Last gaming session, my party entered The Styes. They quickly encountered Refrum, who I described as being afflicted with Redface. The party's Arcane Trickster stayed as far away as possible - afraid that she would catch whatever he had. Guess who was the only PC to fail their fort save? :) In addition, this same PC has received a prophecy about some form of betrayal happening in her future - though she hasn't figured that out yet.
So playing on those two components, I wrote the following dream for the Arcane Trickster. I'll be mailing it to her shortly before our game session (we play on-line) so she'll have little time to react to it. The session will start with everybody hearing her screaming. In addition, she'll wake up with scratch marks on her arms - though they won't impose any penalty. :)
Hope you enjoy it.
The building is old – really old. No doors or windows are visible, and the only light in the room comes from a single torch in a sconce on the wall. The torch flickers, sending shadows all around the decrepit building. In the shadows, creatures flitter and skulk; they seem unnatural somehow, but whenever you focus your attention, they disappear. Shelves are everywhere in this dilapidated building, covered in jars and bottles and tubes. Dust and cobwebs are thick on everything, and the air is oppressive, seemingly trying to strangle the life from you.
What you notice most, though, is the itching. The horrible, burning itching. You have to stop the itching before it drives you mad! You decide this is an apothecary, and begin opening jars and jugs – looking for anything to stop the itch. You rub all sorts of liquids and powders into your arms, face, neck – anywhere and anything to stop that itching.
Nothing helps, and you scratch at the itching. You dig into your skin, intent on ripping out the source of the itch. It doesn’t help, of course, and only serves to make the itch more concentrated, more painful. You dig your long, sharp fingernails into your arms and face. Rivulets of blood appear under your incessant clawing at your own flesh, but that itch won’t go away.
A man is behind the counter. You’re certain he wasn’t there a moment ago, but here he is now. He seems larger than life, though you can’t see his face. The shadows jump and swirl around him, intent on keeping his identity a secret. Somehow, though, his presence comforts you. He seems oddly familiar to you, but you can’t place his presence. He extends his hand towards you, and you notice that he’s holding a small urn. You remove the lid and inside the urn is a foul smelling, sickly green paste.
You hold the urn away from you trying to get the smell as far away as possible. But the itching – gods, the itching. It consumes you, intent on driving you insane. The man behind the counter looks at you through the shadows and nods, and stretches out his arm to push the urn back towards you. Hesitantly, you dip a finger into the goop inside the urn, and instantly the itching in that finger ceases. Relieved to have a solution, you dig into the urn, slathering the foul smelling cream over your arms, face, neck, legs – anywhere. As the cream rubs into your skin, the itching stops almost immediately.
The man behind the counter laughs; suddenly, his presence no longer comforts you – quite the opposite, it unnerves you. His laugh isn’t pleasant, and you get the feeling you’re the target of some joke. You look down at your hands and arms. The itching and burning is gone. All sensation is gone, you realize. You can do nothing but watch in horror as your skin slowly melts, sloughing off your body, exposing muscle and bone underneath. The man cackles madly, and you shake off your initial terror and scream.
Suddenly you’re awake, in your room in the inn.
Ever since writing this, I've decided that anybody who fails their save for Redface will have an odd dream. :evil grin:
You've got me scratching now! I love it Zherog...
As you know, I like having the monsters come out of adventures to haunt the PCs occasionally, and your twist to the Styes plot is a great idea. In the current Styes campaign I'm running the PCs have fallen foul of a set of mask wearing wererats who have taken to turning up at all kinds of unwelcome hours - one of the twists later on is that these rats can enter the heroes dreams...I'll have to remember your scratching idea for then...
Mr Greer has had a great thread recently about horror adventures and things that scare you, and it threw up some interesting and inspirational points.
Are you going to fill us in on the heroes nightmares on the campaigns discusion boards?
Rich
I'm glad you enjoyed it, Rich. :) I've been reading along on the "What Scares You?" thread as well - good stuff.
I've been writing the campaign up in a "story" format on another message board, but it's going slowly. At my current pace, it'll be at least a year before the story gets to the Styes and dream sequence. I can cross post the story here, or even just give a link certainly, if people are that interested in it.
