BURN

The growth in information technology has made the dissemination of information very easy. However there is a price to pay for such easy access to information.

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On the internet, there are a growing number of computer users falling prey to a new computer virus called BURN. This virus is so new that most anti-virus software companies do not yet know of it. It is also unlikely that anyone will survive to tell the story of its most unusual effects.

Astute students of Fortean lore may note an increasing unusual death rate amongst Net surfers, and there are always going to be upset parents. Media types, always hungry for a new angle on the Internet, will also make much of the rising tide of bodies, linking them to Internet pornography. 

Eventually the BURN virus can be traced (via assembly language code headers) to a compiler belonging to the Arkham Sanitarium. 

Howard Barker is a deranged hebephrenic psychology postgraduate from Miskatonic Uni who works as a ward assistant. Lately he has been spending a lot of time with the computers in the building.

Possibilities

1 The two variants of the BURN virus target Windows or Apple computers.

BURN is a Trojan virus which hides itself inside other applications then attaches itself to video card drivers. The next time the computer is booted up the virus causes the screen to pulse and strobe at a rate which hypnotises unfortunate onlookers or causes epileptic seizures.

Embedded into the strobing is the subliminal text message KILL - ENJOY. After 15 seconds the virus shuts down and is deleted the next time the computer is booted. Victims immediately become mindless killing machines and end up dead, either shot by police as they stroll through a shopping mall armed to the teeth, or take their own lives after cheerily slaughtering their family and friends.

Howard Barker is currently preparing his doctorial thesis on human psychological impulses and is testing a few of his assumptions before he submits his final paper.

2 The two BURN variants target sound card drivers, not video drivers. It causes the computer to produce an odd agglutinous chanting from the attached speakers. If the timing is correct (i.e. night and Fomalhaut is visible) the user will suddenly feel cold and tired, and a glowing ball will appear from the smoking remains of the computer.

The chant is a summoning spell for a Fire Vampire and the user has just lost the requisite magical energy to summon the beast. There are a large number of recent cases of people burnt to a cinder alongside their melted computers, causing the major PC companies to suspect hardware faults; none have been found so far.

The Fire Vampires, being balls of plasma, then run around the electrical circuits in the building causing major fires. In big computer installations the sprinklers/halon/CO2 extinguishers go off and the Fire Vampires usually get snuffed. Surviving security video footage from a nearby college campus may prove illuminating.

Howard Barker is a mad genius who got a number of such spells piecemeal from one of the inmates. Said inmate is John Doe #23 and has an unusual case history.

3 The BURN virus is slow and insidious. It subliminally flashes unpronouncable text messages on screen, essentially a Contact Nyarlathotep spell. It also adds a bookmark to web browsers. The address is that of the home page of the Starry Wisdom Brotherhood, a quasi-religious group who hold all kinds of odd beliefs. 

Nyarlathotep contacts the unfortunate victim via dreams or e-mail messages from an apparently non-existent mail address. The net result is that the victim is seduced by the Mythos and joins the Brotherhood. Eventually the sendings (dream or electronic) command the victim to prepare for a journey to the throne of the Ruler of the Universe and to prepare offerings. 

Howard Barker maintains the website and there is much circumstantial evidence pointing to him as the leader of the Brotherhood. Actually he is a front man and scapegoat for Dr. Eloise Whateley, a recent addition to the staff roster at the Sanitarium.

© Peter Devlin

Best-selling necktie

Philosophy major Andrew Cyrus Galbraith penned a runaway best-seller that made him internationally known. Too bad he’s not around to enjoy it.

An earlier collection of his essays had garnered critical acclaim for his striking new perspectives on old philosophical problems. However, Galbraith’s latest paper asked whether life had any meaning, and if not, then should you continue to live? His powerful thirty-page answer was no, life has no meaning outside of what we project on it, and no, we should not live through this absurdity. It was the most intelligent, convincing, solid argument ever written in favor of suicide. Simply titled You Should Do It, the paper also served as his own suicide note. Andrew tightened his necktie, secured the thick end of it to the cross-braces on his dorm window, and flung himself out.

