IF YOU PLAY IN MY GAME DON'T READ THIS:
So I am working on doing a night or two of horror theme in the campaign I am running.
The characters are level 11 (will hit level 12 very shortly) and Demons have played a large role in the game.
I am starting to bring this thing to a close so I want to tie this into the rest of the story. What I am thinking to do is...
The town is ruled by a Baron (who happens to be a vampire, no originality there) and he is about to hold court. Several noble families have been arriving in town and some have been found dead, their bodies torn to pieces and their hearts removed.
The party will most likely be trying to hide their identities- due to other events in the world.
Essentially the Baron has a Troll-Vampire servent who is collecting 7 "noble hearts" for a ceremony to summon a Demon-Lord. He is doing this because he made a deal some time back that saved his daughters life- but twisted her and him. She is Shiningchild/Vampire and he is a straight up vampire.
So I am looking for some thoughts on how to shape this, keep it feeling halloweeny/horrory (maybe a little mystery too).
If you need more info let me know, I spoiler tagged above in case of accidental clicking by those who might be involved.
1. The PCs are disguised as people from one of the dead Noble's lands, and when they arrive the Nobleman's wife starts giving them orders to find her husband's killer and protect her son, their new "Lord".
2. The hearts aren't being removed as part of the ceremony, they're being removed to hide the fact that the murders were being committed with a specific and easily identifiable cursed weapon that is used in the ceremony.
3. The guy the PCs need to talk to is the demon lord himself. The PCs need to either perform their own summoning before the vampire does his, or somehow hijack the vampire's ceremony.
3a. The PCs start their summoning at the exact same time the vampire begins his. The summonings interact, wackiness ensues.
4. Many of the local young women find themselves wandering about in a trance or waking up in strange places. What's happening is that the vampire needs a virtuous maiden for the ceremony and is having quite a bit of trouble finding one.
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Music is helpful. I like to keep a fresh 120 gigs of gaming music on hand so I have music for all situations. Desert/Combat/Big Cities/Scary Dungeons/Temples, etc.
Some good suggestions for horror music are:
Two Steps from Hell: Ashes
Two Steps from Hell: Shadows and Nightmares
Bram Stokers Dracual OST
Diablo 1&2 OST
Danny Elfman's Sleepy Hollow OST
Silent Hill/Resident Evil OST
The Litanies of Satan - Diamanda Galas
The Red Violin OST (some of it)
Doom/Doom 64 OST
This is seriously just a drop in the bucket. It adds a LOT!
For me the weather helps to set the mood, both as a contrast and a as amplifier. Maybe the townsfolk could do something creepy out of superstition, like nail pig hearts to there frontdoors? Could one of the death noble people haunt the place? If you're worried they migth try to get information out of him you could say that he went mad from the pain of being ripped appart. A DM I play with mentions birds and little mamals being absent (or not, or specific races being there) this works to set the mood for me.
I had an undead girl in my campaign, when the charaters met her they thought she was alive. She was kind, but sad and a little distracted, she'd stop in the middle of a sentence to stare at something they couldn't see stareded humming creepy song out of nothing. She giggeld at jokes they made and was nice to them, but kept on mentioning that she was cold. The lovely thing was that the got attached, and when she started sucking blood of the person looking afther her (wich they appointed) they really freaked out.
President, Silver Crescent Publishing
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Here's a possibility which kind of stems off of Skylark's concept.
Have one of the dead nobles appear to the PCs. A soft blue light wakens one of them and the figure makes no aggressive actions and in fact seems to be in great pain (obviously the vampiric baron may have conducted some manner of ritual or used a particular item meant to prevent their sould from returning but this particular one was stronger than most, yet his time is limited).
If the PCs daudle or take too long to gather you can have him flicker a bit and seem to weaken. The apparition won't know a great deal about the situation, but depending on how they were slain he may be able to identify the troll attacker by a vague description at least. You could set a limit on questions say, 5. Limit the apparitions knowledge of the situation to the things you want them to know and reduce the number of available questions depending on how long it takes the PCs to awaken and gather.
At the end have the apparition shriek in pain and appear to be torn apart (be it in the manner that he was killed or simply a violent dissapation of the form).
That would set a kind of creepy tone while giving them a little bit of a lead I would think.
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Ohhh. Maybe because the party is snooping around looking for clues at the locations of the murders, they get pegged as the murderers. A hint dropped by the vampire lord, once he is aware of their involvement. From that point he could just mess with them with dark visions and make them start to believe that they are the actual killers.
My first suggestion for the get together is a masquerade. A second suggestion is that he is taking the town over piece by piece, Salem's Lot style, and it becomes a guessing game as to who is under his control and who isn't. Those that are under his control are naturally trying to further the baron's agenda.
I would change the ritual to something less conspicuous, but at least equally as hard to attain - spinal fluid or even soul energy is the first thing that jumps to mind. One idea I have is that he is not trying to summon a demonic lord but rather to free one. The place the lord is trapped is a nearby forest, mountain, or somewhere underground. Heroes long ago banished him there as he was too powerful to send back to the abyss or what have you. I would watch the movie The Keep for a good way to handle that concept.
The characters stumble into a nearby building or the keep itself and find a torture chamber where one of these nobles are and they find a book or journal that details what the process is and why they are doing it. The trail eventually leads back to the baron and a big fight ensues between the players, the baron, and those loyal to the baron. Just some ideas, I usually have more thought out and detailed ideas but it is getting rather late. If any of this interests you I can write something rather detailed out for you. I write horror quite often, more sci-fi of late, but I always like a challenge. I am fairly graphic most times but I can tame it back some.