Reformatted for Yellow Cubes

From a dream…

A four-inch cube, capable of levitation, bright yellow and of a soft, marshmallowy texture and consistency.

This object is currently squeezing its way into the mouth of a paralysed man - only his eyes can move, and although he wants to scream he cannot. This object is associated with certain poltergeist-type experiences. Its existence is being hidden through the use of drugs which “reformat” perception... this conspiracy is in collaboration with the intelligence behind the cube, and the drugs normally prevent the cube from being seen...

Possibilities

1 This is a tool, machine, or device of some kind. What is it used for? Who or what uses it and/or constructed it?

2 This cube is an intelligent creature. What is it doing, and why? What sort of world would it have ecologically fit into and evolved upon, and why is it here instead of there?

3 Normally, few people can see this object. There is a deliberate government conspiracy to keep the population drugged, mixing the drug into the water supply, mandatory vaccines, mood equalizers, Viagra-type drugs, etc. The real purpose of the drug is to ensure that nobody can see this cube and other related objects, creatures, events, etc. What sort of people are behind this, and why is this being done?

(In the dream all this came from, those powerful, ambitious people were being offered the opportunity to extend their empires into other dimensions, in exchange for their cooperation here with the creators of the cube. Anyone who failed to take the drugs would not be properly “reformatted”, and could see not only the cubes and their creators, but also the way additional dimensions were grafted onto this reality- and because of all this they would quickly go insane. The cubes would only fly into the mouths of certain people, but it was never really clear to me why this was so. Most victims couldn’t see or feel anything, and the cubes would eventually melt away inside their bodies; however, it was a terrible experience for the rare individuals who could see what was happening- they would have to be paralysed first and never seemed to survive the experience. Sometimes, before the attack, these poor victims, the ones who hadn’t been properly drugged, would leave a room for a moment, and return to find it wrecked or the furniture re-arranged, and sometimes one of the creators might roll through the house wrapped in a blanket- it was impossible to tell what they were shaped like, but they seemed to vary in size between a medium-sized dog and an adult human; their strange behaviour was sort of like a surreal, insane haunting.)

© Yronimos

Odontalgia

Searing pain aches through your body, you want to scream . . . but you manage to contain yourself, there are still other patients in the dentist’s waiting room. Finally, it’s your turn. The dentist examines your aching tooth, then comes to the result, that he must remove it with the root. His assistant prepares the anaesthesia, and soon you fall asleep. Just before you completely slip away, you have a really weird vision: the dentist’s head is replaced by a monstrous visage, with wrinkled skin, a bundle of tentacles instead of a mouth and a dozen eyes with pitch-black irises...

Possibilities

1 You wake up and everything went well. The assistant gives you an appointment for the new implant. This dentist is really okay! Still, there are rumours of some deaths in his practice: one man reportedly died because his fear of the dentist gave him a cardiac infarction, and another one died of an unrecognized allergy to his new fillings. And then the assistant also vanishes without a trace. Strange...

2 You wake up and everything went well, it was just a dream. However, the dentist has one more surprise for you: the pulled tooth was hollow, and inside it contained a small electronic device. It’s a small transmitter with which somebody can determine the carrier’s location...

3 You don’t wake up. Instead, you’re trapped in a dreamworld – and you’ve already met the owner of this place...

© Philipp Mählmann

Flightscare

The passengers on the red-eye from New York to Los Angeles are slowly waking up. The stewards are busy making coffee and breakfast, while the dawn light shines through.

Suddenly, the passenger on seat 21A starts to scream and flail violently with their arms and legs. The startled stewards and fellow passengers are having a hard time calming the screaming passenger.

Possibilities

1 The screaming passenger, a Mr. James Carlson, is a businessman bound for a business dinner in Los Angeles. He took a glance out the window to check the horizon, and, in a brief moment, spotted a small swarm of Mi-Go passing. A sight no human normally witnesses, but the dawn light - and the fact that James witnessed it from a plane window several thousand feet up in the air - made it possible.

Mr. Carlson’s mind shattered when he saw the alien Mi-Go, and although stewards and fellow passengers managed to calm down the screaming Mr. Carlson, he’s still as mad as a hatter and must spend some time in a mental hospital.

2 Mr. James Carlson, who’s visiting family in Los Angeles, is a first-time flyer. He’s been afraid of flying since he was born. Up until his first flight, he has always gone by train. But this time a good friend suggested that he could seek help to get rid of his flightscare. He did, and it seemed to help. But it didn’t last.

3 Mr. James Carlson had a nightmarish dream, that resulted in his involuntary screams and flailing. A calmed, and extremely embarrassed, James Carlson apologizes and keeps a low profile on the rest of the flight.

© Tim Deer

Ashes

On an island, an old volcano has erupted again for the first time in centuries. While there is no imminent danger for the few settlements on the island, big clouds of ashes are spreading over a wide area and the near continent.

Possibilities

1 In the areas where the ashes sink down, the deceased rise from their graves and start spreading terror, eating the flesh of the living...

2 In a night after a larger eruption, witnesses claim that amidst the ash cloud a big shadow was seen, as if a gigantic creature had emerged from the volcano, before disappearing into the night - and the volcano still hasn’t come to rest...