His death was a minor news story the next day. It only drew world-wide attention two days later, after someone circulated the paper on the internet, and thousands of readers agreed with Galbraith’s tightly reasoned arguments, and began taking their own lives...

Possibilities

1 The paper is cursed. Galbraith undertook the Unspeakable Oath to accomplish this. Weak-willed people can be susceptible to suicide attempts if they read it. The curse can be cancelled, making all copies powerless, but only by seeking Galbraith’s ghost and allowing it to rest in peace by completing “unfinished business”. Whatever that may be.

2 The paper isn’t convincing. It’s actually a signal for members of a particular cult to sacrifice themselves en masse around the world, or killing many people in ways that look like suicide. The cult is using the sacrifices to summon something powerful - but what?

3 Galbraith’s paper really is that convincing. Shortly before the paper is published, a psychic has a vision of thousands of readers inspired to kill themselves if the paper becomes widely read. It can only be a matter of time before a priest of Nyarlathotep or other fiend publishes it on the internet.

© Rob Northrup

Power Trip

The investigators visit the house a leading member (and medium) of an organisation of psychics and mediums near Arkham. When they arrive they find that the house is surrounded by dead birds, insects and other animal corpses - in fact, every sentient creature in a radius of about one mile has died from massive internal trauma.

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The door is unlocked, and the body of the butler lies in the hall. The medium lies in their drawing room, behind a camera set up on a tripod. All the furniture in this room is smashed, as if dropped from a height. The camera film, when developed, shows a strange man apparently levitating all the furniture in the room up to the ceiling. There is no sign of the man at the scene.

Soon afterwards, the investigators hear of a train crash in Arkham. Everyone on the train has died horribly in a similar manner - except one survivor, the mystery man from the photograph.

Possibilities

1 The mystery man is human, and a powerful psychic. However, his mind is vulnerable to a mental entity that is trying to take him over. He contacted the medium in an attempt to get help, since she is an expert in psychic phenomena. While he demonstrated his powers by levitating her furniture, the creature broke through and unleashed a lethal mental attack that killed everything around the house. He believes that the entity will unleash an even more terrible attack on his death, and he is trying to reach the coast so that he can steal a boat and take it far enough from civilisation before he commits suicide. However, his powers are desired by the US government, who have sent agents to kidnap him from Arkham.

2 The man is actually an alien being who feeds on mental energy. His levitation demonstration was a side effect of the huge energy flow while he drank the souls from the surrounding life forms. He must be stopped - and others of his species are trying to do just that. He is regarded as highly dangerous on his home planet and others of his species have come to take him home. He has gone into hiding in Arkham, and must be found before he needs to feed again.

3 The man is a tulpa - a projected body, which the medium had created from mental energy. His power is enormous, but the ritual required to animate him drained life from the surroundings, pouring it into the new body. The levitation was simply a side effect of this energy flow. The tulpa is now trying to create others of his kind, using the energy of entire trainloads of humans. If he is able to do this again, it will be the end for Arkham - and now, after the train incident, there is more than one of his kind...

© James David Beard

The Freighter

The citizens of a small coastal town in northern Florida quickly mobilize a rescue mission when a derelict freighter runs into trouble at some cliffs, and is in danger of tipping over and go under.

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When the rescuers board the freighter, they’re met with a horrible sight: the crew and passengers have been brutally slain.

The only person left alive is an insanely mumbling sailor, drenched in blood and armed with a bloody weapon. Being unable to question the mad sailor about the brutal murders, the local police charge him for the murders and incarcerates him in a mental hospital.

But before long, a series of strange and brutal murders starts to haunt the coastal town.

Possibilities

1 The mad sailor is not the killer. He’s the only survivor of a desperate battle against a being of monstrous nature. The being was brought aboard the ship as part of the cargo - ancient artefacts recovered by an archaeological excavation in East Africa.

When a nosy sailor searched the cargo for some valuable trinkets to steal, he released the monstrous creature. Then the murders started.

