Herein are some new plothooks, game hooks, urban legends, ideas et al that can be used for any horror, creepy or otherwise spooky game (or can be inserted in otherwise normal adventures).
Please feel free to share :D
The Hag
"Where are you, where are you, little miss Ann?
In the pot, stewing with Seamus and Sam."
- children's rhyme, unknown origin
There exists within the bowels of the city a creature of fearsome reputation and hideous countenance. She is said to prey upon the orphans and the street urchins, the beggars and the destitute. Those who won't be missed, who have no one to mourn for them. It is said she consumes their bodies and eats their skin, leaving only rat gnawed bones.
Still others deny this and contend that she merely eats the bodies, flaying the skin from their hides and wears it, such that she may blend in with the 'normal' populace. And from there, she may target others to satiate her hunger and slake her thirst for blood.
Others say that she does this not out of malice but for revenge, that her children were torn from her and so she robs others of theirs. Although this does not explain why she targets the poor and impoverished.
Yet for all this, no one has actually seen her. Oh, there are claims and rumors of sightings but these are unconfirmed. She is alternatively said to be an actual hag, a dragon in disguise or a fiend. Others claim a vampire as the culprit or a ghoul.
A minority suggest it is a demigod, cursed to remain upon this mortal coil and cut off from worship or veneration. Furious, she avenges herself by eating innocents, to deny others what is most precious to them.
Sanguineum, Ex Sanguinius
The City does not shy away from violence. It permeates and underlies every action and reaction. From extortion and muggings to the cruelty and barbarity of the so-called Justice Courts, violence is as much the existential reality of the City as its soul.
It was not surprisingly then, when the bodies started turning up. It was the children who discovered them, floating in sewers or washed up along the harbor, rotting and drowned in a vile stench. Bloated they were from prolonged immersion within the Salty Drink.
To a place as violent as the City, this was nothing if not unusual; murders happened every day and accidents were always around the corner, poised for the unwary and superstitious alike.
What drew the eye to these unfortunates was not so much the manner of their deaths or condition of their bodies (their state of decay notwithstanding), it was the curious nature of the marks left upon their bruised throats. To all perception and knowledgeable eye, it was almost as if the noose of a rope was left permanently imprinted upon the skin, yet the positioning of the marks suggested the physical act of strangulation.
What then, what act, could leave such massive trauma upon the body?
As ever, darker legends prevail. It is rumored that such acts, such gross violations are the means to express the unsactionable, exsanguination to feed a perverse desire for blood. Detractors have dismissed this claim of course, the act of strangulation is so far removed from the systematic act of exsanguination that any comparison is laughable if not asinine.
These ones present an altogether different take, that the act is the means to express penance. That the method is the means to expel sin from the body. That all targeted were at least criminals, oxygen thieves, with none to miss them or mourn them.
Perhaps there is an even more horrific explanation; that all the suggestions and conjectures so put forward are correct...to a point. In the lunatic ravings of asylum inmates and the irrevocably insane can be found a singularity clarity that cuts through all deceptions.
These ones offer a single theory. The act is the means to draw blood, but it not for the base purpose of expelling sin, it is the means to derive nourishment and the means to perpetuate hate. These ones suggest that all murdered were not criminals, but members of faith. That the killer in question harbors an irrational and psychotic need to murder, having been grievously wronged in the past. That all killed were clerics. The imprint of the noose to is both to signify the irony and ignominy of their deaths.
The darkest myths claim that was taken was not blood, but something all together more precious, the soul.
What Lingers Here
There is a stain within a certain room that animals and even monsters dare not venture near. It appears seemingly as a blotch of paint; carelessly dabbed upon the hard wooden floors, themselves rotting with neglect and age.
No one lingers for long within that room; all (those intelligent enough) who hastily withdraw speak of an oppressive presence, its malign glare settling upon one's soul and laying it bare like so much useless paper.
All who have been in the room dream of rotting teeth and putrid flesh replacing the moon; that drips and shudders onto the firmament. This persists for two weeks, after which their dreams return to normal.
Woeful Moon
Each night for the past two weeks, the moon looks as if something has taken a bite out of it; each day, the total area consumed gets progressively bigger. To the point that the moon will be entirely devoured come the full month.
Animals are becoming increasingly agitated, attacking strangers, passerbys and any owners. Each night, the still silence is punctuated by a terrifying, piercing scream.
Blood begins to drip from trees and teeth flower in plants. Animals begin to ram themselves bodily against trees, causing their forms to explode.
Once the moon is entirely devoured, the cycle resets to the time before any of this happened; no one or thing has any memory of this event ever occurring.
The Agonised City
Formed from the birth/death screams of an aborted atropal, the Screaming City sits within a mass of tumorous growth. Its buildings are pustules littered with seething masses of eyes, its portals maws of gnashing, twisted teeth.
The sun, itself, is a dripping necrotic heart, pulsing with unholy vigor and rhythm, its steady drone felt within the very bones of any unfortunates who dwell here. Its hypnotic caress making any inhabitants malleable and pliable.
Screams shatter through the air at irregular intervals, informing all with gross might the terrifying reality of existence. All here mutate. Into monstrosities of flesh and bone; with no discernible reason, no logical cause.
It is a prison, a jail of organs that inevitably flays all who live here.