Rad. Putting that stuff there for access.

So, to focus on the monster: is it a point? Is it in support of a point? Or is it flavour?

So, the purpose of the place is to show that Something More Is Going On.

@BESW The monster could actually be discarded, it was one of the first things I thought of using in there. But, it could be in support of a point: the point that there is more to the world.

That there really are freakishly scary things.

That there can be things to which the players are small and helpless.

I like it.

In this adventure, I want to show them there's more going on. But I want to also show them that in the grand scheme of things going on, they can be puny and insignificant.

Basically, I want to give them that sense Lovecraft was trying to convey: that the cosmos is enormous, and the best they can hope for from it is indifference.

The arcane appearing in our world is the cosmos not being indifferent.

And whilst some of it is within their control and ability to stop, most of it is beyond them.

Okay, then... give them indifference.

Terrifying, lethal indifference.

That, then, is your thesis, and here is the point of the place: It is a portal into cosmic panic.

Nothing like getting smack about by a big terrifying creature that then says "Now stay out of my way mosquitoes, I have important things to do"?

@Mourdos No. It does not notice you. To be smacked, to be insulted, to be brushed aside, is to be acknowledged.

The party must make drastic effort to be noticed, even to the extent that the thing chooses to brush them aside.

Yes... you're right. I had to head outside to put some things in the bin, but thought about it on the way: I was going to put a monster in there that cared about hunting them.

I need to put a monster in there that doesn't care about hunting them. It can do harm to them, but they don't matter to it enough for it to exert itself doing so.

Do you remember my yeti adventure?

@BESW Yes.

Do you remember what finally pushed the party over the edge, making one Investigator act like she'd snapped even before she hit 6 Insanity?

@BESW One investigator picked up an orb, which attached itself to his hand. One of the women decided she had to tear it off him, and was going to cut off his hand if necessary.

Yes, and what made her believe she had to do this?

The Intelligence told her it wanted a physical form of its own, and that the orbs were its prosthetics.

@BESW She thought it'd possess him.

The Intelligence had already possessed a monk; that was not a new concept. Her conclusion was that the orb was going to treat the Investigator as raw material to create the Intelligence's physical form.

The monk had been possessed while exploring the astral plane; he'd been chosen for his powers and his skills.

This thing with the orb? It was random, uncaring. Anyone who picked up an orb was suitable fodder for its machinations.

I need a creature that isn't just a regular predator then.

You need a creature whose mere existence is a threat. Something that threatens humans with a horrible fate as casually and uncaringly as it rolls over or yawns.

@BESW What could I create? Lovecraft was inspired by various parts of mythology and folk lore:

> The Scandinavian Eddas and Sagas thunder with cosmic horror, and shake with the stark fear of Ymir and his shapeless spawn; whilst our own Anglo-Saxon Beowulf and the later Continental Nibelung tales are full of eldritch weirdness. Dante is a pioneer in the classic capture of macabre atmosphere, and in Spenser’s stately stanzas will be seen more than a few touches of fantastic terror in landscape, incident, and character.

Isn't that dangerous to develop though ? How do you explain the fact that this creature is there in the first place? And how do you explain that humanity wasn't destroyed "accidentaly" by sch creature?

@Saffron I don't have to.

@Saffron Logic later. Atmosphere and function now.

We're on the voyage out right now

Oh sorry

(But being a mad scientist's lab, there's a built-in reason it's there and hasn't wiped us out: it's brand new, either newly created or newly brought to this plane.)

I need, like, a shoggoth. Or a creature that's, I don't know, busy collecting debris, monsters, whatever, and using them for something. (Whatever it is. Bear? Dead. Deer? Putty.)

But even that sounds like it's going to effort.

This just came on my playlist.

@BESW [listens]

I think you can try to get ideas from your own experience of life

Try to find out what is insignificant for you

It's hard because, well, it's insignificatn

But it might help you get in the mind of such creature

I'm presently imagining a creature that's present in noxious mist, and taking steps to make sure that mist spreads.

Yup, easy and literal: killing us is as easy as breathing for this thing, because it vents some sort of toxin.

And this does something else which is a crucial element of good horror (and the yeti sequel "Web of Fear" does it very well): a thing which represents the thing you're afraid of.

Or maybe it's movements involve the whole space around him to shiver and scatter

In Jaws we don't fear a dock; we fear the shark we haven't seen, but which the dock represents.

Inspiration from lovecraft non euclidian creatures

fckyeahhplovecraft.tumblr.com/post/28266259600/…

(Just to get my brainjuices going, with something to work with that isn't of this world.)

@BESW I'm gonna return to it later too. They probably won't be able to kill it. So, later, it'll still be there - or be somewhere. They'll be aware that there is something out there, turning atmosphere to toxin. And later, they'll meet it again.