Moments before the ship ran afoul of the cliffs, the surviving sailor successfully fought the being to a retreat. Unfortunately his mind was destroyed by the horrible ordeal. The monster fled when the resuers arrived and went into hiding, gathering strength.

Now, at full strength, the monster terrorizes the coastal town.

2 The mad sailor murdered the crew and passengers, but an outside source drove him to do it.

The freighter’s cargo contained rare and expensive lumber - which was also the home of a species of arachnid unknown to science. The arachnids’ bite contains a poison that kills small prey but has a hallucinating effect on humans. The hallucinations drives the bitten person to become highly paranoid, and later, permanently insane.

Once onboard the freighter, it was inevitable that someone would be bitten. That someone then went on to butcher everyone else on board, and is the only survivor.

As the rescuers salvage the cargo of rare lumbar and dangerous arachnids, they unknowingly endanger the coastal town.

3 The mad sailor is not the killer. The real killer is a serpent-man sorcerer who infiltrated the freighter, disguising himself as one of the crew. The sorcerer is after an ancient artefact that the passengers, a team of archaeologists, have brought along with them.

The archaeologists were returning home after an expedition in southern Egypt where they located and excavated an ancient temple of mysterious design. The temple, which was actually a remnant of the serpent-people’s civilization, contained a lone, surviving sorcerer kept alive in hibernation.

As the archaeologists entered the temple, they woke the sorcerer. He watched from the shadows until they left, but when he discovered that they had stolen sacred artefacts, the sorcerer followed the archaeologists to the freighter. The sorcerer’s plan was to kill theoffenders and the crew, and then sail the freighter back to Africa.

Things didn’t go according to plan, and there was a fight. Moments before the ship ran aground, the surviving sailor successfully fought the serpent-man sorcerer to a retreat, despite going insane when he witnessed the sorcerer’s real appearance.

As the rescuers arrives onboard the freighter, the weakened sorcerer fled and went into hiding.

Now, however, he is trying to locate the sacred artefacts that are stored somewhere in the town. Anyone who gets in his way is murdered.

© Tim Deer

Tales of Terror for The Dee Sanction

I’ve just finished running a short campaign for The Dee Sanction, Paul Baldowski’s game of covert Enochian intelligence set in the reign of Elizabeth I. You can read about the game on my blog, and I’ve published a short adventure, Abaddon’s Puppet, on my Itch.io page.

Tales of Terror are usually written from a modern or 20th-Century perspective, but here are a few I think could be easily incorporated (with some adjustment) within a game of The Dee Sanction. 

The Dee Signet: John Dee’s signet ring.

Gargoyle’s Watch: Evil gargoyles are watching you.

Homunculi: A strange cabinet filled with 24 clay homunculi.

The Plated Skull: Find it at the Whitstable Reserve.

The Gibbet Frame: A picture frame made from the wood from a gibbet.

Type Case: Type used to print an occult book.

Ailurophobia: Cats. Dozens and dozens of cats.

The Attic Window: A house with an ill reputation.

The Iron Crib: A mysterious crib appears in a graveyard one night.

Suitable for Framing: An unpleasant portrait.

The Old Cottage: An odd coin in an old cottage.

Barratt's Brain

Eric Barrett’s short life wasn’t a happy one. Confined to an asylum at four when he began to exhibit autistic behaviour, he spent three years scribbling weird, meaningless shapes on any scrap of paper he could reach, before finally dying of unknown causes.

Eager to study an unusual case further, the asylum’s doctors have convinced the grieving parents to allow them to perform an autopsy and craniotomy to identify the cause of death.

They cut into the boy’s skull and find...

Possibilities

1   ...a brass clockwork engine where his brain should be.

It’s still ticking over, tiny wires tugging at nerves and muscles that no longer respond. Interior convolutions of the skull suggest that the engine somehow GREW in its current position.