3 In the areas where the ashes sink down, certain people – artists, poets and other daydreamers – start having nightmares in which they claim to have seen an ancient city of strange and twisted proportions, as if not made for humans. As the nightmares continue, more and more of these people are driven by an overwhelming desire to go to the volcano and look for the city there, finally even climbing down to its centre, never to be seen again...

© Philipp Mählmann

Roadkill

This one happens while the investigators are in their car, somewhere out in the country. They are speeding along a shady road, anxious to get from point A to point B to further their researches. Suddenly a man steps out from the trees at the side of the road, directly in front of their oncoming vehicle. There is nothing they can do. The car slams into him.

When they get out to check on the victim’s injuries, a terrible smell assails their nostrils. From the decayed and liquescent human debris smeared across the road it is apparent that the man had been dead for a while before they hit him.

Possibilities

1 The wandering dead man was an experiment on the hoof. A Dr Frankenstein-type has a laboratory in the area, where he is conducting his studies in reanimation in relative seclusion. This one, however, got away. The doctor or his assistants may be in pursuit. The cadaver may have been a one-off, or the first in a series of escapees abroad in the countryside.

2 As the investigator who was driving surveys the splattered corpse, the horror causes them to swoon. As they lift their head, they see the road rushing by, their white knuckles gripping the steering wheel - the whole scene with the undead pedestrian was a hallucination, an REM. dream as they nodded off at the wheel. They snap awake just as the car starts to drift off the road, heading at full speed straight for a large tree.

3 The man they have just run down was a lot older than he seemed. His life had been extended by magick (see Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward) or surgery (as per Cool Air). When he was accidentally killed, his body immediately reverted to its correct state of decay. The players may never learn his old secret.

© Mark Morrison

Dreamfire

Abruptly she awakes. Something is burning, there is smoke in the air. The house is on fire!

Opening the bedroom door reveals and angry orange hell. The fire rages fiercely in the hall, the walls and floors are blazing and impassable.

With flames licking at the door, there appears to be only one way out of the house: through the bedroom window. Outside, the street it quiet, nobody has yet noticed that the house is burning merrily. There is nothing to climb down that is not already burning. The only option is to jump.

She leaps out, towards a cold, hard safety. Landing is a sudden shock, a searing pain, and unconsciousness.

Possibilities

1 She wakes up in hospital. There she is recovering from injuries sustained from having leapt from her bedroom window. Returning to the house, it is untouched.

The nightmare is the work of a protective spell in a forbidden book she is translating. Into one of the pages the author has worked a fiendish spell to prey on the fears of those who should not be reading the book.

Each time anyone studies that book, there is a chance that he will glance at that page, so triggering the spell. Next time anyone takes a flying leap from their bedroom window they might not be so lucky: they might be on the twentieth floor.

2 She ‘wakes’ to find himself in the Dreamlands. She has been summoned, ripped out of normal slumber to appear in the Dreamlands. Whether friendly allies or dangerous enemies have summoned the investigator is not yet known.

In the waking world, she appears to have fallen into a coma having leapt from her bedroom window for no apparent reason. She also has a broken ankle and is currently in hospital.

3 She sits bolt upright in bed. It is night, the bed covers are twisted and drenched in sweat. It was only a dream.

© Steve Hatherley

The Paper Under the Bed

The sheet of paper is covered in black ink. Crabbed, spidery words and diagrams cover one side of the A4 paper in a disturbing pattern that vaguely resembles a crooked cobweb. Around the edges of the paper are two rows of Arabic-looking script and in the centre of the paper, and the web, an eye.

The sheet of paper was taped to the underside of a bed in an unremarkable hotel room. It could have been there for months, it was only discovered when a guest was searching under the bed for their dropped keys.

Possibilities

1 The paper is a dreamcaster, a component of a powerful ritual. A dreamcaster allows a sorcerer to influence the dreams of another person – and in really skilled hands allows the sorcerer, over a number of nights, to place detailed subliminal instructions into the victim.

The dreamcaster itself must be tailored to its victim and, if deciphered, includes clues as to the dreams and instructions it will induce. It must be placed underneath wherever the victim is sleeping, which suggests that whoever put the dreamcaster in place knew who was going to be in the room.

2 The words and diagrams are the work of a disturbed child. The child was staying in the hotel with her parents some weeks ago, and in the process created many, many artworks and taped them over the walls and furniture. Housekeeping cleared the rest of the art – but missed this one last piece.

3 The paper under the bed is an inshō-shi, an ancient Japanese device used to identify victims of possession. When the inshō-shi spends a few hours within close proximity to someone who is possessed, it reacts to possessor’s psychic emissions. By recovering the paper and examining how it has reacted, the exorcists can (by referring to their comprehensive archives) determine exactly what has possessed the victim and how to deal with it.

In this case, the inshō-shi was placed by Vatican exorcists. The hotel is funded directly by the Vatican and as a matter of course inshō-shi are placed beneath each of the beds and are inspected each morning by the housekeeping team. Any inshō-shi that looks as if it has been affected is reported immediately to the hotel management who then contact the Vatican.

A guest who finds a inshō-shi showing a reaction is most likely possessed themselves (but may not realise it). As the Vatican exorcists are very experienced and very thorough, it is unlikely that the entity possessing the guest will recognise the inshō-shi – and the first they learn of it is when the exorcists come knocking.

© Steve Hatherley