A Living Nightmare (summary of a gaming session) by J.W. Mangrum At the time, I was running a fairly large party. They were investigating a haunted house (the adventure was The Ghost of Mistmoor , FYI), and the evil spirit who was trapped there was able to insinuate himself into the dreams of anyone who fell asleep inside. Fortunately for me, one of the PCs did just that. This PC (named Kevin) -thought- he was just nodding off when half the party entered the room he was in via a secret door (the other players were exploring and did just that). As the secret door opened, a second secret door opened in an unusual, but not impossible spot (basically, the dream started fairly normal, but rapidly became bizarre). While most of the party was poking around this new passage, one PC (whose player was not present) was off in another part of the house, keeping guard. The party heard this PC (Simpkin by name) shriek hideously, but by the time they reached him he was quite dead, having been aged more than a century in the blink of an eye. The so-far-simply-eerie ghosts had apparently just turned lethal. Well, Simpkin had a Murlynd's Spoon , which he had been quite fond of, and my greedy little PCs weren't about to let a dead man keep his magic. So Toben stole Simpkin's magic spoon. Then they all turned their attention back to the new secret passage. Eventually, they decided to enter it (it appeared to be a spiraling staircase leading into an undiscovered cellar). Most of the party went in before the secret door suddenly and inexplicably slammed shut, cutting off Toben and Kevin. The PCs on both sides of the door tried to find some way to get it open again, but no dice. Eventually, the PCs in the staircase realized they've have go down into the depths to find a way out. Meanwhile, Toben and Kevin were not alone. They heard a dry, rasping voice behind them: the brittle form of the 120-year old Simpkin, standing like a scarcrow in the doorway. "You stole from me..." Simpkin lurched forward with jerking steps, clamping his fingers around Toben's throat in an iron grip, lifting the priest off his feet. "You took my spoon..." With Kevin unable to stop the shambling revenant in any way, the undead Simpkin carried Toben into a nearby room, which contained a large bathtub/small pool filled with murky water (and skeletal corpses which had nearly killed Toben earlier). Simpkin walked right into the pool, carrying his squirming cargo, dropping in like a stone. Neither Simpkin nor Toben rose to the surface again. Kevin was now alone, and I cut to the others... ...the players were a little shaky. After all, I'd just killed two PCs! But without any options, they had no choice but to keep going. On the stairs were Nash (a witch, who had earlier in the evening gained a Dark Powers point for killing a fleeing thief who herself had earlier let Nash go free), Argent (a paladin), Celia (an infected werewolf), and Walker (a ranger whose species enemy was werewolves. He was also an infected werewolf, whose trigger was killing). They went down and down the stairs, well below the level of any cellars they knew about. Nash, being quite the coward, was in the rear. Unfortunately for her, the supposedly dead thief she'd murdered was creeping along behind them all! No one suspected the thief was there until a razor- sharp blade sliced between Nash's shoulder blades, and her body clattered down the stairs... The thief slipped into a secret door (which closed and locked behind her) before anyone could react! The players were now definitely spooked. As one of them (who always thought I was a killer DM anyway) later told me, they all thought I'd gone on some bizarre killing spree, and I was now actively out to kill the PCs. The next calamity took place when out of nowhere, Celia started to change. Walker had just been waiting for the opportunity (maybe I should say plausible excuse) to kill Celia, so Argent found himself trying to keep these two lethal killing machines away from each other. He couldn't do it, and Walker slew Celia with a grin on his face. Argent had a secret crush on Celia, so he really wasn't too happy about this. But, he was a paladin, so he couldn't very well just off this guy in revenge. His problem now was that it was a matter of time before Walker changed. As each PC died, I'd been picking up the pace. This kept the players of dead PCs from sitting around too long, and increasingly heightened the tension by giving the remaining players less and less time to think. By this point in the dream, I went into full-fledged nightmare mode and stopped calling for die rolls during combat, just making up combats as I went along. Argent and Walker thought they could see the bottom of the stairs when two things happened: they found a glass wine bottle filled with some mysterious -something-, and Walker started to change. It's a testament to Argent's player that even in these circumstances, he really tried to simply fend Walker off instead of going for a quick (and excuseable) kill. Walker (now the only guy with a light source) attacked Argent while he was still changing. During the struggle, Walker stepped on the discarded bottle, cracking it. Instantly (well, perhaps not so instantly that he couldn't screech) Walker was sucked into the void trapped into the bottle, a 280-lb man sucked through a hairline fracture. With Walker went the last light. Argent ran, blindly, in a panic, down the stairs, along a hall he stumbled across. As he ran the air grew warm and damp, the floor grew soft and moist under his feet. After an aunknowable amount of time, sourceless light slowly brightened, showing Argent that he was now in a vast chamber apparently formed of raw, living meat. A vaguely humanoid figure rose/grew from the meat floor ahead of him. The meat figure, obviously some extension of the chamber all around him, shook its "head" sadly. "So close, yet so far," it said through a formless mouth. Instantly, a dozen gangly arms shot from the pulpy floor under Argent's feet, clamping on to his body, and dragged him down, oblivious to his struggles. I cut back to Kevin, picking up where we left off. Kevin's player now knew he was the last PC left. He didn't have long to think about it. Still standing over the murky pool, he had no time to react. Toben burst from beneath the depthless surface, half his face torn away. "YOU LET ME DIE!!" Toben clasped on to Kevin's legs, pulling him off balance! Kevin was dragged into the cold, dark waters of the pool, and… woke up screaming. As did my players. No exaggeration, they all jumped out of their seats shrieking. We had to take a short break while they regained their composure. John W. Mangrum Juste Desserts By John M. Baker (Here's the summary of a session I just ran. It was quite enjoyable, and I'd never realized how much fun Scaena really is. DM's notes appear in parentheses. Spoilers: don't read this if you don't know what Scaena is or who Juste is.) The Story So Far: The PCs venture into the Ghastrian forest to save a group of children that got lost at dusk on a VERY stormy night. They find the children in an old, rickety windmill that had been in disuse for as long as anyone can remember. However, they find that Mad Old Tom, a hermit that lives out there, has been transporting human skeletons from the D'Polarno manor to this windmill. They plan to explore further, but they quickly leave when it becomes clear that the windmill will not survive the storm. Sure enough, it collapses, covering the bones and Mad Old Tom. The next day, when the rain stops, the PCs, with Baron D'Marosso, examine the collapsed windmill, only to find a theater. The doors open and a bunch of bewildered individuals, apparently from Port-a- Lucine, emerge. Dramatis Personae: Cyan, the blacksmith. His mother was killed ostensibly for crimes against the Marquis. Viktor Zhukov, the Captain of the Noble Guard of Ghastria, made sure that the execution took place, leaving the corpse to hang in the main square of East Riding. Cyan's heart burns with vengeance against any such military men. Nahasia D'Polarno, ward of the Marquis. She was found as an infant at the steps of the ruined cathedral, abandoned by her parents. Stezen D'Polarno took her in, despite the fears of the locals. Most of the locals fear that she is a witch, or a changeling, and has enchanted the Marquis into making her the next person in line when the Marquis dies. Sergeant Argmoor Zhukov, Noble Guard and son of Viktor Zhukov. He was born in Falkovnia, but traveled far in his youth to search with Viktor for his mother but eventually settled in Ghastria. Viktor explained that Argmoor's mother was sacrificed by the werewolves of Verbrek in a circle of monoliths. (Argmoor's player could not make it this week, so I kept him in the back.) The Baron Camar D'Marosso looked with a slightly confused yet ultimately pleased eye at the strangers.