Eric’s uncle Phillip was an investigator into the unknown who looked too deeply into mysteries he should have avoided, and slowly went mad. In his insanity, he talked about the things he’d discovered. No-one listened, except his nephew, who didn’t understand what he was hearing. He understood one thing, though—the name ‘Hastur’. He made a game out of repeating it, and even invented a pretend playmate named Hastur.

The childish chanting, coupled with a boyish imagination that treated Hastur as real, was enough to evoke a partial manifestation of the Great Old One, with limited power. Eric and Hastur spent countless hours together, and Hastur told him things even his uncle didn’t know. The boy’s devastating transformation is the result.

His three years of drawings contain mythos secrets imparted by Hastur. Only a few, but they’re big ones, and each is repeated hundreds of times. Someone with the right knowledge could interpret them to reveal information with horrible implications for the whole human race. The Barrett’s have no idea what they have stuck on their fridge.

2.  ...a hollow, filled with nothing but bloody fluid.

Three years ago, parts of Eric’s brain were extracted by mi-go while the family vacationed at a mountain lake resort. They left enough to maintain basic functions, but took everything responsible for higher thought. The mi-go used those pieces of Eric in a mi-go mining machine, burrowing for minerals under the same lake he stayed at with his parents.

Worse, a week ago, Eric’s parents received a phone call in a buzzing, metallic voice claiming to BE Eric, begging them to rescue him. They thought it was a cruel joke, but if the boy is still alive in some form, something will have to be done.

The scribbled drawings are maps of mine shafts, somehow transmitted by the remainder of his brain.

3.  ...a bullet.

While she was pregnant, Eric’s mother was injured in a drive-by shooting. Because it was so close to her unborn baby, the doctors who attended her elected to leave the bullet in place and remove it after the boy was born. However, exploratory surgery failed to locate it after the birth.

The bullet penetrated Eric’s skull, and his brain formed around it. However, the lead slowly poisoned him, leading to the mental breakdown and eventual death.

The gangster responsible for the shooting was never convicted, and is now a wealthy and powerful man. A ballistic examination of the bullet could be the evidence which finally puts him behind bars.

The drawings are meaningless.

© Chris Kerr

Under A Blood Red Sky

After sleeping for a while, the characters awaken in a forest. Their first impression is that the light is extraordinary. Indeed it is, for in the twilight, all colors are shades of red. It looks like an old black-and-white film filmed with a red filter lens. After walking for an hour, the characters come to the edge of the wood. This opens an even stranger vista to them.

They look at a valley where a stream of blood-red water flows gently. On the horizon, a dark red light, which must be the sun, glows unnervingly. Everything is shaded in red: the clouds, the grass, even the sheep herded by a little boy. Down in the valley at the blood river lies a small city. Farther away, on the hill that the river springs from, rises a tower, glowing unholy red in the eerie light.

Possibilities

1     Do vampires dream? Yes they do! This is the domain of a strange vampire lord. (For an example, see Brain Lumley’s Necroscope.)

In the vampire’s long unlife, he has had more than enough time to dream, shaping a whole nightmare realm in the Dreamlands. It lies in the Stony Desert on a high plateau. He is a counterpart to King Kuranes, having created an entire realm out of nothing. The vampire has made himself a retreat in the unlikely case that vampire hunters should kill his body. In his domain he is a god-king. His seat is the Citadel of Blood, the unholy red tower on the hill. He is a ruthless ruler.

The characters have been drawn to this plateau because a good wizard has seen how the vampire lord’s subjects suffer. But, the vampire is a mighty foe, and the wizard cannot face him alone. Therefore, he has summoned helping hands. On the outskirts of the city he looks for the saviours.

2     The characters are not in the Earth’s dreamlands but in those of an alien world. They are archaeologists or geologists and in the waking world have discovered a strange meteor. This meteor is of a stony material in varying shades of red. Everyone touching the stone will dream of the planet from which the meteor comes. How is the curse broken?

3     After watching a horror film named The Mad Butcher, with much blood-spilling and then eating lots of pizza, the characters have a simple nightmare. But why do they all have the same nightmare?

© Mathias Braun