That's excellent; the thing they know is out there, but could only run from.

With this there, I'm wondering if I should still keep this bit:

Okay, so here's a thing.

Yeah?

The monster's vapours don't kill people, because that's not dramatic in the Fate sense, and also because it's over too fast.

@BESW Right, I agree.

They warp, twist, change.

And the aetheric device is there to show it.

Present the device in a safe, controlled fashion.

Mutate some mice, maybe.

Then when they see the same eerie glow moving through the halls as they explore...

Chekhov's mutagen.

@BESW ... so... here's what I could do: they make it through to the lab uneventfully enough. They find papers, maybe a cure, and then they find that eerie glow coming from some equipment surrounded by some mutated things in small glass tanks.

But then, the way they came, they find this creature. It and its vapours are in the way.

Or, no. They find the device. But it's not where the papers and the cure are. There's more than one lab, after all.

Right.

Tell them what the problem is, and put it between them and the solution.

I might introduce the creature in a courtyard, with wilted, twisted plants, and a small pack of... things following it. They're like tentacles on legs.

and it walks slowly across, door A to door B.

You haven't seen Attack the Block yet, have you?

@BESW I haven't, but I can make a point of seeing it well before running this.

And--key point-- um, spoilers?

I do know about the first introduction of the monsters.

@BESW hold off on those, i'll watch this within a few days ;)

Okay.

Basically, there's a plot point (you can see it coming, I think) which I think would be really useful to you here.

@BESW hmmm...

movie's 88 minutes... it's 9:30pm... I could have it watched by 11pm.

... 'cept I should probably aim to sleep relatively early tonight, so I will watch it tomorrow night instead, or on the weekend

That seems disappointingly prudent.

@BESW Yes indeed, but I have good reasons to get up extra early tomorrow morning.

Or alternately, earlier than necessary to be within minutes of just in time for the bus.

The Fairy Nuff grudingly concedes.

Now, other things about the setting: do you want the monster to be the main "cosmic fear" element in an otherwise "ordinary" rotting mad science lair?

@BESW I think so. I don't want to suddenly dump a lot of things in there. I just want to give them a little peek.

Like: "This setting is not safe. Here is an example."

Awesome.

So...

Save the monster for the end.

@BESW Ooohh?

They see evidence of the monster--mutants, traces of mist that leave them dizzy and nauseous, experiments leading up to its creation/summoning, evidence of its escape from wherever it was being held.

........ oh goodness. Do I put twisted mutated things and noxious fumes in the hallway, then show them --

YES.

They slowly get the sense that Something Is Wrong, And It Lives Here.

Then, when the mist thickens and an eerie glow begins wobbling from within it, reflected around the corner, they do not have to see the Thing; the evidence of it is sufficient to set them running.

They should have leisurely time to explore the place, discover things, begin puzzling things out.

Then, when they know what they have to do in the place, bring their world down around them before they can do it.

@BESW What do you mean?

When they finally find out where the werewolf lab must be, fill it with fumes?

and introduce the monster etc?

When the monster appears, there should be no more exploring they need to do. Their goal is plain, the steps to achieving it are clear. Then slam a sanity-shattering monster down between them and their goal.

The hallways they need to traverse fill with mist, the open door they have to pass sheds an eerie wobbling light, the cages of monkeys they saw earlier are now ripped to bits of wire from the inside out.

Let them become familiar with the place before the monster changes everything.

Let the lab become a microcosm of their entire universe: familiar, known, with only a tinge of strangeness around the edges, until--it becomes a place that promises only unknown terror.

This ties into the Attack the Block plot point, BTW.

There's a justification for the sudden entry of the monster.

(Which I can't stop imagining as a long, flattened reptile like a dragonic crocodile snorting toxic fumes from its nostrils.)

@BESW This one, or the attack the block one?

Your monster.

@BESW alien and mobile enough, cool ;)

I know it's not as otherworldly as you were imagining.

It isn't, I just need to make it otherworldly. Or let the players imagine it as such.

I'm imagining that it's as much a victim of the mutations as anything it comes into contact with, and that the aetheric device is the source of the Weird.

@BESW So to my understanding: give them a castle. Let them wander it. Have a list of things to reveal to them:

The monster just got such a highly concentrated dose Weird that it's now a Weird Nexus itself.

the spoil lair 2: The spoilering

Let them explore until they finally find the lab, and get what they came for. Then start changing everything.

Pretty much, yes.

Though if possible, I'd have things change just before they can get what they came for, so the changing becomes an obstacle to accomplishing their goal, instead of just a "cool guys don't look at Weird" running away scene.

@BESW Yeah, that's important.

Though how do I do that? At the moment, the obstacle is: there's a room and they don't know where it is.

Or maybe they do. Maybe someone tells them or makes it plain to them where in the castle the room is, it's just a matter of getting to it.

