose twitches, ears move according to sounds made, and, well, it would have to be one truly state of the art special effects suit to be that good.  After their encounter with the giant bunny in the mall it would decide that it wants one or all of the PC's.  The hunt would be on...

Setting Notes: The Church
The church is an old small white wooden church of simple country design.  It is the kind of church where simple romantics dream simple weddings happen.  In movies and video, its kind is usually where weddings are held, such as in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  It is the kind of church that is associated with small hidden towns and a simpler timeless age.  It is rectangular with a smaller entry area extending out of the front and supporting the bell tower and steeple.  Its front door is painted a bright shade of red and along each of the churches sides are simple stained glass windows.  The wood above the windows is stained black as if from a fire and the roof is pitch black.

The churches' interior, beyond the entryway, is empty to the point of sterility.  There are no pews, no pulpit of altar, nothing.  There is just shinny freshly waxed floorboards extending from wall to wall.  Between each of the stained glass windows are three large white candles mounted on tall iron candelabras that serve to illuminate the blank interior.  At the far end of the church, a large wooden cross that still hangs on the wall is the only other furnishing in the church.  To the right of the cross is the only other door in the church.  Normally, it would lead to the baptistery, but not in this church.  The door is very warm to the touch and, when opened, thick clouds of acidic smoke would billow forth smelling of rotten eggs and burnt hair.  Beyond the door is a treacherous charred black set of old wooden stairs leading down into the root cellar.  Any child attempting to go down the stairs would have to make a successful Feet Quiz to avoid falling through a broken or missing step or to avoid loosing his or her footing and tumbling the rest of the way down the stairs.  Any child who does falls would only suffer a point of damage, but would also be instantly grappled by what lurks beneath.

The root cellar is, more or less, a large hole in the ground.  There is no light what so ever down there and the only way any child would be able to see anything is if they bring their own source of illumination.  The walls and floor are made of scorched earth with tall charred black wooden columns that support the floor above them, though, logically speaking, they should not be able to do such in their condition.  Carpeting the floor are countless hideously burned and fried half-buried corpses of children that writhe and moan.  Any child that had been tossed down into there would be grappled and held firmly in place by these zombies as they are slowly pulled down into the ground.  Likewise, any child who attempts to cross the floor would have to make quite a few Feet Quizzes to keep from being grabbed themselves.  If they are grabbed, a successful Muscle Quiz would need to be made to break free, or a Hands Quiz if they have some kind of weapon to beat the hands away.  Each time they fail on either the Muscle Quiz or the Hands Quiz, they would be given a negative die for their next attempt.  Once they fail three times in a row, they would be stuck unless someone else helps them get free.

The church can only be found at night during the three nights that the passage to its part of Closetland and the for-real real world is opened.  The only exception to this is if they are taken or led to the church by the Easter Bunny.  The area of Closetland that surrounds the church is made of dead, gnarled and twisted trees.  In their boughs roost countless raves like a thick cover of black foliage with shinny red eyes.  Just over their peaks, during a flash of lightning, a child could make out the faint outlines of Black Bird Castle.  It goes without saying, of course, that any child who makes it to the church by night can not simply turn around and go back home the way they had come.  Once they see the church, they are in Closetland.

Resolution
Confrontation with the Monster

While the children will most likely encounter the Easter Bunny several times in the for-real real world during the course of the story, these encounters will not be as harsh and sever as they will be in closet land.  Any confrontation with the monster in the for-real real world that is not going its way swill be very short as it will quickly flee if it is ganged up on or if one of its kidnapping attempts fail.  If the children find a way to kill it, it will definitely not stick around very long at all.  It would flee and watch for a better time to ambush the kids.  It relies heavily on guerrilla tactics, ambushing, and trickery to get its prey.  However, things would change drastically once it is on its home turf.

If the Easter Bunny were confronted in Closetland, it would be far more horrible then it had been in the for-real real world.  It would drop any and all pretenses of nice happy cuteness, shedding all of its fur to expose its sick pink and gray skin.  Its eyes would change from pink to a fierce red, its teeth would grow longer and sharper, and its paws would become long viscous claws.  Its true nature would scream to the surface twisting its face into a truly viscous rodent like visage.  In its real world guise, the monster does not have any special damage bonuses for attacks, but in its true form, it has the following: Claws 2, Bite 3.

Exactly how to kill the Easter Bunny is up to the children and their imagination.  My group had decided that the best way to deal with it was to burn down its church with a fire lit by the flames from an Easter candle from one of the catholic girls church... fight the bad Easter with the good Easter.  Of course, they could simply try to avoid getting caught by the Easter Bunny until Easter is over, but then there would always be next Easter.  Another option, probably unknown to the PC's, would be to simply try to keep the Easter Bunny from meeting its five child quota by either not getting caught or rescuing any children that he might have caught.  In such a case, the tax collector would take care of the rest of the mess for them and leave the poor children to run away into the twisted forest as the two monsters square off in a hideous fight over their escaping prey.  Of course, such an option would not be the best either as, first and foremost, the kids would still be stuck in Closetland, now lost in the deadwoods, and they might either have the tax collector to deal with latter, or one pissed off bunny.