And I am, of course, hoping somebody else fails their Fort save against Redface. :) Everybody else has such exploitable fears in their character backgrounds. :evil grin:
Creative Director
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Ahhh, Redface. I ran "The Styes" as part of my Saturday game and while most of the group was sufficiently disturbed and distraught by the environs, one player in particular got a bit riled up at the horror. He was playing a warlock, and was considering burning the Styes to the ground in order to do a favor to those who were forced to live there but I told him the buildings were mostly too soggy to burn and that the polluted water would probably burn better than the buildings. By the time they realized Redface was a huge problem in the area, and I had them make Fortitude saves (but didn't tell them the DC) they weren't all sure they'd made the save to resist. The poor warlock made the save by 2 points, but he assumed he had caught the Redface anyway and started (on his own) developing psychosomatic symptoms of the sickness, blaming his failed rolls on the sickness. Good times!
:D That's awesome. I didn't tell my players the DC either. But the Arcane Trickster rolled so poorly (a total of 8) that I guess she just assumed (correctly) she failed. Her paranoia is what lead me to develop the dream in the first place.
Next session (hopefully this Saturday evening) they'll make their way to the insane asylum to talk to the good doctor there. From there, they should be all set to go "visit" Mr. Dory. :)
I've made a few changes - but nothing drastic. I replaced Tharizdun with Scahrossar (from Book of Vile Darkness) because a cult of hers has been a recurring pain in their collective asses the whole campaign. I've also changed the ending, in that I didn't see the Kraken/Aboleth fitting my campaign. Instead, the cult of Scahrossar provides enough of an ending for this piece - they've been kidnapping young girls from the PC's home city, and the PCs have been tasked with getting the girls back. :evil grin:
Ahhh, Redface. I ran "The Styes" as part of my Saturday game and while most of the group was sufficiently disturbed and distraught by the environs, one player in particular got a bit riled up at the horror. He was playing a warlock, and was considering burning the Styes to the ground in order to do a favor to those who were forced to live there but I told him the buildings were mostly too soggy to burn and that the polluted water would probably burn better than the buildings. By the time they realized Redface was a huge problem in the area, and I had them make Fortitude saves (but didn't tell them the DC) they weren't all sure they'd made the save to resist. The poor warlock made the save by 2 points, but he assumed he had caught the Redface anyway and started (on his own) developing psychosomatic symptoms of the sickness, blaming his failed rolls on the sickness. Good times!
I've just started running a new Styes campaign with wererats as the main villains (amongst many others, lovely mind-flayers being one) and told the players that every third person in the city is rumoured to be infected - ah the paranoia of a single bite! - the players are already convinced that at least half of the group are wererats! And the half that think they aren't, don't seem sure...
So Saturday the Arcane Trickster had her nightmare. :D I e-mailed it to her about 15 minutes before our game was supposed to start - I wanted her to react to it, rather than having time to ponder it. She was significantly freaked out by it in RL, and that carried over nicely to her RP. The rest of the party freaked when they got a look at her and saw her arms and face covered in scratches. :D
She never really went into details about the dream - just gave them the overview. Then she kept the hood of her cloak drawn up tight all night. When the boy at the asylum stared at her before answering a question, she freaked and slunk off to the back of the group. ;)
Two more have failed their saves. The NPC bard who has also become the love interest of one of the players failed; and the Arcane Trickster's familiar also failed. :evil grin: So I get to freak her out some more....
This is slightly related... Ever since reading Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, I've had much more interest and creativity in using dreams to freak out my players and insert significant plot twists and foreshadowing. Jordan's first two books in the series used a lot of dream-but-not-a-dream elements a la Tel'aran'rhiod (not sure of the spelling) or The World of Dreams. I just sent a significant one at our group's paladin that should give him a lot to think about.
Just thought I'd chime in on how cool using dreams in-game are ;)
One of the most fun things you can do is get the other PCs to "conspire" against one of your players...I did this once in Ravenloft when the PCs fought a mohrg. It greatly outclassed them, and although they fought bravely, eventually it paralyzed them all. It propped the paladin up with his eyes open and then messily devoured his charges in front of him...
The players did a great job roleplaying their desperation and fear, and just as the mohrg reached for the paladin...surprise! It was all a dream.
He was so mad but later admitted it was really cool. Unfortunately, this is the kind of trick you can only pull once...
..a year or so.
-Amber S.
:-D Well, the fact that you put the rest of us up to it beforehand certainly didn't hurt our acting any. :-D
We had some fun and games in the Styes last night,
the party convinced themselves so much that one of their number was infected by wererats that they killed him - he'd actually made his save but had been troubled by dreams for a few days.
Fancy getting the wrong one of their little band.
I think Zherog, that the next development is to find scratch marks inside one of their rooms - perhaps the very character the infected pc likes most - frustrated that she can't kill them, confused, troubled by dreams...
Rich