How do you discover where a room is without being next to it?

@BESW Find a map or directory, find direction signs, ask someone who knows where it is.

Now translate that into "ruined castle laboratory."

A lab journal describing access to a secret experiment chamber, perhaps.

Maybe they find the lab, but it's sealed and they need to find a key/password/talisman to get in.

When they find that, things get Weird as they head back to the goal room.

@BESW Side note: just found out how to handle the rats. Have a room of rats in cages with a little network of tubes keeping them fed and watered. The cages run along one of the walls. In one corner sits a glowing aetheric device: more cages, and inside them, tendrilly things only vaguely recognisable as rats, as if they used to be rats but came unwound like a loose rope.

In the cages closest to the device: rats beginning to show the same signs.

@BESW Hmm. My main concern with letting them know where it is, is that they have the engineer and two of them have craft as a really good stat.

"It's at the top of the tower." "We build climbing hooks." "The door is locked." "We dismantle it."

Have they come up against real magicy magical magic yet?

"It's across this pit." "We make a grappling rope."

@BESW No. A werewolf and a monster.

Ward the door.

@BESW !!

Make it something representative of the uncaring supernatural, like a door that just isn't actually there unless you have the right talisman.

@BESW !!!!!!!!!!!!

A room that isn't actually there either.

For example: a door which opens into an empty room.

Yeah!

If you have the right talisman when you open the door, it instead leads to the werewolf lab.

Now you have a room they can find before they can access it, and the manner of doing so links back into the place's narrative purpose.

There's unexplainably freaky, utterly unnatural stuff in the world, and your efforts to interact with it on your terms are met with effortless passive resistance.

The door could lead to a gigantic void of emptyness

@BESW Oh man. 1. Find creepy stuff. 2. Find room. 3. Find more creepy stuff. 4. Find talisman. 5. MAXIMUM CREEPY STUFF.

Enforcing the fact that they are nothing

@Saffron If I use the gentle caress of doing as little as possible, I think going for something subtle and low-impact like an empty room would be appropriate! But yes... rooms opening to nothingness is a device I can use another time 8)

So long as nobody says "My God, it's full of stars!"

I broke a GM that way.

@BESW Oh no, what happened? XD

Oh, he had all this awesome dramatic scary "You can't handle the infinite void" stuff, and a muttered "My God, it's full of stars!" just cracked the whole thing open.

He started laughing uncontrollably, the rest of the table was totally baffled, so we had to stop and explain the reference, and he just couldn't salvage the session.

But then, this was after he'd gotten my character into a position where the only viable option to move the story forward was to have sex with a giant ant.

So I have no remorse.

Here's the thing about that warded door: cosmic panic is, specifically, the idea that the things we count upon--rely upon--depend upon are not reliable. That the bedrock on which we have built our interaction with reality is quicksand.

Time and space, our place in the universe, the laws of physics and our notions of spirituality, are all catastrophically localised views of the world which we have foolishly assumed to be universal truths.

Your engineers are operating on the notion that skilled physical manipulation of the environment can overcome most any obstacle.

Defy that.

Laugh at it.

You could change the nature of their own inventions

Then in the next adventure go back to letting it work most of the time.

They use ropes to climb the tower ? What rope? You are holding tentacles

@Saffron They use ropes to climb the tower ? What rope? Tentacles are holding you

There's an "in Soviet Russia" joke in there somewhere.

@BESW HA HA HA HA HA HA!

No, no, from the belly, not from the throat.

If you are ok with changing a bit the nature of the monster, you could set it to be the mountain where the castle is itself. They finally enter the room with the talisman, and after walking two steps, one of them stumbles on a trap of some kind when the ground seems to move beneath them. They just have the time to realize that is wasn't the ground but the eyelid of a gigantic eye before the hole structure starts to fall apart

@RoundhouseKitty Hi! You'll need at least 20 rep (you're almost there!) on any one Stack Exchange site before you can type in chat rooms, but you're welcome to hang out until then.

However, this is particular chat room is dedicated to helping @doppelgreener design a tabletop RPG adventure he's going to run, so you may want to check out some other rooms if this one's too boring/esoteric for ya.

@BESW I'm going to have that monster walk through a wall at some point.

Or a door. Maybe.

Absolutely.

They run from it, barricade themselves. Phew, we're safe.

They are in the walls !

It invites itself in. Either just walks straight through the barricade as if it's not there, or the barricade shapes itself around the thing.

Let it treat "down" as whatever direction it wants, walk through walls, sneeze kittens.

I have to sleep!! Thank you for your help everyone.

ttfn

I will let this brew, and do some movie-watching research.

@doppelgreener If you havn't seen it already : the movies Dagon, Cthulhu and In the mouth of Madness are good references for that