Unless the kids have their own way back from Closetland, the only other sure fire way to get back into the for-real real world is to kill the Easter Bunny.

If Monster Isn't Stopped...
Any child that is taken by the Easter Bunny will be tossed into the root cellar where they will be held until Easter night.  At that time a collector from the Bogeyman would come to the church to collect his five children leaving any excess children to the bunny to have fun with. Any children taken by the tax collector would be in for a terrible soul-wrenching meeting with the Bogeyman himself.  However, if the Bunny fails to collect five children for the Bogeyman, things could get quite messy between it and the collector.  The issuing fight between the two monsters could very well be the captured childrens last chance for escape... maybe.

Any child that is left with the Easter Bunny after Easter has passed would be lost forever.  When the bell in the churches bell-tower tolls twelve, the Easter Bunny would howl a painful, ear splitting shriek and strop almost as suddenly as he had started. As the last remnants of sound from the bell dissipate, a twisted, evil looking man in a smoking preachers outfit would be standing in place of the large bunny.  With a mad grin and a strange laugh, he would dissolve into smoke and a fire would suddenly spring up in the cellar consuming any children still down in it.  The conflagration would sear their flesh and condemn them to join the ranks of moaning and wreathing zombies that populate the scorched hole.  The fire will burn for 362 days (never quite touching the church its self) and the charred zombies of the lost children would feel every minute of it.  When the fire finally does go out, then it would be time to collect again.

If the Monster is Killed
Shortly after the death of the Easter Bunny, his church would catch fire and, in a matter of seconds, be completely engulfed in flames.  As the church burns, so would the remnants of the Easter Bunny and, unfortunately, any children who still might be caught inside the church -the final strike of the monster.  The next day, there would be a news broadcast announcing that Benny Hebbert had been arrested in connection to a kidnapping (and any other crime that the Easter Bunny had perpetrated that would come to the attention of the adults) that had transpired of the Easter weekend.  A few details would be given about him as footage of an over weight, balding, water eyed, and sad looking man in a third rate Easter Bunny costume is placed in back of a police cruiser.

Loose Threads
1) If the children were "saved" by the tax collector, what about it?  Will it be coming to take them to the Bogeyman personally or will it just cut its losses?

2) What about the eggs and the worms in them?  If any got into a child, what will happen next.  Will it be bad, really bad, really really bad, or will nothing happen at all?  And what about the eggs that the Easter Bunny had been hiding?  Will they hatch something terrible?  Maybe they will just lurk about, waiting to be found next Easter... and to what end?

3) And what about the story of the preacher?  How true is it?  If any child gets bored enough to actually look into it, they would find that, indeed there was a church in the exact spot where the Easter Bunnies had appeared and, in 1926, it had burnt to the ground with six children inside.  The minister of the church was a man by the name of Minister William Carroll.  He had been in several front-page stories in the papers of the time, being implicated in multiple kidnapping charges, conspiracy to commit murder, and accessory to murder.  Most of the allegations came due to his close association with a Mr. Lloyd Masters, a sweatshop owner and infamous child slaver who's trial and consequent incarceration made headlines for some time.  Minister Carroll had been reported to die in the blaze as well, though the evidence was never conclusive.
"And yes, I can love my fellow man,
But I'll be damned if I'll love yours."
~The Sisters of Mercy

Ron Edwards

Hiya,

The Bait
This was a con demo, so I simply provided sheets for a brother and a sister, and their cousin. The two families were getting together over the Christmas holidays, so that settles "who we are and where we are" right there.

The Hook
Toys began to disappear. I started it off through the kids' friends at the park, including a missing favorite watch (precipitating a possible playground fight) and a missing Barbie (including a very scary and surreal encounter with Barbie's voice in a wooded part of the park). Of course, the player-character kids then discover that their favorite or special things are missing.

The Resolution
No problem! I left it wide open. It could be a matter of confronting the Evil Thing in the Closet (whose connection or purpose regarding the toys is left totally unexplained), who has Mother's Masque and Entangling. It could be a matter of heading out into the park-woods at night and doing a "finding the toys" kid ritual. It could be a matter of Christmas morning, in which the toys in the boxes would either be utterly terrifying abominations or perfectly wonderful, depending on how the Belief Magic goes.

Best,
Ron

saint ash

I used this senerio with a specific player, but i think it could be adapted. it has a dark fairy tale feel.
the hook.
The char. was a little girl who love fairy tales and thought of her self as a princess. She had even devolped a problem eating apples, ( they might be poisened after all). She lived alone with her father happily, until one day her daddy met some one. All of the other adults in this char.'s life were very happy he was finaly dating again after the death of her mom, (it had been so long ago...he really should be moving on with his life, it wasn't healthy after all...). No body would listen to the girl when she tried to tell them that she now had THE wicked stepmother. The step mother kept trying to lock her in her room or the basement, and left her behind on a family hike in the woods, all of this would always be blamed on the little girl who couldn't understand why her dad wasn't listening to her anymore. The worst thing was the stepmom kept trying to feed this girl apples, and of course the girl wouldn't eat them. She could see that they were poisened, looking all grey and blotchy. She was told that she would sit at the table until she ate her snack and so the girl did, rather defiantly for an hour or two, untill here daddy came home. He asked her what was wrong, and told her the apples looked yummy to him. He even ate one to show her it wasn't poisened, though the little girl did try to stop him. Slowly over the evening her daddy started not to feel too well and in the middle of the night she and her wicked step mom rushed daddy to the hospital. the little girl was told daddy was very sick and may have to be in the hospital for a while. The doctors didn't know what was wrong. And now the little girl had quite a problem indeed, she was ALONE with her wicked stepmother.

the bait.
you have to save your dad, and your self, running away and hiding won't make daddy get better. you are gonna have to confront the evil stepmom head on.

the resolution.
you will have to get rid of the wicked stepmom in a true fairy tale fashion, trick her into drinking holy water or eating one of her own apples or maybe a piece of magic jewlery might do the trick. If she is just posses then a visible change comes over her and she becomes normal, but with no memory of what happend after the possesion,( she won't even know the girl or her father, that can get interesting...) Or she can disapper into a puff of smoke and ash or dissovle into a puddle of water like a witch, this will also present some problems as well. when the wicked stepmom has been delt with,the spell is broken and daddy make a full recovery, but things are definetly not back to normal. And is daddy fully recovered or is he a bit tainted now too?



the
I slept and drempt that life was beauty,
I woke and found that life was duty.

Dios-Flakk

Welcome to my campaign "How safe IS School?".
This is more aimed at a True Horror style, because it has potential to be quite dark and brutal.

And were off!

BACKGROUND: This story takes place in a small school with only a few hundred students or so. The grades are K,1,2,3,4, and 5. The janitor, one Mr. Wilson, is a kind old man who is very nice to the children. When a toy is lost, he displays it in a cabinet for the owner to pick up and take back home. The kids love him so much, that they have never tried to steal someone elses toy in this way. But a few days ago, he failed to show up for work. Police went to his house to find him at the bottom of his stairs with a broken neck. Needless to say, the children were crushed at this, and the school hired his replacement: Mr. Drim. The instant he was introduced at a schoolwide assembly, the chldren were scared of him. Middle-aged, slick black hair, a toothy scowl, and a hooked nose. But he isn't really what he seems.....

It started with him taking kids toys out of sheer pleasure.
Recently, (within a week or two) students have begun to disappear. The adults and authority (with their lack of Innocence) figure it as some prowler abducting kids and taking them away. For real though, Mr. Drim takes a child when they have some reason to be with him, and takes them into his office. His office has a locker against the wall, that opens to reveal a hole in the plaster of the wall, leading downstairs to the old underground swimming pools the school owned, before they had to close it down due to a fitting reason.
Mr. Drim takes the children down there, tortures, violates, and eventually mangles their bodies to display on a gruesome altar to (you guessed it) Lamashtu - King of Wrath.

HOOK: A way to get the characters involved is one of many.
1) A player (or NPC) is taken by the janitor after school, and the players have to find a way to get police down there ("But the pools aren't in use anymore, you can't get down there"). If it is a player who is captured, then they can have chances to escape/battle him and try to get someone to help.

2) A friend of one of the players is told to go to Mr. Drim after school and disappears. Ensue a quest to get to him/her before the are sacrificed to the Kings.

3) ALL of the players are abducted (and if they arent friends its even better) because they have to learn to work together to escape and get help.

4) The players stumble upon the hidden sacrificial area, and are seen by Mr. Drim. They escape but noone believes them and they are forced to go back to the "safety" of school. All of a sudden, taking the attendance down or going to the washroom alone is a very bad idea.

5) A players toy is taken from them by Mr. Drim and you break into his office after hours to get it (nice way to add in some hidden Hand-me-downs), this in turn, becomes #4

RESOLUTION:  There are probably alot of outcomes to this scenario.
1)Janitor is caught, jailed and the bodies are found.

2)Players save community and the Kings now target them for revenge

3)The players are sacrificed to Lamashtu, and end up in Closetland (another campaign??)

4)The janitor is taken out of the picutre.....and replaced by an even WORSE one, be him infected by Clostetland or not

As you can see, this could go many different ways, and if you DO happen to play this campaign, post up how it goes because I haven't been able to run it yet, and would like to see if is works!

Have fun, and good gaming.
So what?  I'm an idiot.  Don't make fun of me for it.  If you were me, you'd be an idiot too!

If it hasnt changed: my short story is availabel at:
ftp://65.93.185.183/Feb4_Henley.doc